How Coaching Can Help Companies Optimise Business Processes

What is Coaching?

Coaching is providing feedback, usually to executives and managers, about how to reach their personal best in their organizational leadership role. Executives, managers, and others interested in career growth and development increasingly turn to a business coach for a personally tailored development process. The HR coach may work with every manager and supervisor at every level in the organization and will do everything from active listening through providing test results that highlight a manager’s strengths and weaknesses.

The HR coach asks hard questions and provides advice about actions that may have been more effective than the course the manager chose. People have different reactions to feedback, and even the most carefully chosen words can create an unexpected negative reaction. Thus, the HR coach practices a blend of politically deft observations with frankness that will help managers develop in their capacity to lead people and personally excel. In this respect, the HR coach is the change agent within these organizations who brings solutions.

The Effective Coach

The effective coach defines the boundaries of the relationship with each manager. Is s/he a trusted advisor and friend? Does s/he listen and provide feedback? Or, does s/he help the manager obtain 360 degree feedback and develop action plans to increase his capability as a leader? The agreement the HR professional develops with each manager can be different. The coaching role must be agreed upon beforehand in order for it to work. The HR coach forms a partnership with the manager that results in good choices for the organization and personal growth for the manager. The manager, however, makes the final decision about what s/he will do in any given situation.

Helping Managers Develop Their Own Solutions

In coaching, we don’t bring the answer. We bring a system, a process for helping the client discover the answers. The HR professional educates managers and supervisors as a supportive partner and coach. The goal is to make them self-sufficient. The managers are given the tools they need to be successful in their business-related and interpersonal functions. The HR coach assists by supplying a process they can follow to build their skills. A manager should leave an HR professional feeling stronger, more knowledgeable and more capable of addressing the opportunities in the future.

"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great." --G.K. Chesterton

In organisations under stress, with delayered management structures, where the uncertainty and pressure of the short term prevail, managers are increasingly called upon to deliver and are exposed to demands for performance. At the same time, they feel isolated, increasingly left to their own devices to face their operational challenges alone. They have learned from experience that a U-turn can happen from one day to the next, that nothing is certain, and that career paths no longer follow a linear progression. They live with a degree of insecurity, insistent pressure and constant self-questioning.

Because of this, managers need a more individual, "bespoke" human resources management process, geared to the issues of the day; they need a setting that is nurturing and confidential, where they can work on themselves and develop their potential.

Situations Where Coaching May Be Needed

Preparation for career development

• Developing potential
• Defining a career project

Success in change

• Taking on a new function: transfer, promotion, reorganisation, etc
• Preparing and carrying out a merger, reorganisation

Development of personal and managerial effectiveness

• Managing a larger team, a new team
• Improving management style
• Resolving relational or organisational difficulties
• Reinforcing leadership role

The goal of coaching processes is for individuals to incorporate what they have learned into their day-to-day work, and, among other things:

• guarantee that the techniques or the learned abilities are put into practice.
• help the coachees to overcome the difficulties or obstacles that may arise in their job, which can endanger people’s behavioural or attitude change.
• help the coachees overcome the traditional resistance to change that generally exists within organizations.
• manage their professional careers with success and avoid “the derailment” that occurs occasionally.

The Benefits

For the coachee

• A privileged opportunity for self-expression, conducive to openness and discernment
• The implementation of new mechanisms to trigger change in interactive relationships
• The most effective way of adapting and transforming the coachee’s own operating methods
• Formulating a strategy for change

For the employer

• Acquiring the means of real HR management for the long term
• Developing a strategy that inspires trust, attracts and retains the best talents
• Offering a space for self-examination that promotes self-fulfilment and success

The coaching programme provided by Neumann is conducted with the strictest respect for the individual, who will be provided with all the resources needed in order to adapt and grow. The programme is designed to allow the coachee to:

• Retain his/her independence
• Maintain his/her ability to contribute to teams
• Preserve his/her area of creativity
• Remain true to himself/herself
• While remaining in line with the company strategy

Coaching Success Stories:

Case Study 1

A large industrial group in the energy sector recently hired a new Director with a totally different professional background.

The company requested a professional coaching, which is given to all new arriving directors. However, the request for coaching was also very much appreciated and initiated by the newcomer himself, as he feared the resistance of a well established company culture and therefore saw the importance of a proper on-boarding process.

In this professional context, which was very different to the one he had been used to, the new Director wanted to understand and define all dimensions of his new role and position himself within the new, fixed hierarchy and also within a very established team.

The coaching with one of Neumann International’s experienced consultants helped him to define his positioning. First, the coach helped review the current situation of his surroundings, of the different players and their roles, and helped define his own fields of responsibility. Following this analysis, he had the possibility to “practice” with his coach and to “test” himself by role playing different professional situations. Due to this training, he was able to analyse the situation and his reactions with some “distance”, and learned to better set priorities and to use his energy in the best way possible.

At the end of the coaching process, which lasted throughout his probation period, the results clearly showed:

• A real integration into the company: The newcomer was accepted by everyone.
• The development of a valuable exchange with his superiors: the collaboration worked well.
• The support and acceptance of his entire team.

Case Study 2:

The Marketing Director of a large industrial firm regularly encountered problems in the collaboration with his superiors.

The CEO of the group, who had already completed a professional coaching himself, proposed the same opportunity to this Director, whom he considered very competent. The Marketing Director himself expressed his wish for a coaching, as he wanted to resolve the hierarchical conflicts.

The coaching allowed him to:

• define his qualities and skills, as well as the areas where he needed improvement, based on his current positioning within the company;
• undergo an in-depth self-analysis, of his role and his resistance in relation to his superiors;
• better understand the different communication channels within the company.

The coaching lasted 5 months. During this time the Director discovered the reasons for the different obstacles in his relations and learned how to deal with each accordingly. Together with his coach, he then analyzed different ways of dissolving internal tensions which regularly provoked the conflicts with his superiors.

This analysis from a “distant” point of view allowed him to better control himself and his reactions and to develop serenity. He also learned to activate new energy and to better channel his “intrinsic” potential. After the coaching process, he was ready for a “gentler”, more flexible and less strict way of communicating.

He learned how to work on the different relations, which - in the past – had endangered his professional success, based on his real competences.

Contact

Chantal Berard

Partner

65-67 avenue des Champs-Elysées
75008  Paris, FRANCE
Phone: +33 1 442054 04
chantal.berard@neumann-inter.com