Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
By Venkat Manthripragada
Unlike the skilled and unskilled manpower of yester years belonging to traditional industry,
knowledge workers involved with the new age industries require more direction and guidance.
With high knowledge and restlessness much higher than the yester year workers, knowledge
workers take more managerial time if not properly coached and directed. This article touches
some important aspects of coaching the knowledge workers.
Introduction
The modern day workers are knowledge workers and are highly empowered.
They are as forceful as the river water; always find ways to direct their energies
in directions that allow them to. Because of the dynamism and flexibility the
knowledge workers may go in all directions which was not the case in case of
skilled and unskilled workers of yester generations.
It is said that knowledge workers probably require more direction and guidance
than skilled and unskilled workers of manufacturing era. Because they can see
more world than what their predecessors could see, the opportunities to loose
themselves into the wilderness are more.
Modern day workers can be motivated, their energies can be directed and can be
guided but these workers cannot be controlled by organizational barriers. It is
important to motivate the employees to improve continuously. The knowledge
workers possess inherent urge to learn and move up both from learning and
organization perspectives. In the absence of proper direction, the learning can go
into directions which may not be useful to the organization and can prove to be
hindrances to achieve the target performances.
Why coaching
How to coach
Coaching is a leadership function that calls for directing and influencing skills of
the leader. While coaching the leader in charge should follow some fundamental
principles to influence the team under coaching. A systematic nine step approach
towards the Coaching exercise can deliver good results.
The leader who has taken the responsibility to coach an individual or team
should show the path by walking the talk. The leader should resist temptations of
following shortcuts while executing tasks because the team members under
coaching look up to the leader to mould their personalities.
The leader if commits a mistake should accept the mistakes candidly. Any
attempt of justification for a specific behavior can bring the leader’s position in the
eyes of the team member down and the leader will loose the ability to influence
the team members.
In the conditions of formal authority where the leader’s decision can impact a
team member’s growth opportunities, the team may show patterns of following
the leader’s advice but the intended results of coaching can be achieved only if
Often coaching exercises may not target entire team as such. Growing a team
started fresh is different from coaching a team. Coaching often is required to
motivate the team members to work towards a positive result when they are
showing the behavior away from the goal.
In majority of the cases, leaders try to use their single heads to generate ideas to
resolve team’s issues in turn wasting the most valuable asset – the good ideas of
the team. Often the ideas generated within the team results to be much simpler
and close to the intended solution.
To generate good ideas from the team, it is important for the leader to show that
the team’s opinion is valued and used. Also while taking ideas from the
employees the leader should use active listening skills – to listen, understand
and respond. If the leader does not respond to a team member’s advice, the
team may stop talking to the leader.
Two important issues while dealing with the ideas generated by the team are –
leader’s ability to handle the ideas on their merits and tendency to assign the
task to execute a specific idea to the person who came up with the suggestion.
Leader’s often try to interfere their own interpretations or small diversions
to the ideas generated within the team and try to claim the credit of
generating the ideas or innovating the basic common thought. This will de-
motivate the team leading to new issues rather than resolving the existing
issues.
Coaching is a two level exercise. The coaching exercise should start at the team
level and then focus on individual. The common direction for the team should be
established at the group level and individual different should be observed to
focus individual coaching.
To make the coaching effective, the team members should be challenged with
some achievable results rather than just involving in motivational lectures. The
motivational lectures often become idealistic leaving the team members
bewildered about their fundamentals and action points required to reach the
levels mentioned as a part of the motivational lecture.
It is important to have a fair system of rewards for the team under coaching.
When the team responds to the challenge, it should be rewarded. A fair system of
rewards doesn’t mean that the rewards will even out over time. All workers must
have an equal opportunity to compete for the reward, but the rewards must go to
those who earn them.
Rewarding the group evenly can impact the team’s cohesiveness and balance. It
is important to establish the acceptable parameters transparently; the rewarded
can be admired within the team resulting into a good balance of providing internal
guidance within the team.
The actual coaching takes place in one on one session with each individual
employee. The group level coaching direction through lectures and challenges
will have individual impacts. Each of the team member takes the challenges at
different levels depending their maturity and confidence. It is important to have
one on one coaching sessions where the leader should bring out the topic
directly, positively and honestly.
One on one session may involve review of individual performance or behavior
patterns. How the leader is communicating with the team member in individual
coaching session is as important as what is being said. The tone and eye contact
are as important as the content itself. As much as possible, the coaching
discussions should focus on the issues positively rather than touching individual
limitations which can divert the team member from the topic leading to counter
productive results.
When a leader is resorting to coaching, the key intention is to convert the team
member into positive and more productive and these outcomes should be clearly
communicated to the team member through the conversation and tone and body
language play a vital role in establishing the same.
While designing the coaching for an individual or team, it is important to keep the
purpose very clear and staying honest about the motives.
The discussion and questions during the coaching session should strictly be on
the subject and on target. If the answers are straying off the point, the discussion
should be refocused tactfully. Because the coaching deals with behavior patterns
During the coaching period, the leader should keep regular contact with the team
members. It is important to move around the team members motivating them.
The leader should provide feedback to employees – especially the positive
feedback which can energize the team to achieve the intended results faster.
The feedback provided to the team members should be honest, strait and
objective. The team members should not become conscious about their
capabilities or behavior patterns which will lead to developing defense
mechanism. The response from the team members to coaching should always
be positive.
The coaching session at individual level should be closed formally with clear
feedback to the employee about the whole exercise from the beginning of the
coaching session to achieving intended results.
The coaching session should not be left incomplete else the whole effort will
leave the team members confused about the intended direction.
Often one successful coaching session motivates the team members so much
that they keep on working towards continuous improvement consciously similar
to the coaching session concluded.
Conclusion