Management Coaching Gives Your Company An Edge
Many companies make the dangerous mistake of hiring someone simply on the basis that they have managed people before, taking for granted that they are an experienced manager who will not require any further help. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Managers are human beings too, and just as making home-cooked meals for a few years doesn't qualify someone to be a master chef, though it might be a good start, becoming a good manager consists of much more than having past experience managing some people for a while.
This is where management coaches come in. One of the most important resources human resources can provide is the kind of management coaching that turns a mediocre manager into the leader of a all-star team. There's a reason that top CEO's of Fortune 500 companies spend a combined total of millions in one to one training with the world's most elite coaches. That reason is that even someone with as many successes as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs knows that he doesn't know everything.
Take one example from the field of music: at a time when he was the most famous and well-paid living composer in the world, George Gershwin still took lessons in harmony from other composers! World leaders still take personal coaching in their field, which is a good indication that management coaching is an important part of bringing out the best in your management team.
So when you have decided that your company could use management coaching, the question is who should be coached. We would answer that anyone in a position of responsibility in your company regardless of division or number of people managed should be coached.
No one is perfect, and thus everyone who makes stressful management decisions needs coaching. Changes in the world, particularly increases in business efficiency, require active adaptation in order to stay ahead of the curve. Managers unable to adapt to this new business climate are going to lose out - it is as simple as that. They lose their edge, their organization's advantage, and, in the worst cases, their workforce and their business as well.
Expert management coaching ensures that an angry lapse will never destroy a team, that a bad day doesn't mean a bad month, and that teams are led, and not just managed. Raising leaders doesn't happen without investing in them, and management coaches are the most proactive way of doing that -- for a Fortune 500 CEO, and for your management team too.
Human resources are most beneficial to companies when they provide management coaching to help turn mediocre or poor managers into world-class leaders. Fortune 500 corporations spend millions of dollars to train their employees with the best management coaches the world has to offer. Anyone making management decisions needs coaching as no one is perfect. We all had to learn things somewhere, but changes in the world (especially increases in business efficiency) require us to adapt and stay ahead of the curve. Without proper coaching, managers lose their edge, their team's advantage, and, if they are particularly bad managers, they might even lose their work force.
Published July 20th, 2007
Filed in Business, Communication, Education