Coaching and Leadership in the Workplace Essay

According to Mike Noble in his article, Transform Managers into Coaches: Five Steps for Coaching Success, an effective manager is a coach and not just a boss. The most effective managers are those who can coach and collaborate. If one is able to coach their employees effectively then they are able to create sustainable long-term results for themselves and their company. Coaching is action of helping others to perform better, whether it is through feedback, demonstrations, or teaching. It is investing in the people within a company and shaping them into better employees so that they can not only perform their tasks better, but also better qualify for promotions. Mike Noble’s article breaks down the five steps necessary for successfully becoming a coaching leader and the benefits of becoming one. By coaching your employees, you become a transformational leader who enhances as well as generates new experiences for employees, thus gaining a stronger level of commitment from them. The first step to transforming a manager into a coaching leader is to build a personal case for coaching. The manager has to want to develop their coaching skills and see the relevance of developing them. Once a manager understands that they can achieve better results through coaching instead of taking a command and control response to management, they will be willing to develop their skills as a coach. Managers are more inclined to seize the opportunity when they realize that many successful leaders and executives are coaches in their respective disciplines. Next, firm expectations need to be set regarding coaching. By clarifying the expectation that coaching is the primary responsibility of each manager, you are creating a coaching culture. If a firm or organization has a strong corporate culture of coaching, it creates a positive environment that employees want to be a part of and participate in within that firm or organization. Coaching should be a part of every manager’s job description. For the third step, one should teach coaching skills and put them into practice. Coaching does not come naturally for everyone and core-coaching skills can be taught in a variety of ways. The key to developing good coaching skills is being able to put them to use in real life situations when coachable opportunities occur. If you want a manager to transform into a good coach, there is no better way than to give them a coach of their own so they can experience things hands on. The fourth step in the transformation process is to be assigned a coach. By assigning them a coach, it enables a manager not only to experience the benefits of coaching but provides an effective model for coaching others. The final step to developing a coaching manager is to reward the best coaches with the best jobs. Those with the strongest coaching skills are potentially the strongest performers and therefore the best candidates for important manager and executive roles in an organization. The benefits of becoming a coaching manager are career advancement and overall benefits to the organization with strengthened skills in their employees. Right now, I have an authoritative style of leadership, but I strongly want to develop my coaching skills and modify my behavior. My store manager is a strong coaching manager who I admire greatly and she is my coach from whom I learn all my lessons. I have all the habits of a strong ethical leader in that I have strong personal character and a passion to do what is right. I always try to consider the interest of the stakeholders, be proactive, and model the values of my company. All of these qualities make me a good manager, but I do not just want to be good, I want to be the best. If I am to be the best, I have to develop the strongest team and I can only do by coaching them to be better. Right now, I am just an assistant restaurant manager with McDonalds, but I intend to move up and desire nothing more than to move through the ranks quickly. McDonald’s focuses its training on coaching and improving performance, so that is why I find this article so relevant to leadership styles. You can coach someone to make decisions that are more ethical and do the right thing. If developing a coaching leadership style means I will build a stronger team at my restaurant, then that is what I want to do. I want to be able to share my strong ethical culture with others and the best way for me to do that is to coach them. I want to foster long-term success among my people and create a positive climate where people want to work. As of right now, I have gone through four of the five steps in developing myself as a coaching manager. I have identified my personal case for coaching and I know what is in it for me. I want to move up and that is my motivating factor. My store manager at work has set firm expectations for me in becoming a coaching manager. She has set goals for me and I am working on achieving them. At work, I bring the skills I am developing onto the floor and implement them into situations as they occur. I learn new things daily from my coach, my store manager Jessica, and I try to share those things with the people I am coaching. At this point in my career, I can only hope that the things I am learning and bringing onto the floor are effective and I will soon see myself reap the reward of becoming a first assistant manager at work and one day becoming a store manager.