CHAPTER- 3 COACHING AND COUNSELING

COACHING
• Coaching is a fundamental performance management activity
that takes the opportunities presented by the work itself and
uses them to develop the knowledge, skills, competencies and
therefore the performance of people.
• Coaching opportunities arise in two ways: informally on a day-
to-day basis, and after a formal performance review that
identifies learning and development needs
• Research by Graham, Wedman and Garvin-Kester (1994)
showed that specific coaching behaviours have been directly
correlated with net increases in sales.
• Research by Ellinger (2003) indicated that improvements in
systems and cost savings may be directly attributed to coaching
interventions by managers.
• Ellinger and Keller (2003) conducted research in a distribution
centre and found that supervisory coaching behavior was a
highly significant predictor of employee job satisfaction and
performance.
DEFINITIONS OF COACHING

 Coaching was defined by Ellinger, Ellinger and Keller (2003) as a

day-to-day, hands-on process of helping employees recognize
opportunities to improve their performance and capabilities; a
form of facilitating learning.

 Jarvis (2004) stated that coaching usually lasts for a short period
and focuses on specific skills and goals.

 Lee (2005) explained: ‘The coaching model of performance

management redefines the relationship between the supervisor
and the subordinate.
• The two work together to help the subordinate perform at his or
her very best.’
• Coaching involves short-term interventions designed to remedy
problems that interfere with the employee’s performance but it is
also concerned with longer-term development and continuous
learning.
• Coaching can be distinguished from mentoring and
counseling. Mentoring describes a relationship in which
a more experienced individual uses his or her greater
knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace
to support the development of a more junior or
inexperienced colleague.
• Counseling addresses the employee’s emotional state
and the causes of personal crises and problems. It is
usually conducted by trained counselors and involves
short-term interventions designed to remedy problems
that interfere with the employee’s job performance.
•  
The process of coaching
Evered and Selman (1989) defined the following essential
characteristics that define good coaching:
• developing a partnership,
• commitment to produce a result,
• responsiveness to people, practice and preparation,
• a sensitivity to individuals, and
• a willingness to go beyond what has already been achieved.
Woodruffe (2008) suggested that coaching should aim to:
• amplify an individual’s own knowledge and thought processes;
• improve the individual’s self-awareness and facilitate the
winning of detailed insight into how the individual may be
perceived by others;
• create a supportive, helpful, yet demanding, environment in
which the individual’s crucial thinking skills, ideas and
behavior's are challenged and developed.
 Thompson, Purdy and Summers (2008) listed five coaching
stages:
1) developing a relationship with the client;
2) collecting and analyzing diagnostic information;
3) processing feedback and planning actions;
4) taking action; and
5) evaluating progress.

Woodruffe (2008) recommended a three-part approach to

coaching:
1. Discovery. The aim of the first meeting – or meetings – is to
focus on discovery.
• In this stage, individuals being coached find out about
themselves. Personality inventories may be used to facilitate
discussions concerning the individual’s self-perception.
• Career expectations and career development are explored. 360-
degree feedback tools are used to introduce the views of others.
• The goal of the discovery phase is to heighten self-awareness.
2. Action Plan. Once individuals have a clear picture of their
strengths, weaknesses and how they come across to others,
they are encouraged to set goals and objectives to develop and
challenge themselves.
The goals will be set within the context of career development
and will take advantage of current business issues or projects.

3. Review and recommit.

• At this point individuals review their performance against the
goals they had set.
• Action plans can be updated and altered if necessary.
• The sessions are used to discuss and build upon successes,
as well as examining how obstacles and difficulties can be
overcome.
Techniques of coaching
Hallbom and Warrenton-Smith (2005) recommend the
following coaching techniques:
• Ask high-impact questions – ‘how’ and ‘what’ open-ended
questions that spur action rather than ‘why’ questions
that require explanations.
• Help people to develop their own answers and action
plans.
• Identify what people are doing right and then make the
most of it rather than just trying to f ix problems –
coaching is success driven.
• Build rapport and trust – make it safe for employees to
express their concerns and ideas.
• Get employees to work out answers for themselves –
people often resist being told what to do, or how to do it.
 
