kufranjufra: Should managers become internal coaches?

Gabor Holch

One of the most recent trends in management and leadership development is using the ?soft power? of coaching. Part of this trend is an increasing number of coaching certifications, which often becomes an obligation for managers. Yet, I have seen much more managers with coaching certifications than managers who actually coach their teams on a regular basis.

A coaching certification is rapidly becoming one of the most common decoration items on managers? office walls. But only a fraction of them actually use their coaching skills. Is it a good investment to become an internal coach? and should you?

Here at Campanile we are huge fans of coaching, if it is done properly. Here is how to avoid your coaching certification become a distant memory a year after you got it.

There are fads and fashions of everything. Ideas hit the market and become widely popular. Most of them are not brand new, but were only used by specialists, and after the fad is over the idea will go back to the same limited specialist group. Do you still use tapes to record information? Most of us do not. Specialists do.

Coaching is the current fashion of leadership development. Many companies hope that turning leaders into internal coaches will be a solution to problems they cannot solve otherwise, such as performance feedback or mid-to-top level management conflicts. Others introduce it because managers have done all other kinds of training already.?Unfortunately, delivering internal coaching skills can become a major time-waster if a few key facts are ignored. Here are the most important ones.

Coaching is just another method. If a company has failed to engage managers through training, the problem may be the message, company culture or overall strategy. Delivering the same thing through coaching will not help.
It takes huge commitment. Many of your top managers, especially leading technical experts, will be very skeptical of coaching. They may stay skeptical even after being certified, especially if nobody asked them if they wanted to.
It is resource-intensive. A professional coaching certification requires 50-100 hours of coaching on top of the hours spent on learning the skills themselves. Compared to the people development budget of most companies, it is also a considerable investment. Beware of providers who offer shortcuts.
Coaching is not for everyone. Coaching takes a specific personality: a supportive, patient person with great listening skills. Most high-performing managers are go-getters with great problem-solving skills, which is quite opposite to the coaching type. Many managers who have the right personality, on the other hand, have no time or opportunity to coach their teams ? their problem-solving responsibility still comes first!

Ultimately, internal coaching certification can be a powerful leadership tool in the hands of a small, carefully selected group of top managers, who will later get the time and resources to spend regular time on coaching others. Ironically, many companies provide coaching skills to everyone because assessment and careful planning is time-consuming and expensive ? and waste even more time and money later. With careful planning, and if reserved for the best-performing leaders, internal coaching can help share best practices, spread the attitude of the most brilliant people at the firm, and can serve as a great retention tool for both coaches and teams.

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