Urgent need to use coaching in our Management Style

 
Modern business requires that every part of any process, be it admin, accountancy, marketing or production must be “right first time, every time”. Solutions need to be found there and then, as there is no time, nor is there any real need, for every decision to be pushed up the management chain or on to someone else’s desk. Engineering is a prime example of why this is of paramount importance but the challenge is how to ensure that this happens. It’s ok for the big boys who have oodles of money to throw at it but what about the smaller companies fighting for survival in a hugely competitive world market. The answer is to change the management style and this article deals with some background information and how Coaching can help.
Everyone needs to really believe that they have they answer, if they will only be allowed to look for it and feel they are part of the solution. The problem is that a lot of management is still by the old style of telling, rather than collaborating and asking.
It appears to be more natural for us to tell/order someone “what to do” rather than ask “how would you do it”. It seems it’s a throwback to the old days of confrontation between unions and bosses and even possibly related to the dreaded class system. The strange thing is that the main area of improvement is where there are more ladies in management, because communication is their style, and long may it continue.

The problem has been that our education, from school, college, university and on the job is that we are so used to not only having the answer told to us, often by rote, that we live our lives by that system from then on. What we need to be taught is use everyone’s creativity, rather than cramming our orders, our ideas down other people’s throats. It is even worse for engineers because we have been trained to use the left-hand side, which is the side that is naturally structured, analytical side and thus the side that for engineers is the most developed.

The result is that engineers don’t get to use and develop the other side of the brain, which is recognised as the creative part, the right hand side. We weren’t allowed to use it a lot during our formative years, and this never changed later on in life. For example when have you been allowed to make whatever came into your head, experiment without someone being on your back looking at the clock, the cost, etc.

If all of us had been able to do this every so often, use our own creativity, gaining feedback from the learning experience then the British ability to be good at developing ideas would not have withered on the vine. Ideas and products would have had continuous development because people would have felt free to not only have their own ideas of improvement but would not have felt scared to voice them.
What we have all forgotten is that people learn fastest, work best and feel more confident, when they feel involved, are in control of their destiny, able to achieve goals by being part of the solution. Not only all this but the creativity is kept bubbling all the time.

This is where Coaching comes in, because it can start the process off. It requires collaboration, something that some find really difficult to practise, often due to their egos and image, but nevertheless people will need to change.

“it’s not the strongest that survives, it’s the one that is able to change according to circumstances”

This Coaching philosophy is growing. It has been around in the US for some considerable time and is only now becoming better known as a management discipline in the UK. With the growth of production teams, centralised build units, quality teams and with them a team ethos and culture, ideas and creativity is on the menu in a bigger and bigger way. The challenge is that this has to be understood from the top down and not from the bottom up. This paradigm switch in management from telling to asking requires some subtle and not so subtle changes.

Not only does this mean walking the talk day to day, but also we need to start the process at our schools and colleges. We need to have our workforce leaving school knowing how to listen, how to be creative, how to work as teams, how to understand and accept the other point of view, how to read body language, how to understand the language that influences different people, etc. Only then can we start to improve the communication between ourselves and let the creativity out.

This way we have a chance to resolve some of the present challenges but we will need: -

• to understand the spoken and unspoken languages that we all use, with intuition being more recognised than it ever has been in the past. Again women are much better at this than men!
• all participants must be good listeners, as you can’t hear what the others are saying when you are talking oneself. You need to use the ears and mouth in the same ratio as they were given to us i.e. at least twice as much listening as talking
• constructive feedback must be the order of the day, with neither judgmental nor autocratic behaviour, as this kills off team synergy quicker than anything
• exploration, rather than instruction, because everyone has different perspectives and approaches to the same challenges, the same words and the same box
• to unlearn old “dictatorial” and “autocratic” habits by delegating power, letting go of the reins and pass them to others for team ideas, group solutions and collective thoughts. Easy to say but difficult to do.
• to have a belief in the process and have a positive view on the outcome. Yes there are problems but how about looking at them as challenges and what about mistakes being called learning experiences, that is unless they are being repeated!

All of the above are always hard at first, especially when venturing into uncharted territory but again this is where Coaching comes into action.

©William Barron
Creating Insight
January 2000
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