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