Game Changer : Coaching leaders in small & Mid size organization!

Coaching is such a new phenomenon in Asia , that to all practical purposes, no one knows what it is. So at any given time less than 1 in 10,000 people are actually looking for a coach. 

(According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) , Organizations spend over $200 billion on training and development each year, and It's a widely held opinion within the training industry that between 50 and 90% of training is utterly wasted. Coaching is a much better solution to many situations.

Each year people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on books they never read and workshops whose content they quickly forget. Just look back at the library at home & you would find a self-help book adorning the shelves. Has it helped you change & improve? Not very likely. 

Many of the traditional approaches of imparting new knowledge do not translate into changes in behaviour. Coaching is a far more effective solution. Coaching engages the uniqueness of the individual. Coaching is an on-going relationship that raises awareness, connects the client with their passions and deepest desires and holds them accountable to get the results they want. People grow and change with a coach. Coaching doesn't just get results; it gets the most meaningful results. These results are in business, sales , revenues & even personal areas too.

In my journey as a Learning & development professional & as an Executive Coach in past 3-4 years, I have noticed a clear trend in Indian companies. 

1.  The Major IT companies use coaches (Internal and external) extensively for working with their technical leaders who to be effective & aligned to their client needs, need to develop social & emotional skills as well communication style.

2.     There are these large Indian companies who have built academies to nurture and grow their talent and retain them. Each Year the cost of hiring new talent is growing. These companies have used coaching “ as a perk” to groom their high potentials and also make their leaders move from “ good to great”

3.     Then there are some companies who get funded / PE investments from abroad. Since Coaching is quite prevalent in US/UK, these companies insist on talent development and therefore coaching is introduced by them as a tool for achieving desired new behaviours.

It may be debatable to say but let me hazard saying that these companies could well do without coaching. They can still get the desired results with traditional ways of people development. Some may argue that these organizations can afford it. My counter argument is that while they can afford it, they very well could do without it too.

Let us see now whether coaching could help the smaller companies, owner/promoter driven listed & non listed companies in meeting their challenges like:

a.      Hiring best talent. Small organizations can either not afford them or this talent is not willing to move to either company and / or the city

b.      Old loyalists. They have served well over the years but in this age of competition and innovation they are unable to change and in fact resist and dissuade and drive away new talent. Some promoters even share that these old loyalists do not recruit teams who are better than them, fearing a challenge to them.

c.    Leadership behaviors at workplace continue to be hands-on driving away talent who would like to have freedom along with accountability

d.      Promoter’s family members joining the business. Generally these are youngsters and need to be up & running quickly. However they are put under some mentors where because of proximity to power, their mentors tend to be soft. They are unable to manage their way through, unless they come with great education. In fact even those from promoter’s family who come with Engg. / MBA degrees from rated colleges do get frustrated with organization culture and people (b & c above).

Large organizations with deep pockets create systems and processes in people management space which smaller companies cannot afford. These systems are best in talent acquisition, management and development. They understand people quality impact top & bottom line.

The argument for smaller companies is therefore that even in absence of best & bench-marked systems you would do well to address some of the challenges that I talked about earlier. These are addressable without elaborate investments in HR automation. All you need are expert coaches who have the ability to identify the solutions holistically including some bit of support training for change management but mostly to work with each of senior leaders to help them develop new behaviours aligned to expectations and market requirements. The Coaches must be selected carefully. I say this because there could be a tendency to hire an old senior retired employee. While they may be good, they are not coaches who are specially trained and certified to work with people & help them move from where they are to where they want to be or their organizations desire them to be.

It is an idea worth exploring by the smaller companies who should never spend a single rupee without seeking to know the return.Coaching is the only tool whose impact can be measured. Perhaps the only people development tool to help you calculate the return on investment. Is that not what matters?