The Power of Coaching

Jacky Eyres highlights a research project
which looked at leadership development in the public sector

Turn on the TV, tune in to the radio, open a newspaper, and you are almost certain to come across a report about the state of the NHS, education or local government calling for better leadership. This has made leadership development a priority for many public sector organisations.

In 2000 the government set up the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership to look more closely at management and leadership across the UK. Lancaster University Management School carried out one of a number of research projects. About half of the eighteen professions interviewed were public sector professions, including local government, medicine, nursing, the probation service, the civil service and speech and language therapy. So what did we find?

The key leadership skills were seen as:

Vision
Strategic thinking
Influencing skills
Political awareness

The majority of people interviewed felt that workplace and on-the-job development are more effective at developing the above skills than formal management education.

On-the-job learning includes in-house development programmes, learning sets, mentoring and simply ‘sitting next to Nellie’. The managers interviewed felt that programmes which gave them the opportunity to network with other managers and swap ‘war stories’ gave them the most help with tackling their day-to-day work issues.

There is a caveat here though - on-the-job learning is seen as unhelpful when the manager is just ‘dropped in at the deep end’ with little or no support from others in the organisation.

One-to-one coaching is highly valued by practitioners and developers alike as a way of developing competent and confident leaders. As one management developer in a large public sector organisation put it: "What we are finding is that a key to successful management development is very much coaching and one-to-one support. We’d like to offer it more widely".

A senior nurse working in a large acute Trust felt that: "‘… anyone who is perceived as having potential or wants to lead should have an opportunity to have a coach. Sometimes it is to steer you on the right road or to help you think through what the road might be. They don’t tell you what to do, they act as a sounding board".

Coaching is viewed as a powerful development tool, especially when combined with other activities as part of an overall package of leadership development. Most organisations reported that they use a mix of internal and external developers, coaches and facilitators to deliver their leadership programmes.

Where next?

The research findings give some clear pointers for successful leadership development:

A holistic package of development is more likely to deliver the goods than random and unrelated ‘training’ days and events.
The value of social learning shouldn’t be underestimated – most managers report the greatest benefit from learning with and from their peers.
One-to-one coaching is a highly focused and effective development tool for leaders at all levels in an organisation.
Using a range of providers from in and outside the organisation is an effective delivery model.