7/30/2019 Talent Management: Understanding Coaching & Mentoring

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The trend towardsoaching and mentoring

In most organisations today,alking in and delivering a few daystraining is not enough. Manympanies have found that afterending thousands of dollars onaining interventions, there hasen no real significant change or measured impact onsiness. This has been the bane of the training industry,

hich has lost a tremendous amount of credibilitycause of this charge.

What is coaching?The coach within an organisation is quite similara tutor. This is not a new practice. In fact, this isry common in the banking industry. The coach is not

cessarily a supervisor, for anyone can fulfi

ll this role.he coach is therefore responsible for following:1. Transferring valuable skills to his or her

lleagues.2. Assisting them in figuring out solutions within the

orkplace.3. Guiding colleagues through legacy systems or new

lutions.In your role as a coach, it’s important not to come

er as the doyen of all truth and knowledge within theganisation or you will quickly lose respect. Here areme tips regarding the types of questions you should ask as a coach:

‘Questions’ on new systems implemented:1. Are you comfortable with system “X”?2. Tell me what new benefits you can identify.3. Please help us to point out any weakness you come across.4. What are your suggestions for improving the system?

Questions related to goals:

1. How do you rate yourself from 1-10?2. Can you give a realistic time to achieve this goal?In general, you will notice from the tone of the questions that you are transferring ownershipthe person you are coaching and this is the key technique.If you are in the business of training, whether in-house or an external provider, be prepared forincreased demand for coaching services.

What is mentoring?Oft times, the term mentoring is used interchangeably with coaching, but GES does not

commend this. Mentoring is slightly different from coaching. The mentor is usually a seniorrson within the organisation appointed to a junior person. The role of the mentor is to:1. Provide guidance.2. Act at the first point of reference for any challenges or dif ficulty the junior may face.3. Give career tips and guidance.4. Help the junior navigate through internal bureaucracy, policies and procedures.Organisations must be very careful in designating mentors for junior staff. It’s important to

ow the personality types before appointing any and every one as a mentor. The traits for goodentoring are as follows:

1. Should be good with people.

2. Must have ahigh level of emotionalintelligence.

3. Should not be swamped with so much work that there’s never enough time to act as ment

Tips for implementing coaching and mentoring programmes  GES recommends that before embarking on coaching and mentoring programmes that you go

through the following steps:1. Screen your candidates by way of psychometric testing, experience, observation and

interviews as if you would for a new employee hire. Coaching and mentoring are very specificroles and require a unique skill set. Not all managers or supervisors will make good coaches andmentors.

2. Define the specifications of what will be required for the roles of coach or mentor.3. Set metrics.4. Allocate a specific number of hours for coaching and mentoring even though they will be a

hoc situations. In the case of in-house coaches and mentoring, you must be careful not to allowthis role to distract too much from core tasks and responsibilities.

5. If the demand increases for coaching and mentoring, you may wish to create specialised jobto handle the demand.

6. Consider coaching as part of your request for services from external training companies. Twill save you the time of having to divert in-house staff from their everyday activities.

Finally, the field of accounting offers very good examples on how mentoring ought to be donACCA has an excellent mentoring programme if you are looking for a model to follow. See : httwww.accaglobal.com/en/employer/supporting-trainees/workplace-mentor.html

• For access to the entire series of GES articles in pdf feel free to downloadthem from http://www.scribd.com/GlobalExpertSystems

Coaching and

mentoring