Beyond the paycheck: how coaching can help you keep you workforce (happy)

By Margarita Gokun Silver

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

Published: October 25, 2005 (Issue # 1116)

Margarita Gokun Silver, President of the Global Coach Center

We are all familiar with the situation: a company enters a market, hires well-qualified people, invests time and resources in training, gets accustomed to their expertise, and then … then, it begins to lose them. It happens to almost every organization, it happens more often than managers like, and it’s been happening regularly in St. Petersburg.

In fact, this has become such a problem in the city, some companies located near to each other, have come to an informal agreement not to hire the others’ staff.

So how can a company retain its employees? Compensation is the obvious answer, but it is neither the only one, nor the perfect one. Money, after all, isn’t everything. A department manager of a prestigious and well-paying organization has lost three staff in the last six months. There may be several reasons, among them a sign the manager keeps above her desk: “You are entitled to ***my*** opinion.”

This manager runs her department through a culture of fear, but presuming you would actually like your staff to stay – what options are there? One popular approach of recent years has been the coaching approach. It sets as its aims to increase individual performance, to stimulate a creative office atmosphere and effective teamwork. So, how does it work?

There are five interconnected tenets that identify the coaching approach and each one is focused on emphasizing and harnessing the unique potential of every individual.

(1) The coaching approach assumes all people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. That is, the potential of each employee to achieve great heights already exists within them and only a small “nudge” is needed to help the employee on their way. If each person has the answer within themselves, the manager no longer needs to micromanage, or have all the answers. Instead, the company promotes personal discovery and self-responsibility for each task.

(2) The second tenet is “safe space,” an environment which does not support judgments or condescending attitude; it’s the space where the exchange of ideas and opinions is encouraged and ***no one gets to be wrong.*** An opinion is just an opinion and an idea is just an idea. The employee needs to feel comfortable to approach the manager, needs to feel that they won’t be put down, laughed at, disregarded, or degraded.

This is the opposite to establishing an atmosphere of fear, where other opinions don’t matter and creativity is frowned upon. In a climate of fear there is a limit on trust, one of the most important characteristic of a “safe space” at a workplace.

(3) The third tenet is powerful communications, a concept which consists of five elements: alliance building, compelling questions, three levels of listening, value farming, and objective feedback. The idea is to base language on curiosity and respect to people. A manager needs to ***know*** his staff to understand what they are capable of. What are their goals, motivations, values? This becomes even more important when working in diverse and cross-cultural environments.

(4) The fourth is logistical, for it sets in place a structure and a process for individual development. The structure contains SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed) and the process is grounded in accountability.

(5) And the last, but not the least, is leadership development. With a coaching approach managers support their staff to grow and stretch their capabilities. With such support staff create, build, and “play” thus acquiring a high-level of self-confidence and mastery, which with time translates directly into leadership potential. Employees stay not only due to job satisfaction, but an understanding that they are on the way to becoming leaders themselves.

***Margarita Gokun Silver is the president of Global Coaching Center, a life and executive coaching company with offices in Washington, DC and St Petersburg, Russia.***

website: www.GlobalCoachCenter.com