Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2019/2020
If you have considered asking a top performer to coach other team members to draw on expertise within the team, tread carefully…
If you are a sales manager looking to increase performance, productivity and employee satisfaction levels you may want to explore what benefits creating a coaching culture on your team can deliver. Niamh McCartney gives a practical explanation of making the move the coaching.
There are some key elements to consider that will help you decide whether coaching is required and to ensure the success of your new approach.
- Make sure you really understand what coaching is (and what it is not!)
Having a coaching style as a manager can empower and challenge team members by moving conversations from ‘tell’ to ‘ask’, giving them more input, control and agency in their roles. Getting a coach for top performers is also known to accelerate results.
Be aware that this approach may not be appropriate for all members of the team. Coaching is not performance management. In fact, a performance management plan as it exists in the corporate context is not compatible with the essence of coaching. Coaching tends to be an equal, reflexive and non-directive relationship – it “asks”, performance management tends to be directive, top-down, measured and time sensitive – it “tells”. Assess whether all team members require coaching, and identify those who require a performance management plan instead. If they need performance management, coaching is unlikely to work in the short-term and may not yield the results you require within a reasonable time-frame for the investment.
Recommendations:
- find out if there is any coaching available in your organisation and meet with a coach to understand what coaching is
- attend an ‘introduction to coaching’ workshop
- read “The Tao of Coaching” by Max Landsberg and “The Coaching Habit: Say Less. Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever’ by Michael Bungay Stanier.
- Get buy-in from the team
If you are introducing a coach for your team, make sure the team fully understand what coaching is, the benefits for them and the benefits for the team and business as a whole. If you are not clear on what coaching is, it is likely your team will not be clear on it either and the initiative will fail.
Recommendations:
- get someone from your organisation who coaches to come and talk to your team about the benefits
- organise a team ‘introduction to coaching’ workshop and design your new 1:1 structure together
- ask your team for their thoughts and their understanding of this initiative before introducing a coaching approach
- Make sure ‘coaching’ is not a tick-box exercise
Introducing coaching to your team because you heard it drives results will not drive results. The philosophy needs to be embedded in the way the team functions or it will not work.
If you are creating a culture of coaching on your team, this will take time and require open minds and the willingness to adapt and change. If you do not follow steps 1 and 2, then your initiative is a tick-box exercise.
Recommendations:
- follow steps 1 and 2
- get confirmation from your team that they commit to the initiative
- draw up a coaching contract in place for the team
- Consider getting a coach yourself
You may not need to get a coach for your team, especially if buy-in is thin.
If you work closely with a coach yourself, over time you will learn the skills you require to implement a coaching culture within your team by adapting your own management style. Many large organisations coach managers and not reps – it is more scalable, less costly and embeds the culture at the right level; you are likely to have a broad range of skill/will, performance and engagement levels across a team and so the results will be variable. Adapting your style to include a coaching approach may deliver the same return for less cost.
Recommendations:
- get your organisation to provide you with a leadership coach
- commit to a programme of 6 sessions minimum
- measure whether your team performance is improving and assess the results over a reasonable time-frame
- Get an external coach
If you are introducing a coach to your team, I would strongly recommend hiring a coach outside of the team/organisation. If you have considered asking a top performer to coach other team members to draw on expertise within the team, tread carefully here. It assumes that a top performer has the skills to coach as well as execute, and that the team will be willing to be coached by a member of the team. In my experience, this is not often the case and this move could be counter-productive leading to resentment, disengagement and a drop in performance.
Recommendations:
- get an external coach for your team
- if coaching from within, invest in training for the individual before rolling out the initiative
- get buy-in from the team
Hopefully these steps will help you decide whether to implement coaching for your sales team, and to avoid potential pitfalls if you proceed!
By Niamh McCartney
Niamh McCartney works as a sales manager in the technology industry and is passionate about coaching to drive a culture of excellence. She holds a BA in Anthropology with Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London and is a graduate of the Kingstown College Advanced Diploma in Personal, Leadership and Executive Coaching. She has been working in sales for 8 years and is currently studying the MA in Personal and Management Coaching at UCC. Niamh is a mother of three, and her private coaching practice works with parents to help them achieve balance and success both at home and in the workplace.
