Management Coaching & Mentoring

At its core, coaching is all about facilitating change. In the workplace, coaching is focused primarily on helping an employee to change his or her current KSA-state to a more desired KSA-state. It is important to note that this process is not conditioning per se, one where undesirable behavior is simply extinguished and/ or a desirable behavior is shaped through punishment and reward.

Although such an approach can yield desired results in the short term, it gives away much of the value-adding benefits that could normally be gained when a learning and goal setting approach is used. Instead, coaching should be a learning process, and as such an effective coach needs to understand how people prefer to learn in order to maximize their ability (both physical and cognitive) and to sustain their motivation.

To this end, many coaches have relied on a 4-stage learning model of competence/ skill development and mastery as a useful framework for their own coaching efforts. This model describes the milestones a client should reach as they move away from the current status quo toward his or her desired end-state. Each milestone in itself is a change objective, and a coach should adopt an intervention approach that best suits the client in each stage since situations, personalities, and other variables will all come in to play to make each situation unique.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence

• Doesn’t know how to use a piece of equipment or process an invoice

• Doesn’t understand what constitutes good vs bad performance

• Doesn’t see the value of acquiring the KSAs or the tasks themselves

• Is not interested in learning the job or acquiring the KSAs

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence

• Has acquired a basic KSA set

• Recognizes the value in acquiring the KSAs

• Begins to understand good versus bad job performance

• Can begin to assess their own performance

Stage 3: Conscious Competence

• Has a basic to good understanding of the equipment and acquired KSA proficiency

• Understands the differences between levels of performance standards

• Sees the value in the task and KSAs

• Understands how to avoid making mistakes

• Seeks out guidance and assistance on their own

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence

• Has expert knowledge of the equipment and has KSA mastery

• Consistently achieves exceeds performance standard expectations

• Actively seeks ways to enlarge and enrich the job

• Is able to coach or mentor others on how to perform the job

To be effective, the coach must decide the best way to move the client through each stage until the desired end-state is reached (i.e., consistently meets or exceeds a performance standard for a specific performance goal).

In other words, the model is not a cookie-cutter that coaches should apply in the same way to each client. Instead, an effective coach will figure out how to help the client adapt to and move through each stage depending on their personality, intelligence, motivation, and preferred learning style.

When employees are observed behaving in undesired ways, and behavior modification is required, a coach must first consider what specific aspect of the behavior needs to be addressed. The coach must then decide on the approach to learning a new KSA or modifying an existing one. To do this, consideration must be made of the individual’s personality, intelligence, and learning style.

Intelligence is not only someone’s capacity to input, process, and make sense of information. It also influences the way in which they prefer to learn, since some forms of intelligence benefit a person more than others, and they will tend to default to that aspect in most learning situations.

It also influences someone’s motivation because our beliefs about our own intelligence underlie our self-esteem, self efficacy, emotional stability, and locus of control.

From a coaching perspective, overestimating one form of intelligence or underestimating others for each client can constrain efforts to facilitate change. As such, the coach needs to be aware of the various forms of intelligence and learning styles as much as they need to understand personality differences.

What makes this especially challenging is that currently there is no universal definition of intelligence, and intelligence is often a general term used to describe the overall composition of an individual’s cognitive ability. For example, one of the most ubiquitous assessments of cognitive ability is known as the “G-factor” (General Intelligence Factor), and is often used for selection purposes in government and civil service agencies.

An applicant’s G-factor is a composite of a variety of cognitive ability dimensions, where one dimension does not determine overall success compared to others.

Cognitive ability itself includes a range of different and unique forms of intelligence.

For example one type of intelligence involves understanding kinesthetic principles which include physical agility and balance, and hand eye coordination. This type of cognitive ability is essential for jobs such as athletes, firefighters, even chefs, actors, and anyone who has to work in a dynamic environment using a variety of tools.

