People and Management October 2018 | Page 71

www.peopleandmanagement.com Lovely Kumar Director, Larks Learning Pvt. Ltd. M anagers today face the unenviable task of dealing on one hand with a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, & Ambiguous) environment and on the other hand managing millennials (a generation of those born between 1980 to around the mid-nineties) who clearly want purpose, feedback, and personal life balance from their employers. As mangers grapple with the above reality one of the potent ways of handling this cohort is the ‘Coach Approach to Managing’. The Coach Approach to Managing utilises the power of coaching and contextualises it to the managers’ role. Before we go any further we need to distinguish between coaching, mentoring, and how the coach approach fi ts into the managers’ scheme of things. ICF defi nes coaching as partnering with clients in a thought- provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential. (International Coach Federation, 2018) There are, however, many other options to inspire people to maximise their personal and professional potential such as training, mentoring, counselling, consulting etc. The most confusion is around mentoring and coaching and that is because the programs that we have experienced at the workplace is a unique mix of elements of both mentoring and coaching. Coaching differs from mentoring in a few fundamental ways, and it is imperative to know the difference. A mentoring relationship is typically long term, not very structured or regular and with both the mentor and mentee voluntarily being involved in the relationship. A mentor is typically someone who is ahead of the mentee in the same fi eld. Professional coaching on the other hand is typically time bound, structured with clear guidelines and conducted by someone who is a master at the process of coaching. It is not essential for the coach to be from the same fi eld as the coachee. Coaching in contrast to mentoring is more about asking powerful questions, listening, helping the coachee create solutions and focus on the present and future. Some key attitudes required when wearing a coaching hat is being non-judgmental, non-directive and believing in the resourcefulness of your coachees. Mentoring on the other hand is about sharing of the mentor’s personal and professional journey and of obtaining the mentor’s advice. Now the challenge is, as a manager you actually can’t adopt pure coaching; you can’t be unfailingly non-judgmental and non-directive, or for that matter pure mentoring; your subordinates may not want to be mentored by you. However, you can use the coach approach. The coach approach consists of asking powerful questions, listening to your subordinates and through the process of asking relevant questions get them to discover the way forward. More on the Coach Approach to Managing in the session. P & M Vol. 9 Issue 6 • Sep-Oct 2018, Noida / Pre-Event Edition | 71