The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book

How to increase productivity, foster talent, and encourage success

Nicholas Nigro

• Publisher: Everything
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781605502212
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

One of the most difficult things to do as a manager is spotting raw talent and then devoting the time and energy to shape and mold that employee toward achieving growth and excellence. The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book, 2nd Edition guides managers and aspiring managers through implementing a successful coaching and mentoring program both in the workplace and in life.From delegating responsibility to expanding knowledge base and skill level, The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book, 2nd Edition gives you completely updated information on this new approach.This indispensable guide features information on:

• Inspiring self-motivation
• Coaching versus mentoring
• Overcoming common workplace problems
• Managing diversity
• Debunking common myths and mis-conceptions

The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book, 2nd Edition even takes readers beyond the workplace and provides insight into extending their newfound knowledge in all areas of life - including at home and in social settings.

1

The Brave New World of Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and mentoring have been getting a lot of positive press lately. The tools and techniques of this fresh and intriguing managerial methodology are taking root in both the private and public sectors. This introductory chapter reveals the myriad benefits of coaching and mentoring and elucidates why this forward-looking brand of managing is the perfect fit for the twenty-first century.

Building a Coaching Vocabulary

There are coaches who operate as independent consultants (and rather high-paid ones at that). Brought into companies from the outside, these are men and women who address specific problems ranging from the highly technical to the more abstract, like communication deficiencies and morale issues. And then there are mentors within companies (usually highly regarded top managers) who take carefully selected subordinates “under their wings” and groom them for “bigger and better things” in a rather informal, open-ended relationship.

The English word “mentor” is derived from Homer's Odyssey. In this literary classic, Odysseus ventures off to war and turns the guidance of his young son Telemachus over to his friend Mentor. In the absence of his father, the boy is “mentored” by Mentor in the ways of the world.

The sum and substance of this book revolves around coaching and mentoring applied to managing on a day-to-day basis. That is, on the ABCs of coaching as a managerial art that distinguishes itself from traditional managing. Indeed, coaching and daily managing are no longer strangers, but a very compatible, happy couple.

So, from this point onward, sole references to “coaches,” without any qualifiers, will refer to the managers who are employing — or hope to employ — this enlightened and fast-spreading managerial methodology on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, coaching is grounded in continuity and consistency across the board. It is not a pick-and-choose managerial approach, but a way of life in the office, or wherever else it is practiced. A manager who says to an employee, “Let's have a coaching session now” is not engaged in the art of coaching.

Throughout this book, you will also encounter perpetual references to “coaching and mentoring” to depict an all-inclusive managerial discipline, even though “coaching” and “mentoring” are not exactly the same thing (see Chapter 4).

Understanding the Benefits of Coaching

Exactly what are the benefits of being a manager and a coach at the same time? For starters, coaches who get the utmost out of their employees realize the personal and professional satisfaction of seeing their managerial talents bear real fruit. Additional benefits that accrue to successful coaches include a pat on the head from the executive class (nice), financial remuneration (nicer still), and sometimes even a promotion (how sweet it is!).

And, if none of these things come your way, battle-tested and results-oriented coaches can always take their formidable track records of managerial accomplishments somewhere else. Capable coaches, with tried-and-true accomplishments on their resumes, are in high demand on the corporate frontier. They are rare birds indeed. When you demonstrate that you can manage men and women with supreme confidence, as well as deliver the goods, you can — in effect — write your own career script.

If New York is the “city that never sleeps,” then coaching and mentoring are the managerial methods that never sleep. Their tools and techniques are rooted in never-ending learning. And this continuous learning requires that coaches, mentors, and employees alike view the workplace as a learning hub without knowledge boundaries.

The pièce de résistance of first-rate coaching is its many tentacles. That is, high-performing employees are similarly put on the fast track of personal growth and career advancement. If you boldly delegate real responsibilities and challenge your employees to better themselves, you — as a conscientious coach — grow their skills and make them more self-sufficient and productive workers. In other words, employees who respond favorably to a coach's guardianship are destined to rise in the company or — perhaps — in another company that is on the prowl for self-motivated, solid talent.

In the big picture, coaching and mentoring methods are designed to better the lot of one and all under their attentive thumb. Simply stated, the coaching and mentoring learning tree avails its fruit to those who are willing to sample it. Adept coaches, as well as those on the receiving end of their intelligent, devoted leadership, are always poised to move on to the next level of learning and of skills. The coach-employee relationship, and the learning environment that's part and parcel of it, embodies not only career growth and, hopefully, a fatter paycheck, but a rewarding interior journey as well, where all concerned feel better about themselves and what they do. And this job satisfaction cuts across their professional lives and into their personal lives. The bottom line: Reliable, results-oriented coaches can always take pride in the knowledge that they inspired people to perform at higher levels than they otherwise would have if left to their own devices.

Coaching and Mentoring Is Teaching

Coaching and mentoring are for all intents and purposes teaching tools and techniques. In the classroom, first-rate teaching entails more than just imparting facts and figures, although that's very important. Inspired teaching — both in school settings and in the workplace — is really about stimulating students to desire learning on their own. The best educators plant the seeds of learning and hope that they get enough water and sunshine over time to sprout and grow trees of knowledge.