A common framework used by coaches is the GROW model:
 
 
• ‘G’ is for the goal of coaching – this needs to be expressed in
specific measurable terms that represent a meaningful step
towards future development.
 
• ‘R’ is for the reality check – the process of eliciting as full a
description as possible of what the person being coached
needs to learn.
 
• ‘O’ is for option generation – the identification of as many
solutions and actions as possible.
 
• ‘W’ is for wrapping up or ‘will do’ – when the coach ensures
that the individual being coached is committed to action.
•  
’COACHING PROCESS USED IN A RETAIL COMPANY.
•Goal
• In practice, when managers start to coach, most of the role involves
asking questions that will help the individuals work out for themselves
what their goal is.
•To aid this process, a list of questions is provided, with the goal usually
being one of the objectives or the performance criteria standard. Like the
main objectives, all goals need to be SMART.
•Reality
 
•The second stage, ‘Reality’, examines the current situation and what the
individual has been doing and achieving.
•To aid this process, managers collect together examples to use in the
coaching process. In addition, the company’s guidance notes give a list
of questions to ask to gain a perspective on the individuals’ views and
understanding of various situations. Among the list of questions are:

• 
•  
•  
• What is the situation at the moment?
• Who else is or could be involved?
• What is their perception of the situation?
• What would be happening/what would it look like if it were
perfect?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, what is it like now? What improvement
do you want?
• What are the barriers to moving from X out of 10 to Y out of
10?
• What is holding you back?
• What have you tried so far? What were the results?
 
Options
 

• ‘Options’, the third stage, attempts to encourage employees to

come up with ideas on what they could do to achieve their
objectives or reach the performance criteria standard.
• Again, a list of guidance questions is given to managers to
help with the process, but this time there is an attempt to
explore some of the more unconventional solutions that staff
might have.
• The company stresses that the session should allow
employees to think quite broadly and that managers should
not criticize any ideas that emerge. Once employees run out
of ideas, then managers provide their own.
• Will
• The final stage of the coaching process is to formulate an
action plan, outlining what the individual is going to do. The
plan, the company says, should be specific with clear
deadlines. Once more, the company provides a number of
questions to inform thinking

COACHING SKILLS
A good coach is one who questions and listens.
Good understanding of their role to motivate people to learn.
Awareness of present level of skills, knowledge and their
behavior.
Learning and feedback
Effective listening, analytical and interviewing skills.
Create a supportive environment for learning.
Mangers need encouragement, training and guidance
 PERFORMANCE COUNSELLING
• Performance counselling is normally done in regular course
of performance when there are no problems.
• Performance counselling focuses on the entire
performance (tasks and behaviours) during a particular
period rather than on a specific problem.
• However, specific problems may be discussed during
counselling as a part of analysing and understanding
performance patterns.
• Performance counselling can be defined as the help
provided by a manager to his subordinates in analysing
their performance and other job behaviours in order to
increase their job effectiveness.
• Performance counselling essentially focuses on the analysis
of performance on the job and identification of training needs
for further improvement.
• Counselling is a dyadic process. It is based on the relation
between two persons, a manager who is providing help or
how is counselling and an employee to whom such help is
given or who is a counselee.
• Focus on establishing mutuality and confidentiality. Managers
provide such help or counselling at various stages.
• Counselling could be an effective instrument in helping people
integrate with their organization and have a sense of involvement and
satisfaction.
• The following conditions are necessary for counselling to be effective.
1. General Climate of Openness and Mutuality: If the organization or
department in which the employee is working is full of tension, and
people do not trust each other, counselling cannot be effective. A
climate of minimum trust and openness is essential for effective
counselling.
2. General Helpful and Empathic Attitude of Management:
Counselling involves effective helping which is not possible unless the
counsellor has general helping attitude and has empathy for the
counselee.
3. Sense of Uninhibited Participation by the Subordinates in the
Performance Review Process: Unless the subordinates in a
department or organization feel free enough to participate without
inhibition in the process of review and feedback, counselling cannot be
effective.
4. Dialogic Relationship in Goal Setting and Performance
Review: Performance counselling focuses on the counselee’s
achievement of the performance goals he had set in consultation
with his manger.
• Joint participation by the employee and his reporting officer
are necessary both in goal setting as well as in the
performance review. Without such collaboration effort,
counselling does not achieve its purpose.
5. Focus on Work-oriented Behaviour:
• The main purpose of performance counselling is to help the
employee in improving his performance.
• Counselling can be effective if the focus is kept on the work-
related goals rather than diffusing attention into various
other areas.
• While doing so, discussion may involve other related and
personal issues, but these are used to refocus on
improvement of organizational roles rather than on personal
or general personality problems.
6. Focus on Work-related Problems and Difficulties:
Performance counselling is not related only to the achievement
of goals, but also to the contextual problems in achieving or not
achieving the goals. Analysis of performance therefore becomes
the basis of counselling.

