Impact of Developing Managers to Coach Re-Sets Culture

 

Case Includes:

Full Competency Implementation	Coaching Skills: Earnest Development
Strategic HRBPs	Setting Stage for Innovation

Situation:

A global, diversified organization was working with a cadre of KF Associates, implementing and updating competency-based HR programs. The HRBPs participating in the Training work stream of this huge project, discovered that before managers could perform as coaches who assessed and developed employees, the managers themselves needed far more than a training session. This insight proved to be essential, not only for the competency implementation but as a beneficial cultural change that later opened up the organization for better innovation progress than most.

Action:

The first step entailed creating a competency model for the role of manager, which acknowledged the top-down requirement that managers serve as coaches. This was at the dawning of widely publicized Engagement research. The challenge was complicated by the involvement of globally dispersed HRBPs.  Long discussions occurred between the internal staff and the external coaches, involving multiple scenario planning for both logistics and manager experience needed for skill development. This preparation and thorough planning would eventually prove to be worth the effort since the managers, world-wide, would need to willingly accept the uncomfortable change involved with developing skills they had not been required  before to have and use.

The plan that most agreed with, but all agreed to comply with, was that managers could self-assess with the new profile and ask others to give feedback too. This would be a “soft assessment” versus a formal 360. There was a decision that if a manager was opposed to the new requirements, they could be considered for re-staffing wherever possible; but no new positions would be created.

Early on, senior HR leaders could foresee that nearly most of their ‘effective’ managers were going to fall short of the competencies listed for assessing, giving feedback, planning development and coaching employees. So a preventative solution they concluded was to release the Manager Success Profile (a term some companies decide to use in place of Job Profile) and state that for two years, managers would have access to various skill building workshops, to be offered around the globe, for them to select from and attend (as many times as they liked) in order to build the necessary skills. At the end of two years, they continued, the managers would then be subject to upward feedback on the Success Profile, as a part of their performance review, and the managers’ leaders would have access to such feedback. All managers would expected to be rated favorably.

The challenge then became:

• how to design different interactive skill building experiences for managers
• develop internal HR professionals to facilitate the sessions
• create interim, milestones of progress for the managers and HR to see evidence of growth, and
• encourage HR professionals to advocate for managers to participate, assuming few managers would see the requisite change in values, beliefs, what to observe, how to interact etc — in order to be rated favorably within 2 years.

I must say that this “case” experience was one of the most gratifying consulting engagements of my career, primarily due to the commitment of the top management in fostering the change they wanted to see. And incidentally this all occurred before Engagement became a daily topic.

Surprises:

It is difficult to describe how much a typical manager, even today, must adapt their skills to become an effective coach and developer of others. Since such expectations often occur as an after —thought, not hiring or promotion requirements. To call their reaction to this a ‘bait and switch’ seems inadequate.

In the case above, there were managers who left the organization because they would not accept these requirements they felt were sprung on them. However most cooperated and did cultivate a new mind-set and behavior.

Conclusion to Share:

If popular literature and research literature today portray accurately what managers face, the sea change is still needed and seems to have not even begun. After 25 years doing this work, I still see little progress in determining what to require of those who could and should be promoted from the individual contributor ranks to a manager of others. The tendency persists to offer such a promotion as a reward for being the best individual contributor, not for the competence and values needed to serve a vital role in the organization.