Employee coaching used to be reserved for top executives, but now many employers realize the vital role it serves on many levels within their organizations. As coaching becomes more democratic, how can it become part of a company's overall learning and development culture, how can it boost inclusion and impact, and how is it evolving?
During a From Day One virtual conference, a panel of five experts on employee coaching spoke about how companies are evolving to bring more inclusion and diversity to their coaching and mentoring programs. The panel was moderated by Janelle Nanos, a business reporter from the Boston Globe.
Most successful leaders have benefited from some form of coaching, and all of the panelists agreed that their careers have grown thanks to the influence of good coaches. “I established a relationship with my manager as a coach when I didn't get the promotion I wanted,” shared Eileen Cooke, vice president, enterprise learning, development & performance at CVS Health. “It wasn't a coaching relationship that was about feedback, like after something ‘what you could have done better?’ It was like pregame coaching, setting me up to go be successful, the day before or the hour before I was stepping into something. Like, here's the context, here's a scenario. It was really like having someone on the sidelines with me, and he set me up for what ultimately was success. I needed that coaching to get me there.”
Head of People Experience at Seattle Children’s Hospital Keturah Hallmosley recalls a coach who helped her understand her goals and acted as a cheerleader. “I was really looking to grow and develop. One of the things Rita helped me understand was I am enough, and to have that confidence within myself to really work on specific leadership skills, and connect with my goals moving forward.”
The sidelines metaphor is an effective lens through which to view the differences between coaching and mentoring. “I see mentoring as more role-specific, more long-term, something that sometimes can last all through your careers, whereas coaching is a lot more specific to [the time period], to address a performance challenge,” said Shashank Bhushan, chief talent development architect at BMC Software. “Coaching is more reflective in its nature. The purpose of the coach is to come in and help ask questions that elicit answers from the coachee. Whereas mentoring is more typically with a subject matter-expert, who would be more directive and would say, ‘I did this; it worked for me, and maybe this is something that you should try.’” That said, Bhushan believes that both are necessary. “My own experience has been that mentoring actually precedes coaching, because it prepares the person to learn from somebody else.”
Tamar Elkeles was chief learning and talent officer at Qualcomm and now is a member of the board of directors at the edtech marketplace Open Sesame. “I think that mentoring is a bit more informal in organizations. Coaching is like an assigned person that's working with you on a specific task.”
Regardless of the terminology, creating an inclusive workplace requires rethinking the old “top-down” techniques by which wisdom and instruction were dispensed from on high, and usually only to an organization’s top executives. Modern coaching aims to boost inclusion, especially in fostering career growth and providing a pathway to leadership for people who have traditionally been marginalized. For many leaders, this means abandoning one-on-one sessions in favor of bringing together groups of people who can learn from one another, regardless of organizational hierarchy.
BMC Software introduced a program for middle managers with specific classroom sessions, each followed by group sessions (to share knowledge) and then individual coaching (to reinforce new learning). “This created a very different vibe altogether,” said Bhushan. “We brought it down several layers below in the organization and made it easily accessible to folks who can really make a difference to a lot more people's lives on a day-to-day basis.”
Tom Bigda-Peyton, chief learning officer at Catholic Health Services, is also a fan of groups and “inverting the pyramid” so that employees at all levels can achieve excellence. He’s also adamant that organizational learning should be a two-way street. “In my healthcare organization, we do a lot of coaching on the technical side. But on the people side, we try very hard to get to the frontlines and work backwards rather than the management and work down.” The healthcare organization has developed an “appreciative coaching program,” in which managers first compliment what has gone well before giving their nurses one idea for improvement. “If you're going to democratize, you have to have group settings,” he continued. “Sometimes the terms ‘coaching’ and ‘mentoring’ can confuse the issue. To me, it's about giving and receiving feedback in a way that you don't get defensive, and the other person doesn't get defensive.”
Hallmosley also believes two-way dialogue broadens inclusivity and benefits coaches. “What we're seeing right now is how important it is for leaders and individuals to understand that diverse perspectives and different ways of looking at things are essential in how we make decisions. And coaching, making it okay to learn and make mistakes and get feedback, helps us. I realized that there's not just one right way to solve a problem or one right way to approach things. That's something that coaches learn: that there are multiple perspectives and different ways to get to the end result.”
Looking forward, each panelist sees the role of both internal and external coaches as likely to expand, as remote workers require that managers give (and receive) feedback from behind a screen instead of behind an office’s closed door. Another evolution is predicted to be an increase in opportunities for inclusion in a remote-first environment. After all, said Elkeles, “We all have the same size square in a Zoom.”
Cynthia Barnes has written about everything from art to zebras from more than 30 countries. She currently calls Denver home.
