How Coaching Can Help a Project Manager to Be a Better Leader

Introduction

Today in the data-driven world, the picture of people communication became more complicated and nuanced, generation “x”, “y” and “z” are now working together, it brings an extensive challenge for project managers to deal with a great variety of issues that began to appear. Thus, soft skills are becoming equally as important as technical or hard skills. Charlotte Neuhauser in her article  “Project Manager Leadership Behaviors” argues that project managers have two main groups of responsibilities:

  • Technical responsibilities (e.g. managing plans and budgets, analysis of statistical data, monitoring and controlling processes);
  • Team management with the aim of motivating its members.

As a result, the project manager has to deal with a wide range of subjects such as finance, planning, contracts, communication, technology, organization, strategy, teamwork, etc.. That is why for him/her it’s essential to explore new tools and methods to become a more efficient and successful leader. One of the ways that can help a project manager to achieve improved results is coaching.

Coaching has become very popular, but usually, people are confused about what it means. It’s not about advising, guiding or mentoring it’s all about asking “right” questions and supporting in order to develop different ways of thinking, ways of being and ways of learning. It came from sport, where coaches help to transform physical and psychological strength into performance excellence. But in the business world, it’s more complicated because people and situations are endlessly diverse.

Coaching leadership style in business means that managers are following principles of coaching, they should emphasize asking questions, but not give the answers, perform emotional intelligence, give feedback and contribute to developing of self-confidence. The idea is to focus on keeping a balance between managing project challenges and care for team members. However, knowledge lack about coaching might create a vice versa effect and develop a negative attitude towards coaching.

In general, coaching can improve four areas:

  1. Develop thinking pattern: to be able to analyze and understand mental processes in a real situation;
  2. Develop behaviour pattern: to find and use the right methods/tools in different situations;
  3. Develop learning pattern: better use of different learning methods, (e.g. role models, feedback, and self-thoughts).
  4. Develop emotional pattern: includes openness, confidence, respect, recognition, optimism, hope, and joy.

To perform a coaching leadership style, a project manager should act as a coach and follow five steps:

Step 1: Develop trust

At the beginning of a coach session, a well-working collaboration, trust, respect, and openness must be established. To create such an atmosphere, the coach should present the coaching method to the coachee, discuss critical success factors, what the potential barriers are and how to solve these challenges. One aspect is role clarification, the coach’s role is to ask questions, and the coachee’s part is to answer and solve the issues. Another point is that both parties must agree on some ground rules; these rules are confidentiality, honesty, openness, and respect. During this step, both parties should discuss expected and realistic results of the process.

Step 2: Analysis

The purpose of this step is to clarify the present situation, the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. For the second step, a coach should collect the data by using the dialogue and self-reflection method. The diagnosis can be performed very simply, for example, by having a conversation between the coach and the coachee. As a result, the coach can form a picture of how the coachee thinks and acts. Here are examples of questions for this step:

  1. What would be the most valuable topic to focus on?
  2. What outcome would be most valuable for you?
  3. What is the present situation?
  4. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  5. What are your current challenges?

Step 3: Define goals

The most significant motive for change is what the coachee wishes should be different from the present situation. It’s essential to have a clear picture of the future situation that he/she wishes to be in. Bear in mind it’s difficult to change everything at the same time. First of all, you need to identify a few realistic goals that are explicit and directional. There are two different sets of criteria: behavioural criteria and results criteria. Behavioural criteria are about how teams and its members act, do they provide feedback, is there a delegation process, how they deal with conflicts, does collaboration work, is there rewarding excellent performance, etc. Results criteria measure the final results: profit margins, sick leaves, turnover rate, job satisfaction index, stakeholders satisfaction index, etc. Often a realistic goal for the coachee is to improve a few of the behavioural and results criteria. Here are examples of questions for this step:

  1. What areas would you like to work on?
  2. What do you want to achieve?
  3. What results do you expect?
  4. What are your long-term goals?
  5. For how long do you want the goals to be reached?

Step 4: Planning and implementation

In step four, we have reached the knowing-doing gap. Usually, the easiest part is to perform the diagnosis, discuss actions and plan how to implement the actions. The hardest part is to carry out the actions. The coach’s role is to challenge the team member to act, but at the same time, create a feeling of confidence that the process will succeed. Here are examples of questions for this step:

  1. What is the easiest way to achieve the goal?
  2. How to find a resource that is missing?
  3. Where can the necessary information be found?
  4. Where to learn the right skill?
  5. How to find the time?
  6. Are there any groups or people who are ready to help you?
  7. What mistakes have others made before you?
  8. What motivates you?
  9. Can you somehow solve this problem in a way which is entirely unusual for you?
  10. Is there a temporary solution?
  11. What could be the first step?
  12. What intermediate tasks can be defined, and what are the deadlines?

Step 5: Follow-up, evaluate and give feedback

Thomas Crane affirms in his book “The heart of coaching: using transformational coaching to create a high-performance culture” that continuous follow-up is a critical success factor for the coaching process. The essential elements of success are result measurements, feedback and rewards. The follow-up process can be a simple conversation where the coach gives feedback to the team member, or more complex include a total evaluation of the coaching process and interviews with co-workers, managers, peers, etc. Let’s take a look at one method for measuring, the coach used a scale from 1 to 10 (Source: Neenan, M. and S. Palmer, “Cognitive behavioural coaching”, 2001; Berg, M.E., “Coaching”, 2006). The lowest score 1 represented no goal achievement, and 10 was the highest score, showing full achievement of the goal. Before the process started, the coach asked the coachee to indicate where on the scale he/she was now. This was repeated several times during the coaching process to evaluate any effect. However, we have to be aware that this is a subjective measurement. Another tool used to measure the impact of coaching is 360-degree feedback. 360-degree feedback is a kind of multi-source feedback rating where an individual receives feedback from his/her subordinates, peers, direct reports and other relevant stakeholders, e.g. customers, sponsors, etc. By using this method, the other involved stakeholders are allowed to give feedback as well. To read more about the method please follow this link.

Conclusion

The coach role is challenging and demanding. The project manager as a coach must possess effective communication skills, be a good observer, an excellent listener, and know when to give feedback. Further, he or she must have knowledge and experience about coaching, show confidence and respect, and be trustful and honest. Lack of knowledge can develop a negative attitude towards coaching. The coaching leadership style helps to build self-efficacy and self-confidence in the individual and belief in the result to trigger action.

Literature

  1. Charlotte Neuhauser “Project Manager Leadership Behaviors” (2007)
  2. Berg M.E., “How coaching help managers and employees to succeed”, Universitetsforlaget (2006).
  3. Goldsmith, M., “Changing leadership behaviour,” The    Journal of Quality and Participation, 27:4(2004).
  4. Flaherty, J., Coaching: evoking excellence in others, Butterworth-Heinemann(2005).
  5. Smither, J. W., London, M., Flautt, R., Vargas, Y., & Kucine, I., “Can working with an executive coach improve multisource feedback ratings over time?” (2003)
  6. Neenan, M. and S. Palmer, “Cognitive behavioural coaching” (2001)
  7. Pfeffer, J. and R.I. Sutton, The knowing-doing gap. How smart companies turn knowledge into action, Harvard Business School Press (2000).
  8. Thomas G. Crane, “The heart of coaching: using transformational coaching to create a high-performance culture”(2001)
  9. Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H. and P. Sandahl, Co-active coaching, Davies-Black Publishing (1998).
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