Coaching and mentoring are art forms that unceasingly endeavor to expand everyone's knowledge base and skill levels. Knowledge is the ability to organize information into a context and practical perspective. Skills embody the application of this knowledge in performing specific tasks or job roles.

The principal mission of this book is to reveal coaching and mentoring and their increasingly important role in the business sphere, as well as in offices in the sprawling public sector of the economy. Until relatively recently (let's say before 1990), the workplace was clearly differentiated from “home sweet home.” It was a rigidly structured environment — almost antiseptic in its activities and schedules. Generally speaking, the boss was the boss and you did what you were told to do. You performed your everyday workload and went home near suppertime. And maybe — in time — you became the boss.

That was then and this is now — the twenty-first century.

For the preponderance of the twentieth century, it was not unusual for a man or woman to labor in one job — and one job only — for an entire working life. It happened all the time: Young, wet-behind-the-ears adults graduated from high school or college, found work with a company, and were still around for their retirement parties forty and fifty years later. And for their longstanding and loyal toiling, they received engraved wristwatches and pensions to live on until the Grim Reaper came calling.

Indeed, these dedicated souls, who stayed in one place from the beginning to the end of their working life, were once upon a time lauded for their steadfastness and allegiance to the companies that employed them. And, in turn, many of these employers reciprocated this dedication by not casting them aside when they sprouted their first gray hairs. It is an epoch that is long gone.

Twenty-First Century Workplace Challenges

Today it's counterproductive to debate whether the sedentary but stable old business world just described was somehow better than the more dynamic and unstable business world of today. No doubt, this is a highly competitive and technological age. But this high-tech world notwithstanding, no time machine has yet been invented that can shuttle us back to the days when everything, it seemed, cost a nickel. So let's live our lives and move forward in the present realities.

While not completely ancient history, the days of moving up the corporate ladder in the same company are fast becoming the exception rather than the rule. Nowadays, employee advancement is more often a lateral movement. Moving on up, yes, but in different companies — and sometimes in totally different professions — in a dizzying zigzag rather than a straight line.

Technological Competency

We've established that there are no time machines on the market. There are, however, these curious contraptions called computers that are omnipresent in business environs (and everywhere else for that matter). And courtesy of this technological marvel that has spawned the expansive Internet, the corporate world is in a constant state of flux.

The information age makes it altogether more imperative that businesses never rest on their laurels. Every business, big and small, must adapt to perpetually and rapidly changing market conditions, or risk falling by the wayside.

To err is human; to forgive is being a coach. Forgive, yes, but coaching doesn't ever amount to overlooking performance lapses! As a coach, you must swiftly identify missteps and correct them at the source. You don't do this to embarrass a particular person, but to impart valuable lessons on avoiding similar foul-ups, bleeps, and blunders in the future.

So, what exactly does this spanking new business-world order mean for you, a manager or manager of tomorrow? In essence, it means that you must be a sponge for learning with a nimble capacity to adapt to changing circumstances at a moment's notice. The new skills that are needed to keep up with all of these inevitable technological advances must become your skills.

Continuous Growth

Learning new skills throughout your entire work life is not only recommended, it is indispensable. College knowledge is merely the beginning, not the end of the learning curve. By keeping up with the fast-changing times, you prepare yourself to effortlessly slide into another job role. And, if and when a job termination occurs (voluntarily or involuntarily), you don't emerge shell-shocked and stuck in quicksand. You come out of it all adept at moving on to bigger and better things because your knowledge base and skill level are in great demand.

Coaching and mentoring in today's dog-eat-dog corporate environs attempts to counterbalance, as much as humanly possible, the sometimes very unpleasant twenty-first-century realities of work life. As a coach, your predominant mission is to at once broaden your own abilities along with those who work alongside you. To accomplish this noble mission, you must ply your team with substantive responsibilities, genuine challenges, and ceaseless opportunities for career growth and development of their skills.

Preparing Employees for a Future of Changes

The Boy Scouts' motto is “be prepared.” That is, don't go out into the wilderness without the accouterments of survival (food, bandages, mosquito spray, snake bite kit, and so on). And it's an adage appl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Top Ten Reasons Why Coaching and Mentoring Bests Traditional Managing
• Introduction
• 1 The Brave New World of Coaching and Mentoring
• 2 Coaching and Mentoring: Art, Not Science
• 3 Motivating Employees: Easier Said Than Done
• 4 Mentoring 101
• 5 Using External Coaches to Your Advantage
• 6 A Coaching Blueprint
• 7 Overcoming Workplace Obstacles
• 8 The Power of Positive Thinking
• 9 Communicating Vision and Goals
• 10 Measuring Your Coaching Effectiveness
• 11 Time Management
• 12 Interviewing Prospective Employees
• 13 Conflict Terminators
• 14 Dealing with Employees' Personal Lives
• 15 Coachable Moments
• 16 Altering the Corporate Culture
• 17 Enhancing Profitability
• 18 Managing Diversity
• 19 The Next Frontier: Retail and Service Industries
• 20 Coaching and Mentoring: A Legacy
• 21 The Role of a Lifetime: A Script for Mentoring
• 22 Ten Myths of Coaching and Mentoring
• Appendix A: Glossary
• Appendix B: Resources
• Appendix C: Case Studies
• About the Author
• Copyright