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HR Professionals as Internal Coaches
(3 success criteria)
Two trends have emerged in organizational development. One is the growing acceptance and use of executive coaching to help develop people. The other is the human resource professional's role shift from a staff to a strategic partner. These two trends put together infer that the HR professional is increasingly expected to play the role of an internal coach/mentor to colleagues.
In organizations that have started to use internal coaches, results have been positive. For example, GE Capital reported that its HR professionals did just as good a job as external coaches, if not better. Furthermore, using internal coaches save money otherwise set aside for external coaches.
How prevalent is internal coaching? Many HR professionals will profess that they have been playing this role all along. Yet, most of their professed coaching is informal, with little to no expected outcome or formal parameters.
To put this matter into perspective, let's first define internal coaching. It is "the process of an internal colleague giving feedback to another colleague on his/her observed behavior/performance with the intent of helping the coachee to develop potential." Usually, the coach and coachee have no direct working relation. This is in contrast to the performance coaching relationship between a superior and direct report, which focuses on maintaining or enhancing the direct report's performance. Internal coaching tends to gravitate to softer skill sets like and development of the coachee's potential. Subject matters like leadership/management capabilities, interpersonal relations, career direction and work/life balance dominate.
Yet, internal coaching does come with its own unique baggage. If not properly addressed, these challenges can impede the effectiveness of internal coaching. Specifically, internal coaches need to grapple with issues of credibility, trust and time.
Credibility
“The newly promoted engineering manager can definitely
use my guidance in his role but I am not trained as an engineer.”
“HR is a staff function. What do they know about my work
challenges?”
Are HR professionals seen as coaches competent of helping and
guiding other professionals in the same organisation?
Credibility can be built if HR professionals take concerted
efforts to understand the organisation’s business and
operations sufficiently. While there is no need to delve into
technical details, HR professionals should at least be aware
of the interpersonal dynamics and personal working styles playing
out in the coachee’s environment.
It also helps if the coach is qualified and trained. Though
getting a coaching qualification does not directly translate
into competence, it at least enables the coach to know and use
a proven process to work with the coachee. With the increasing
acceptance of coaching, a slew of coaching training is readily
available.
While it is within the control of the HR professional to invest
time to learn the business and coaching skills, it gets challenging
when it comes to influencing key strategic decisions. For any
organization to be people-centric, decision-makers need to be
reminded and persuaded to consider the HR-related implications
of any major decision. How much of a voice HR has in executive
and board meetings will ultimately determine the amount of credibility
HR has in the eyes of internal staff.
It gets tricky if the HR professional become fatalistic when
his/her voice gets drowned out. “The CEO and Chairman
are more interested in ramping up revenues than retaining good
people. It is not my problem.” Being strategic is to link
people issues to business/organisational outcomes. And be assertive
enough to articulate these issues throughout the organization.
Instead of hoping for a boss who is empathetic to HR priorities,
work hard to make him/her so.
Trust
“My coachee tends to be defensive about her shortcomings.”
“How open can I be with the HR coach? Will what I say
go back to management?”
Trust is less of an issue where external coaching is concerned.
A typical executive coaching contract would clearly spell out
ethical considerations like confidentiality and what gets reported
back to management. Internal coaching tends to be less formal.
Coupled with the internal coach being “one of us”,
skepticism, not surprisingly, rules the roost.
This skepticism will never disappear. Yet, steps can be taken
to minimize it. Emphasising the developmental (and not evaluative)
intent of internal coaching is a start. Then supplement this
with a formal set of rules of engagement, the most important
of which is the boundary of confidentiality. A rule of thumb
is that everything spoken in the coaching conversations will
remain confidential and not be taken in account for evaluation
or selection purposes. The only exceptions are matters detrimental
to the interests of the organization and of illegal intent.
Sharing that a colleague is embezzling funds will definitely
get reported. However, revealing that two married colleagues
are having an affair might fall into a grey area. Degree of
greyness varies with organizations. Whenever possible, the coachee
is given the benefit of doubt.
Of course, whatever rules of engagement created for internal
coaching, they need to gain agreement from top management in
order to avoid any conflict of interest. Imagine a boss who
insists the internal coach give an evaluation of the coachee
for the upcoming promotion exercise.
One way to maintain objectivity is to ensure the internal coaching
initiative has a succinct purpose. Typically, coaching is used
as part of a developmental assessment process. Assessments are
commonly of psychometric and/or behavioral nature. 360-degree
multi-raters assessments are effective as a source of feedback
for the coachee. These assessments can serve as a conversation
starter and the basis of the coaching relationship. Strengths
flagged out by the assessments are encouraged and leveraged
on while weaknesses become developmental goals to be coached.
The value of these assessments is that they focus on the individual
and do not judge the person’s performance per se.
Trust erodes when things get personal. A good internal coach
goes to great lengths to focus on the coachee’s behaviors
and not intentions. Talking about behaviors (“You kept
very quiet in the last 3 meetings”) is making an observation.
Talking about intentions (“You are intimidated by others’
presence in the meetings”) is making a judgment. Observations
are objective while judgments are subjective. What is worse,
making judgments provoke defensive reactions which pretty much
shut down any meaningful coaching.
Time
“I love to reach out to our people personally. But
given that our HR department has been streamlined, we are stretched
beyond imagination. Instead, I need to be coached.” “I
get measured on my work performance. The HR coach wants to work
on my leadership potential. But if I don’t get the work
done now, there is no potential to talk about.”
Alas, time is a good excuse for a busy executive. By claiming
that one has no time, priorities can be reshuffled, work ignored
and people neglected. Time management experts would assert that
setting priorities is key to finding time. Therefore, the crux
is: how can the internal coach and coachee be motivated to put
coaching among the top to-do items on the priority list?
One answer lies in the demand coaching makes on both parties.
Coaching sessions, with a monthly or bimonthly frequency and
not lasting more than an hour, seem palatable. One advantage
of internal coaching is that many coaching pairs share the same
work location. This facilitates easier scheduling. Catching
up over lunch or coffee is a lot easier to arrange. Other permutations,
just as using emails or phone calls in between meetings as and
when needed, also help to make coaching less burdensome.
No organizational initiative can be completely successful without
the top management’s support. Here, senior executives
can send a strong message that coaching and being coached are
important. Walking the talk means allowing coaching pairs to
devote time for coaching.
Conclusion
The HR professional is in a very advantageous position to play
an integral role in the development of talent and successors
in the organization. With a clear view of the organization’s
direction and operations, the internal coach can ably help the
coachee manoeuvre through the quagmires of managing and collaborating
with people within the context of the organization’s culture.
On the other hand, the HR professional has to overcome conflicting
stigmas of being an “outsider” who does not understand
a line job or an ”insider” who is out to spy for
the boss. By being conscious of and working on building credibility
and trust with the rest of the people, the HR professional can
get better buy-in and acceptance from them. To do all that,
the HR professional has to invest the necessary time and effort
towards this end.
Author: George T. K. Quek is a consultant,
coach and facilitator who works with senior leaders like CEOs,
VPs and GMs and their teams to improve their individual and
organisational leadership and management performance. He has
trained, coached and consulted for more than 3,000 executives
and leaders from over 100 organisations throughout the Asia
Pacific in the last 5 years. Prior to that, he had over 15
years of senior leadership experience with Fortune 500 and
regional multi-national corporations. He is the author of
“Service Unusual” which has been
translated and published in English, Chinese and Thai.
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