Leaders as Coaches: Developing Talent with Compassion
Eklavya Sinha
Learning and Development Manager,
(Asia Pacific), Aon Hewitt
The use of coaching as a leadership development tool has seen a significant boost in the last few years. According to Aon Hewitt's Top Companies for Leaders (TCFL) Study 2011, 87% of Top Companies in Asia Pacific deployed internal or external coaching, as compared to only 57% in 2009. While external coaches are popular with senior managers, internal coaches are more prevalent at the middle and junior management levelsOrganizations use coaching to improve leadership effectiveness and build a strong leadership pipeline. Another benefit of coaching is to use it as a self-development tool for the person who coaches.
Coaching with Compassion
Coaching with Compassion is defined as "the process of helping others in their intentional change process"2. This requires the coach to understand the aspirations of others (know), care deeply for their success and well-being (feel) and act to help them achieve their goals (do). This is fundamentally different from transactional coaching, where the primary focus is on achieving organizational goals without sincere regard for the person being oached. When seen in this light, Coaching with Compassion is important and comes with significant payoffs. It helps the coach to overcome stress, which is inherent in most leadership roles. Furthermore, compassionate coaching enables the leaders to avoid self-preoccupation and remain connected with people.
Figure 1: Internal versus External Coaching
Possible Limitations for Internal Coaching
Some things need to be considered before using internal leaders as coaches. Firstly, leaders serving as coaches need to be trained rigorously before being entrusted with a coaching responsibility. Despite the increase in popularity of coaching, training for internal coaches is still not widespread, which is a serious impediment to the effectiveness of internal coaches. Secondly, internal coaches may often have multiple interfaces with the person who is coached. Such a situation, if not handled proactively and sensitively, can raise doubts about the confidentiality of the process. Lastly, there will always be executives for whom external coaching will continue to be a preferred choice, given factors such as their personality, role or specific need for coaching. Organizations should therefore, view internal and external coaching as complementary development tools and not mutually exclusive of one another3.
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