Waikato Business News January/February 2017

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS January/February 2017 15
The importance of coaching your people
Everest Group is in the business of creating
exceptional workplaces and one way we
are particularly passionate about doing
this is through developing the leadership
capability of managers – as a leader, as a
manager and as a coach.
These three activities are
complementary and are
required to achieve business
objectives, by enabling
teams and individual team
members to be self-led high
performers.
When managers are
LEADING, they create and
share a vision of the future with
their team and ensure that their
activities are consistent with
bringing about those objectives.
When managers are
MANAGING, they deliver
results to the organisation
by controlling the work of the
team, and agreeing and moni-
toring such things as budgets,
timescales and quality levels.
When managers are
COACHING, they support their
team members in their learning,
to enable them to develop
the skills, knowledge and attitude
necessary to successfully
deliver their job responsibilities
and goals. Without coaching, a
manager’s leadership practice is
like a three-legged stool balancing
on two-legs.
We commonly hear that
business demands prevent
managers from having regular
coaching conversations with
their staff. That’s not to say that
coaching isn’t planned in many
of these cases, but commonly
it’s the first thing a manager
will bump in the face of competing
priorities - a practice that
seems reasonably innocuous at
face value, but over time it can
be perilous to performance.
In subtle and not so subtle
ways, lack of quality interaction
with staff can compromise
an employee’s confidence, their
skill level and potential, their
sense of value, their faith in
leadership, and ultimately their
engagement and contribution.
A people leader’s highest
value contribution to an organisation
is to keep their people
working at high performance.
Coaching is about facilitating
the performance, learning
and development of another. At
its foundation is the belief that
people are not their behaviours,
behaviours can change, and
high performance is achievable
and sustainable. This requires
the manager to develop strong
interpersonal skills and a commitment
to grow the potential
of others.
Ask, don’t tell: Pure coaching
is about asking good questions
and engaging the brain
of the coachee, thus developing
self-led high performing
people, conversation by conversation.
Engaging the brain
ensures that they do the thinking,
and connect the dots, that
results in behaviour change. It
takes time and intention to do
this well.
Unfortunately, fast paced,
demanding work environments
Small businesses upbeat about year ahead
New Zealand small businesses
finished 2016
on an upbeat note, with
confidence at its highest levels
in almost two years, according
to ANZ’s quarterly Business
Micro Scope survey of small
firms.
A net 20 percent of respondents
- up from 17 percent in the
September quarter - say they
are confident about the business
environment in the year
ahead.
Within this group, micro
firms’ (0-5 employees) confidence
rose a solid 5 points to
+14, while intermediate firms
held steady on +26.
The ANZ composite measure
– a key proxy for growth
– lifted to +20 during the quarter.
The composite measure is
based on firms’ activity outlook,
hiring, investment and
profit expectations, all which
improved in the quarter.
“It was a storming finish
to a good year for New
Zealand’s small businesses,”
said Andrew Webster, general
manager retail and business
banking. “If the confidence
plays out, 2017 will be an
excellent year for small businesses
with a net 34 percent
expecting a lift in activity for
their business over the next 12
months.”
The composite growth
measure lifted across all five
regions – Wellington leads
the way followed closely by
regional South Island.
Auckland continues a gradual
climb while growth prospects
in regional North Island
and Canterbury have started to
gain more momentum.
“While overall sentiment
and growth prospects are positive,
concern about finding
skilled staff continues to create
a potential wedge between
growth prospects and actual
growth. Competition and
regulation are also seen as
obstacles to businesses realising
their growth potential in
2017,” Andrew said.
Growth prospects for four
of the five sectors improved
in December with construction
and services leading the way.
MANAGEMENT AND HR
> BY LIBBY GAIRDNER
Coach and Trainer, Everest Group Limited,
Creating Exceptional Workplaces, wwweverestgroup.co.nz
tend to generate quite the opposite
behaviour. Managers fall
into the trap of driving results
through readily giving the
answers and telling people what
to do. If this is the norm for
their ‘coaching’ conversations,
it achieves instant results at the
expense of capacity development.
As a general rule of
thumb, the ratio for coach talking
compared with coachee is
approximately 20/80; that is,
the coachee is encouraged to
do most of the talking. To do
this well, the main tools a manager
needs are Questioning and
Listening. Notice that availability
and presence goes without
saying, if you want to do these
two things well.
Questioning 101:
Developing questioning skills
will help managers have effective,
exploratory coaching conversations,
with the ultimate
goal of facilitating awareness,
growth and accountability. A
starting point to develop this
skill is the 5Ws and How –
Who? What? When? Where?
Why? and How? These little
gems create targeted questions
to uncover and explore key
information in any situation.
These questions dig deeper into
factual information to uncover
truths. They sit at the core of
problem solving, evaluating,
and identification of causal relationships.
When used in coaching
and performance conversations,
questioning helps develop
accountability.
Listening 101: Active listening
is not just sitting in silence
while someone else talks. The
skills of active listening can
be summed up as follows:
Look interested; Inquire with
questions; Stay on target; Test
understanding; Evaluate the
message; Neutralise your feelings.
Neutrality is powerfully
important when coaching, and
it takes practice. A conversation
that stretches beyond biases,
assumptions, agreements or disagreements
will create profound
learning and the accountability
needed for self-leadership and
high performance.
As this New Year gets into
gear, consider the importance
of taking time to actively coach
your people. Look beyond
immediate business demands
to a future where everyone in
your organisation brings skill
and a sense of high accountability
to all that they do. And with
that goal in mind, recognise the
value of building capacity conversation
by conversation.
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Simon Reid
(Associate)
Bevan Houlbrooke
(Associate)
Hamish Ross
(Associate)
Kay Carter
(Associate)
Geoff Webster
(Director)
Jonathan Gwyn
(Associate)
Bronwyn Rhynd
(Director)
Hamilton Office: 58 Church Road, PO Box 171, Hamilton 3240. P: 07 849 9921 E: hamilton@ckl.co.nz
Te Awamutu Office: 103 Market Street, PO Box 126, Te Awamutu 3840. P: 07 871 6144 E: teawamutu@ckl.co.nz
Auckland Office: 25 Broadway, PO Box 99463, Newmarket, Auckland 1149. P: 09 524 7029 E: auckland@ckl.co.nz
Website: www.ckl.co.nz
Campbell Burrows
(Director)
Warren Lovegrove
(Director)
Mark Gilberd
(Director)
Members of the Institution of
Professional Engineers
NZ (IPENZ)
Members of the NZ Institute
of Surveyors (NZIS)
Members of the Consulting
Surveyors of NZ (CSNZ)
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Planning Institute
(NZPI)
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