Coaching in the Navy — What is coming?
Coaching our people is critical to our success, it also a key element of the Leadership Development System (LDS). Coaching is not something we engage in with just our direct reports, but also our peers and those outside of our direct chain of command. This concept of everyone coaching each other is what is referred to as a ‘coaching culture’ or being more ‘coach-like’. You may have heard these phrases used already, but if you haven’t, this is what it’s all about.
Be ‘Coach-Like’
An organisation with a coaching culture can be described as one which adopts coaching principles as an integral way of managing and developing people. It recognises the value of using coaching principles as an approach to grow and develop its people in order to grow and develop the organisation itself. Being ‘coach-like’ means using coaching principles with each other as a natural part of meetings, reviews, and one-to-one discussions of all kinds.
Coaching Principles
It’s about asking questions rather than jumping to telling an answer, it’s about really listening, not just listening to formulate a response, and it’s about being genuinely curious as to what the other person is saying and helping them through your questions to find the answers themselves. It’s only by using these techniques and demonstrating these coaching behaviours that we can fully understand the person’s challenge and provide help.
Leaders as Coaches
Understanding that we all need to be ‘coach-like’ is just the beginning. All leaders need to engage in coaching in the workplace for specific performance outcomes. Those who are 1Ups, supervisors, instructors, Career Managers, and Divisional Officers/Senior Rates, fall in to this category.
In order to develop our people, we have to actively support their development. On the whole the Navy uses an apprenticeship model, we teach our own. Starting at day one, we are learning about our trade, and honing our craft. As we gain more knowledge and experience, being coached on how we’re performing is essential for becoming more effective at our role. We need our leaders to coach us. As leaders, we need to coach our direct reports, and we call this ‘Leaders as Coaches’.
Benefits of Coaching
There is a multitude of research into the benefits of Leaders coaching in the workplace. Some of the main ones are:
· Performance/Skills improvement.
· Well-being: People work better if they feel well, basic needs are met, and they do not struggle with health-related problems caused by the job.
· Helps build ways of coping with stressors.
· Increases job satisfaction: In a workplace where a lot of the time we cannot change things about our tasks or interactions, being able to ‘re-frame’ our work experiences and attitudes can help us remain positive.
· Setting and striving for goals.
Expert Coaches
An organisation the size of the Navy (and the NZDF as a whole) can benefit from having access to ‘Expert’ coaches. These are the people who are formally trained, and can dedicate their time to coaching anyone who requires it. This kind of coaching can be invaluable for supporting:
· Leaders who are about to, or have just, transitioned from one leadership level to the next.
· Leaders managing people for the first time, or dealing with specific issues as a supervisor.
· Individuals who want to improve their leadership skills, workplace performance, or interpersonal skills.
· People who want to be more effective in general.
All of these elements of coaching — Be Coach-Like, Leaders as Coaches, and Expert coaches — are all part of the ‘system of coaching’ that LDG is working to establish.
So — What’s Next?
The first stage is to run two trials:
1. Designing and delivering training for ‘Leaders as Coaches’ to develop their coaching skills.
2. Using an expert coach, which we will trial before the end of the year to a selected group of people.
Both of these trials will run before the end of the year, so if you’re interested in taking part in a workshop, keep your eyes peeled for announcements in your ships’ or units’ notices. It’s anticipated that a full rollout of the system of coaching will commence in early 2020.
The NZDF requires us to coach — it’s in our Leadership Framework and a foundation stone of the LDS; we hear about it on the LDS Transition courses we attend but until now, there has not been a fully aligned and integrated system for learning how to coach, or getting access to coaching if we need it. We are breaking new ground with this initiative, and taking another step to better supporting our people.
