I have been sharing an article recently with colleagues and clients.  It’s one I co-authored with Gill How of Buonacorsi Consulting and was published in Training Journal in December, 2012.

It had an interesting genesis.  I don’t quite remember when, but a while back (two years?  …three?  …four?) I heard Gill talk about some work she’d done with Southern Railway and found myself sitting in the audience feeling …well, frankly, jealous.  This was definitely a project to die for in my world.  Gill, and her clients at Southern Railway, had worked together with the aim of developing a coaching style of leadership across the organisation.

This would naturally capture my interest – I am very familiar with the research that underpins Goleman’s article Leadership That Gets Results and his book The New Leaders (which I’ve mentioned before on this blog).  This research tends to demonstrate that leaders are most effective when they (a) adapt their style to meet the needs of situations as they arise and (b) use styles which build motivation and engagement – what you might call a positive climate at work.  A visionary style is one of these (setting out a clear vision for the future and translating it into clear goals for individuals in your team).  A coaching style is another (fostering the learning and development of members of your team).  A participative (or democratic) style is the third (used judiciously – engaging staff in key decisions which affect the team).

Gill’s work with Southern Railway represented – to me – a wonderful opportunity to test the impact of a coaching style of leadership on organisational climate and on business results.  Oh, boy!  The results were compelling.  Gill and her clients provided such a long list of measures for our article that we had to pick out some choice examples.  A key moment was in 2009, for example, when after three years of working with Buonacorsi Consulting to develop a coaching style of leadership in its organisation, a survey by Gallup showed a statistical link between levels of employee engagement and participation in the company’s coaching programme. In other words, those managers who had developed their coaching style were having a strong and positive impact on the climate experienced by their team members and this impact outweighed that of managers who had not participated in the programme.  Other results included increases in participation in employee surveys, reductions in grievances and employee tribunals, the odd award… the list goes on.

Sitting here writing, I wonder how this lands with you.  Perhaps you’re celebrating your own use of a coaching style of leadership and everything that it brings to you.  Maybe you’re struggling to make time for the meetings, paperwork and blah, blah, blah that beset you constantly in your organisation.  How on earth do you begin to take time out to coach members of your team?  In case you’re interested, I came across another case study earlier this week, courtesy of The Harvard Business Review’s wonderful Morning Advantage.  Even without following the link they provide, I think Sarah Green’s commentary speaks for itself:

The purist in me loves this piece from Business Strategy Review out of London Business School. Julian Birkinshaw and Simon Caulkin report on an experiment they did with a sales team at the Stockholm offices of a major insurance company, in which they asked the team’s manager to free up two additional hours a day to, well, manage. She handed off some admin work, excused herself from less-important meetings, and spent the extra time giving more guidance to her team, both as a group and one-on-one (read the full piece for the details). After three weeks, sales were up 5% over the previous three-week period, low performers had greatly improved, and no one — not the manager or her direct reports — wanted to go back to the old ways of working.

But wait! you cry, Surely it can’t be that simple. Indeed, Birkinshaw and Caulkin caution that this way of managing may not be for everyone, and many managers “might be happier dealing with numbers behind a desk.” But, they say, for those who can handle the intensity of “full-on management,” the result can be a much more satisfying job and a much more motivated team. I’d hardly be so charitable; why are you a manager if you don’t want to really manage?