Coaching and Mentoring – strategy for success or training on the cheap?

There’s been much media coverage of late condemning short training courses which seem inadequate for the professional standards required of those who complete them. The most recent I heard was a teacher training scheme requiring 6 weeks up front training before the graduates who had been recruited to the scheme were released on an unsuspecting bunch of pupils.  Six weeks in the mind of the interviewer I heard grilling the spokesperson was clearly in adequate.

Despite this, the spokesperson explained as calmly and as carefully as possible that the teacher training was primarily on the job, that the whole programme lasted two years, that the qualifications gained were the same as those who had been through more traditional training routes and that this was considered the best way of ensuring that these graduates really understood what they were getting into, could be paid to train and could support schools in dealing with immediate staffing and recruitment difficulties in areas of significant teacher shortage.  The programme, explained the spokesperson, was based on high level coaching and mentoring as the individual made their first steps into the profession.

Similar stories have recently come to my attention about medical schools rolling back plans to use problem based training for new doctors, complaints about the level of experience and skill of new police officers, prison officers and others performing vital services and staff shortages in key areas of the public sector.  Coaching and mentoring is often part of a response to the need to address a known skill shortage quickly and to base the learning on real life, on the job experience rather than on a theoretical understanding of the issues gained in a classroom.

But still doubt exists.  This approach to professional development is hardly new but any move from a purely academic, taught programme towards something which is less class room intensive and more experiential raises concerns – especially those quick to jump on the bandwagon of ‘dumbing down’.  The easy argument goes that academic was harder, more thorough and in all ways better than anything based on giving people real experience and helping them learn through that experience.

I have been involved in designing blended solutions where on the job learning plays a very significant role in the mix of interventions.  One of my clients proudly talks about their 70:20:10 ratio for learning, where the 70% represents on the job learning supported by line managers and subject matter experts coaching their new, less experienced team members. But amongst this overwhelming positive perspective on coaching and mentoring,  perhaps the cynicism expressed in the mainstream press is not wholly misplaced. 

My experience when rolling out these blended programmes involving coaching and mentoring is the attitude of managers to the whole approach.  Many will look positively pained that they will be expected to coach their team members.  Some will consider it an imposition – the training team pushing what should be their job on to the already over worked managers.  Others will simply glance skywards and ask ‘when are we supposed to find the time to do this?’

It is a fact that in leaner organisations, the role of the manager as a leader of his or her people, ensuring task achievement, team and individual development has been somewhat skewed.  The operational, hands on role of many of today’s team leaders and managers means that they have precious little time to spend with their people.  Their overwhelming focus is as a senior team member – doing all the same things that their team does but a bit better, a bit quicker and a bit more expensively.  The idea that people management is an activity which requires time devoted to it, skills to do it and a set of values and guidelines within which to undertake the tasks required, seems to be a luxury few can afford in slimmed down organisations.

It seems to depend on the motivation for the introduction of the mentoring and coaching approach which determines the degree to which the cynicism I have described is warranted.  In one area, it is an absolute imperative t fill vacant posts as quickly as possible and one way of squaring the circle of needing to train new people and needing bodies on the ground is the adoption of a work based learning approach.  Without an attendant change in organisational culture, the responsibilities and roles of those undertaking the mentoring and coaching and a robust approach to monitoring on the job execution of learning tasks, these approaches will always been seen as an expedient measure to reduce costs, reduce timescales and – potentially – dumb down.  In the case of the teaching example I gave earlier, it really doesn’t provide much confidence in the robustness of the approach when one of the trainees was made head of modern languages in the school in which she was undertaking her pre-qualification training placement!

If, however, the imperative is to improve the quality of learning and the depth of competence of those completing their development programmes then perhaps the concern is misplaced.  In the medical school approach to problem based learning, in which action learning sets of would be doctors work on real cases under direct, experienced supervision, the issue is not that it was ineffective but that it was too expensive.  This approach is not a quick fix, nor is the cost of involving mentors and coaches to the right level a cheap option.  Far from it, the individual investment in the development of an individual could be higher if all the inputs were properly costed.

I have only three, linked suggestions about ensuring coaching happens and supports the implementation of work based tasks which, as you suggest, is really vital to learning being embedded in behavioural change in the workplace.

 Unfortunately they all require pretty major changes of organisational culture:

 1)      Constantly, managers should be told that coaching is not an optional extra.  Every management programme I have ever seen suggests that management is an activity not a status and performing that activity well requires managers to be actively involved in the development of their people.  John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership, post grad management qualifications, CIM competences and the like have all emphasised the point that it is a core part of the people leader’s role.  And yet, we still have managers wondering aloud when they’re expected to find the time to undertake a role which defines their competence as a manager.  If ‘nice to do’ is being squeezed by ‘need to do’ then coaching should become ‘need to do.’

Utilise your competence framework and management programmes to reinforce that coaching isn’t an extra that can be done or ignored depending on work flow but is an essential part of being a good manager.

 This leads neatly into …

 2) What gets measured gets done. I don’t know many organisations that don’t monitor management performance and check for results.  Many will reward on the basis of performance.  If coaching (or at least an active engagement in team learning) is a core requirement of the role, then shouldn’t this be managed and monitored along with other performance measures? 

An LMS could help with this.  At Infinity, our LMS, Involve, includes the facility to review learner performance by manager.  This enables the  identification of  those managers whose teams are up to date with their learning programmes, completing required modules and have undertaken work based tasks (where these are a key component of the sign off process for each module).  This mechanism also allows us to identify those managers whose teams seem not to engage with learning and training, or who don’t complete modules or get pulled off programmes at the last moment.  Those managers who are not supportive can then be quietly spoken to, recommended for further training  or named and shamed depending on how hard line you want to be.  In forward thinking organisations, team participation in appropriate training and competence achievement is a key performance indicator for the team leader and used as part of the performance management process – even to the extent of having an impact on a manager’s annual bonus.

 3) If work- based task achievement is important, then consider using some kind of accreditation system which looks at demonstrable evidence of work based implementation of new skills or work practices.  By using a form of certification for an individual’s completion of work based tasks (whether supported by an external body or developed for purely internal use) which relies on manager/coach or mentor  sign off, this will create situations where there is a ‘pull effect’ – i.e. learners themselves will start to demand coaching from their line managers to enable them to achieve certification.  This is especially true if certification delivers other benefits such as access to promotions, higher salary bands or increased (and welcome) responsibilities.

I recognise that none of these are easy to implement straight off the bat, but unless developing new staff or helping our people take on new roles is to be done to the highest level of quality, then it must include real experience and feedback on work actually done.  It should involve time and input from experienced staff members – coaching, mentoring, providing feedback and monitoring performance against clear standards.  And for the organisation committed to quality development of its people - this takes time, money and potentially a change in the nature of the role of management.  Failure to take this seriously ignites the cynic in us all.

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