7. Avoidance of Discussion of Salary and Other Rewards:

Performance counselling may not serve its purpose if it includes
discussion about salary raise, rewards, etc.
The main purpose of performance counselling is to use
performance appraisal in planning and improvement of the
employee, rather than understanding relationship between
performance and reward like salary, etc.
Bringing such discussion in the performance counselling may
vitiate the main purpose of counselling
Process of Employee Counseling
• The counseling process has three phases: rapport
building, exploration and action.

• Rapport Building: In the rapport building phase, a

good counselor attempts to establish a climate of
acceptance, warmth, support, openness and mutuality.
• This phase involves generating confidence in the
employee to open up frankly, share his perceptions,
problems, concerns, feelings etc.
• The subordinate must be made to feel wanted and that
his superior is genuinely interested in his development.
• Exploration: In this phase, the counselor should attempt to
help the employee understand and appreciate his strengths
and weaknesses.
• He should also understand his own situation, problems and
needs.
• Questions should be asked which help the employee focus
on his problem. For example, if an employee feels that his
problem is that others do not co-operate with him, the
counselor may ask questions to narrow down the problem to
the employee’s relationship with a few individuals.
• Then the superior may ask questions to help the employee
understand what he does (or says) to his colleagues that is
making it difficult for him to win their co-operations.
• Problem identification is a critical step in planning for
improvement. To help the employee make a correct diagnosis
of the problem, open-ended questions may be asked.
• Action Planning:Counseling interviews should
end with specific plans of action for
development of the employee.
• The main contribution of the superior in this
phase is in helping the employee think of
alternative ways of dealing with a problem. For
example, in case of an employee whose
relationships with colleagues are poor, the
superior may suggest “What three things can
you do in the coming week to improve your
relationship with X?” After helping the
employee brainstorm, the superior may also
add more alternatives to the solutions already
generated.
AIMS OF COUNSELLING
According to Eisenberg & Delaney, the aims of
counseling are as follows.
1. Understanding Self.
2. Making Impersonal Decisions.
3. Setting achievable goals which enhance growth.
4. Planning in the present to bring about desired future.
5. Coping with difficult situation.
6. Controlling self Defeating Emotion.
7. Effective Solutions to Personal and Inter personal
problems.
8. Acquiring effective Transaction Skills.
9. Acquiring „positive self-regard‟ and a Sense of
Optimism about one's own ability to satisfy one's basic
needs.
• DIFFERENT TYPES OF COUNSELLING
Counselling is of three types:
1) Direct counselling: Direct counselling is a
process of directing the employees to solve their
emotional problems through advice, reassurance,
communication, release of tension and clarified
thinking.
• In the process of counselling listens to the
problems, decides the course of action and tells to
motivate the employee to take necessary remedial
measures
2) Non-directive counselling:
• Non-directive counselling is the process of skilfully
listening and encouraging the person to explain his
emotional problems, understand that and
determine the course of action.
• Counselee is in the centre of the problem and is
the judge and advisor of his own problem.
• Counsellor simply encourages him in the improved
course of action.
• This technique applies all the functions of
counselling except advice and reassurance.
3) Co-operative counselling: Co-operative
counselling is an integration of both the types of
counselling directive and non-directive and
removes almost the defects of both the techniques.
• It involves a mutual discussion of an
employee‟s emotional problem and
cooperative effort to setup conditions that will
remedy it.
• It applies for functions of counselling. I.e.,
Reassurance, communication, release of
tension and clarified thinking. Advise is least
applied.
• Employee is referred to professional counsellor
if reorientation is needed. It is the best
technique of counselling in modern times.