Management Coaching - Help Wanted
Many companies fall into the mistake of hiring someone who has managed people before, and assuming that, since they're an experienced manager, they don't need any more help. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that managers are human beings too, and just as cooking at home for a few years doesn't leave someone completely qualified to be a good chef (although it might well be a good start), being a good manager consists of more than having experience managing some people for a while.
Management coaches enter at this point. Human resources are most beneficial to companies when they provide management coaching to help turn mediocre or poor managers into world-class leaders. Fortune 500 corporations will spend millions of dollars to train their employees with the best coaches the world has to offer. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't know everything either. They know this, which is why they're willing to spend so much money to train their people.
A similarity may be found in the field of music - George Gershwin took lessons in harmony from other composers, at a time when he was the most famous and well-paid living composer in the world! If the leaders of the world take personal coaching, isn't that a good indication that management coaching is an important part of bringing out the best in your management team?
Of course, one has to ask: where do you draw the line? Does everyone in a supervisory position need management coaching? Does a project leader? Lead engineer? Merely "senior" engineer, managing only themselves? The answer to each of these is a clear "yes."
Everyone who makes management decisions needs coaching, and the reason is that no one is perfect. We all had to learn things somewhere, but changes in the world (especially increases in business efficiency) require us to adapt and stay ahead of the curve. Like the kid's saying "you snooze, you lose", managers who receive no training "lose". They lose their edge, their team's advantage, and, if they are particularly bad managers, they might even lose their workforce.
If you have received good management coaching, then your teams will not be destroyed by single incidents, and bad days will not have carryover effects. Leadership is much more difficult than managing, and much more rewarding for your business. But leadership doesn't happen by itself. Management coaches can help you develop the leaders your business needs to be great.
When companies provide management coaching, even mediocre managers can strive to become excellent leaders. Such training is best when it is also imparted through personal coaching. Good management coaches provide an edge to a manager's abilities, increasing his strengths and reducing his weaknesses. From the organization's point of view, it has much to gain from training its managers, as, for example, bad managers de-motivate people working with them and soon become problems for human resources manager. However, even excellent managers need to be coached to keep them abreast of latest developments and techniques.
Published July 20th, 2007
Filed in Business, Management
