A633.7.4.RB – How Do Coaches Help?
How
Do Coaches Help?
Rotondo and Schmeizer (2011) stated coaching is
where a leader needs to set a work environment that permits the workforce to
grow. Coaching is not a tool to be
utilized to intentionally bully a staff or act as a therapist for their
employees. They further stated that our
emotions reinforce most of the human behaviors.
Human beings are hardwired to learn and understand things from the
perspective, thinking actions, and behavior of
the people that they encounter and observe on a daily basis (Rotondo
and Schmeizer, 2011). When we find ourselves to be more reliant and dependent on our leaders
as a coach, it only means that our leaders coaching
capacity is ineffective (Maccoby,
2009) and we are not learning of our own accord.
Becoming a real leader is growing
to be a strong individual/person with a strong foundation of principles,
values, and ethics to have the ability to support and nurture others that are
weaker than them. The real leader
focuses on becoming excellent at the things that they love to do most in their
life to inspire others in doing the same. A real leader inspires and motivates
their employees in taking action on their accord without creating an aura of
negativity or threat in the workplace. A
true leader possesses a powerful and passionate vision of what they want to
accomplish in their department, and they share those visions to their
subordinate. A real leader instills hope
within their employees when things are not working right or when things seem to
be failing.
According to Rotondo and Schmeizer (2011), it is of utmost
importance that leaders ensure to have meaningful conversations with their
employees. They have also made mention
of three myths on behavioral change. The
first myth is that information is enough.
I believe that possessing accurate data or information on how to be a
good leader without practice or experience is enough. I have met intelligent leaders from different organizations
who have no idea how to assess and understand their
employee's needs and desires. With this situation,
as an HR practitioner, I have a chance of coaching our leaders.
In the fast phased health industry, Registered
Nurse
Managers’ schedule is very hectic and full.
They manage at least 40 Registered Nurses on different shifts. They are very focused on patient satisfaction
and sometimes forgetting that employee satisfaction is of equal
importance. Due to the span of control
issues, our consultant recommended creating new positions of Assistant Nurse
Managers who will have more ability to manage a maximum of 15 Registered
Nurses to strike a more meaningful
conversation and avoid overwhelming stress experienced by our RNs.
One error we made was promoting experienced RNs to ANMs
who have no experience of being a leader, and we did not take the time to sit
down with them individually and ask of their desire to be promoted and the
future state of their careers. In
addition to, we missed developing training and development for new leaders
program which was key to the success of the new leaders. The result was a disaster. Our turnover rate
increased to 30% in just six months time of the implementation. That was I consider lessons learned and we
did immediate remediation by restructuring
the reporting structure through assessment of Span of Control for every clinical
department and scheduled coaching training for Managers
and above.
The second myth that we were given was that emotions do not matter. I always believed that whatever endeavor we
decide to take, emotions are of utmost importance most notably for a servant leader. During my tenure as Assistant Director
for Human Resources at one of the local Universities here in Daytona Beach, we had a tenured faculty, whom I
would call Dr. M who was stricken with cancer.
To make a long story short, Dr. M. had sold her house, cashed out all of
her retirement funds to fund her medical expenses. She was declared cancer-free twice but on the
last one and a half year of her life, cancer came back, and this time she ran
out of funds. Our University, President
at that point who I considered as a transformational and a servant leader,
called my Director and me in and told us to support Dr. M. and make sure that Dr.
M. receives continued medical coverage.
The Dean of Education was also advised to let Dr. M. teach whenever she
feels capable and able.
The University had a self-funded health coverage which meant at the
discretion of our University President, the University can approve to pay out
medical claims. Our past President
supported Dr. M. without limits. Dr. M.
continued to teach while undergoing medical treatment at the expense of the
University. Dr. M. passed away in her
sleep, and until today, I have always been thankful to God that He had given me
the opportunity to be a part of Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed’s leadership team. I have learned that servant leadership is connecting to
members of your team gaining their trust,
respect, honesty, and loyalty not only through strategic business
decision-making and transparency to support your members achieve their goals
and personal interest, but also through compassion and love for everyone we
worked with.
The last myth given to us was that people didn’t change
because they did not change hard enough.
In
my line of business as human resources
professional, I have come across of the difficulties that a leader
could experience when joining a new team as a leader. When positioned as Assistant Director of Human Resources, the team was lead by a director who could
not lead the team with clear vision and goal. There was no cohesiveness in the setting of goals, and the team’s role was not clarified. The members of the HR team were not
communicating openly and honestly either due to fear of retaliation or just did
not care at all. Personality conflicts
within the team were very apparent, and
disrespect for each other was heightened.
It was evident at that
time that I was not the
right person to facilitate a team building program for my team. I wanted us to start fresh by learning together
the importance of an efficient and fruitful team to serve our faculty, staff,
students, and stakeholders. I reached out to one of our Board of Trustees
who was an expert in team building and a human resources expert, to coach us on how to perform and behave as a team. She gave us a clear vision of why we were
doing what we do which was building on the university’s legacy of educating the students of today and the
leaders of tomorrow and what our roles were to achieve our vision and
goals. Most importantly, the focus of
the team building was trust that we have each other’s back and will support
each other no matter what, and we will
respect each other in the midst of our diverse culture and belief.
I
have learned that resolving conflict is not only a standard function of a leader in the workplace but it also of importance
to act as a coach when the situation necessitates it. I had a diverse team with a different culture,
belief, and religion. Conflict within my
team was inevitable. Defining to my staff
that it is okay to agree to disagree, but we have to take personal differences
outside the workplace. We are all equal, and trust and respect for each other are significant to the success of our
team. When one cannot persuade the other to see it their way, the other
has to let either the matter go or simply
leave the room and discuss the matter
when both are ready to listen with an open mind. In our daily huddle, I ensure that members of
my team were aware that when we work together through change as a team, there
is nothing that we cannot accomplish. Compassion,
competence, and commitment to my organization and my team are what I bring to the table as a leader and a
coach to my team.
References
Coutu, D.,
Kauffman, C., Charan, R., Peterson, D. B., Maccoby, M., Scoular, P. A., &
Grant, A.
M. (2009). What can coaches do for you?.
Harvard Business Review, 87(1), 91-97.
Northhouse, P. (2015). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th
ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage
Publishing.
Obolensky, N.
(2014). Complex adaptive leadership
(2nd ed.). London, UK: Gower/Ashgate.
Rotondo, S. &
Schmeizer, G. (2011). Rypple leadership series/teleos leadership institute:
coaching with compassion (Part 1) [Video File]. Retrieved from
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