Business Coaching:
An e-Economy Leadership Model (2000)
by C. Sean Clancy
Today’s e-economy is defined by productivity gains that are driven by robotics, electronics, self service, and the Internet. The American
economy is more productive yet the average American works more hours per week than the previous generation. Telecommuting, digital cameras, and video conferencing have reduced the amount of face-to-face interaction in today’s business world. The condition of human
productivity based on effective leadership is the next frontier for the
American economy.
Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil
contended that “all politics are local”. In the case of business; all
leadership is personal. Media reports and articles continue to
highlight companies that are struggling to provide effective leadership in an economy that is less and less personal. Unlike the Internet, connections to other people are not based on speed. Information and marketplaces can move much faster than human relations can.
Prior to the “information age” consuming the American economy,
knowledge was transferred from one level of management to the next through formal and informal mentoring. In today’s downsized and right-sized world, many of the bridges and most of the time needed to transfer knowledge and political savvy are just not available. Internal mentoring systems have failed due to sheer lack of people and their associated knowledge. Today’s accelerated pace of change creates and destroys competition and entire industries such as dot.com’s literally overnight.
Through this recent upheaval, an industry or at least a movement that focuses on people and leadership has been born and is growing
exponentially. Business Coaching is based on flesh and blood; not
microchips and bauds per second. Thomas Leonard started the coaching movement in the early 1980’s. Leonard was a financial consultant in Seattle who was working with young affluent clients. He was advising them on how to manage their six figure salaries when they began asking him for advice in other areas of their lives. Leonard originally coined his new practice “life planning” and eventually “coaching”.
Coaches are “…part personnel consultant, part sounding board, and part manager” (Fortune Magazine, February 2000). Coaches are professional service providers who can improve individual
and group performance, boost profits, and enable people to make better decisions. Harvard’s John Kotter explains the phenomenon like this, “we have a lot of people who we trained to be superb managers but now have horrendous leadership challenges thrown at them. I think a lot of the coaching is aimed at trying to help people develop skills and actions that are different from what they grew up with.”
Critical differences exist between management and leadership.
Management is task driven and focused on doing things right whereas leadership is vision driven and focused on doing the right things. Good managers do not always make good leaders. A challenge exists in moving forward in an economy where many lines are blurred between managers and leaders.
Coaching is a viable leadership model for the twenty-first century.
Unlike a one- size fits all approach, coaching is extremely personal to the point of being completely customized to each individual client.
Coaches can help build a stronger, more effective and productive
individual who in turn can build a stronger, more effective and
productive organization. Extremely successful athletes such as golfer
Tiger Woods and tennis player Pete Sampras certainly know how to play their respective sports, yet they both rely heavily on coaches.
Corporate executives can benefit in the same manner while enjoying the additional benefit of creating a coaching culture throughout their
organization.
Corporate Coach University International advises that “Coaching in the corporate setting uses the synergy of the organization and its members to enable them to evolve their capacity for learning and renewal into achievement of breakthrough results. Corporate coaching is central to a cultural evolution process that shifts the landscape of the work place
from one where people receive direction to one where people commit to doing things they care passionately about. Everyone wins, and organizations achieve extraordinary results when organizational
members’ creativity and potential are realized.” (www.ccui.com,
February 18, 2000)
The new economy continues to focus on improving productivity as
products and services march head-long into commoditization. Through the use of computers and robotics, manufacturing companies have greatly reduced the amount of human labor required to produce goods. In the same breath, those same manufacturing companies are hiring a higher percentage of white collar workers to service wholesalers, retailers, and consumers of goods. The immediacy and choices available to customers have driven up the level of service that is required to out-pace the competition.
Most organizations struggle to claim and sustain product
differentiation today. Most do claim and some actually sustain service differentiation. The broad concept of customer service defines any interaction between a provider of goods or services and any consumer of those products and services. The interaction may come in the form of a face-to face contact, a telephone call, an email exchange, or an electronic interface. The common denominator behind all of these transactions is a person on the other end or at least a person designing an electronic interaction that strives to deliver satisfaction. People are the only true and sustainable differentiators in today’s e-economy.
CCUI identifies the benefits of coaching as follows: “…providing a
platform for organizational evolution, resulting in proved workforce
recruitment and retention, is applicable in all parts of the
organization, uses a common language which everyone can relate to, emphasizes the unique potential of individuals, is relevant to
individuals as well as teams, provides a vehicle for establishing
internal and external networks and partnership, enhances internal and external communication, compliments other improvement processes ( TQM, Six-Sigma, and re-engineering by putting people into the process improvement equation), has sustainable benefits, promotes focused performance, promotes development of new skills, forms a basis for planning and career advancement, fosters entrepreneurial thinking, and finally facilitates the building of a shared vision.” (www.ccui.com, February18, 2000)
Business coaching focuses on creating and propagating effective
leadership throughout organizations. Today’s economic conditions
require that companies have leaders throughout its ranks and that all employees are productive, innovative, and are able to lead at a
moment’s notice. A formal coaching culture can assure that leadership is modeled, encouraged, and rewarded. The traditional pyramid or hierarctical, model of corporate leadership is not flexible or nimble enough to today’s pace of economic change. This fact is reported again and again in the business media.
An effective leader can enhance employee performance and subsequently organizational performance by focusing on personal development, understanding of style and desired outcomes. Positional power is only one aspect of leadership. Positional power without self-knowledge and the skills and abilities to mobilize people on their terms, is wasted potential. A coaching leadership model can compliment positional leadership by turning potential power into true power to move an organization ahead of today’s constant wave of change.
John P. Doyle in his book, The Business Coach states, “Coaching is
needed. There is clearly a business imperative for coaching. The world is changing at a lightening-quick pace and everyone is under more pressure to perform with less. It is not enough to live with these changes; it is necessary to find a proactive solution to them. And that is what coaching is: a proactive transition from traditional managing to business coaching.” John Kotter provides this definition of the twenty-first century organization in his book, Leading Change, “…non-bureaucratic, with fewer rules and employees, limited to fewer levels, and organized with the expectation that management will lead, lower-level employees will manage…”
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