• Other forms of intelligence include: - understanding and interpreting the behaviors of ourselves and others [interpersonal] which is necessary for such jobs as doctors, educators, and salespeople - understanding ourselves and our own relationship to others and the world [intrapersonal] which is necessary for almost all careers - understanding verbal and written language and being able to explain and interpret ideas and information [linguistic] which is necessary for such jobs as public speakers, lawyers, television and radio hosts, and authors - employing logic and detecting patterns using data to analyze and problem solve [logical – mathematical] which is necessary for such jobs as engineers, scientists and researchers, and accountants

- recognizing rhythms and total patterns, and having an awareness of the structure of sound [musical] which is necessary for such jobs as musicians, acoustic engineers, and music producers and composers

- creating and interpreting visual images, and having both visual and spatial perception [spatial – visual] which is necessary for such jobs as artists, engineers, photographers, inventors, and interior designers

In addition to these established forms of intelligence, a more recent form of intelligence that has become popular is known as emotional intelligence which involves regulating and controlling our own emotions and being able to perceive the emotions and others.

As service jobs continue to increase, emotional intelligence is becoming more important because of the frequent interactions between people that must occur as part of the job.

And just like there are many forms of cognitive intelligence, there are also several forms of emotional intelligence which are: - self-awareness which involves being aware of what you are feeling - self-motivation which involves persisting in an effort while facing obstacles, setbacks and failures

- self-management which involves understanding and regulating your own emotions and impulses

- empathy which is the degree to which you can sense and understand how others are feeling

- social-skills which is a general term to reflect how effectively we handle the emotions of others, particularly in conflict management

By understanding the various dimensions of intelligence, we can begin to understand that a “behavior” is actually a composition of actions that are rooted in different forms of intelligence or knowledge.

Furthermore, these different forms of intelligence directly influences not only someone’s capacity to learn a new knowledge, skill, or ability, but also the way in which people prefer to learn.

A mismatch here often leads to resistance to change, and can (and often does) doom any coaching effort to failure.

For example, in occupations where linguistic intelligence is important learning to master linguistic ability requires extensive verbal, written and language-based learning.

For those jobs were the ability to create and interpret visual images is important, learning to create and interconnect various pictures and shapes requires a more abstract approach to learning.

Currently, much of the research on the relationship between learning and behavior has been conducted with children and adolescents; however, Annette Towler and Robert Dipboye developed a learning style orientation measure that provides insights in a wide range of contexts.

Specifically, they identified five key factors which determine an individual’s Preferred Learning Style Orientation. These are:

- Discovery Learning: learners prefer subjective assessments, interactional activities, informational methods, and reflective activities.

- Experiential Learning: learners prefer an active hands-on approach

- Observational Learning: learners prefer external activities such as demonstrations and diagrams

- Structured Learning: learners prefer taking notes, writing down and diagramming the steps of a task

- Group Learning: learners prefer to interact with and observe others

What Should a Coach Keep In Mind

In the book titled “Work Redesign” by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham (1980) the authors identified four ‘facts’ that provide some guidance for coaching.

The first fact is that many people are underutilized and under challenged in their jobs. This results in a poor fit between the person and the job which often leads to increased high turnover, absenteeism, disengagement, and other negative work outcomes. And as the authors note “this misfit usually has developed because the person is too much for the job rather than because the job is too much for the person”.

The second fact that Hackman and Oldham point out is that people are more adaptable in their work the management often realizes. The implication being that with coaching (i.e., establishing a collaborative relationship), any employee can increase their productivity and work quality.

This sentiment was reflected by Ken Blanchard who said “To achieve the best results and greatest satisfaction, leaders and direct reports need to work together to set goals that are aligned with the organization’s objectives and offer the right amount of challenge for the employee”. https://www.thebalance.com/the-power-of-one-minute-goal-setting-2275953

The third fact identified by Hackman and Oldham is that employee self- reports of job satisfaction and performance are often suspect for many reasons. As such to set effective learning goals requires coaches to become actively involved in observing the interactions between their the employee and their job.

What this implies is that when a coach can directly observe whether employee attitudes match their behaviors then the coach can more easily identify potential causes of job performance successes as well as failures.

The fourth fact is that change will often be resisted even when it is a good idea. There are several common reasons why employees resist change such as challenges to their self-esteem and self-efficacy, the possibility that they will have to learn new knowledge skill and ability, and an anxiety that a work process that they have become used to and may have improved may be fundamentally altered.

In other words, employees will assess the risk versus reward of change which will directly influence both their attitude and their corresponding work behaviors. As such when setting goals careful consideration must be given to not only make those goals clear and specific so that employees do not make unnecessary or unwarranted assumptions of risk.