Coaching And Leadership In Business

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As managers, one of the biggest challenges we face on a daily basis is that of actually managing our people. One common challenge we discovered among our group was the difficulty of hiring the right people for the right job. Not only does one have to define the technical skills necessary to perform the job, managers need to determine which type of behavioral skills the new hire must possess in order to fit into the dynamics of the existing team. The latter is much harder to identify. Finding the right personalities that will work well and compliment your existing team is critical. Personnel Decisions International (1999) explains, when hiring people it is important to determine the most important competencies for the organization as well as the position. The involvement of management in articulating the behavioral expectations of the new roles is critical. In one of the situations in our team discussions, we addressed the behavior of an IT professional that was hired as a contract employee. It seemed that management continued to hire creative individuals and fostered an environment that would allow people to work independently without many spoken behavioral boundaries. Certain behaviors, such as showing up to work on time, and meeting deadlines were not behaviors where this individual excelled. He lacked focus even for interesting research projects. Unfortunately, his behavior was not addressed until his annual review, which was more than a year after he joined the company. Following his review his behavior improved for a period of time; however, it was short-lived. After one month the same patterns reappeared. Failure to provide ongoing coaching, perhaps even on a daily basis, may have helped this individual... ... middle of paper ... ...possessing more of the "soft skills" have been more effective than possessing the technical skills of getting the job done. The success of your company depends largely on its employees, and although time consuming, coaching is an important aspect of the job that all managers should practice. References: Personnel Decisions International. (1999). Successful Executive's Handbook Axelrod, Beth, Handfield-Jones, Helen and Michaels, Ed. (2002). A New Game for C Players. Harvard Business Review, 81-89. Waldroop, James and Butler, Timothy. (1996). The Executive as Coach. Harvard Business Review, 111-118. Manzoni, Jean-Francois and Barsoux, Jean-Louis. (1998). The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome. Harvard Business Review, 101-113. Waldroop, James and Butler, Timothy. (1999). Job Sculpting. The Art of Retaining Your Best People. Harvard Business Review, 143-52.

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