Integration
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118
119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152
153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169
170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186
187 188 189 190 191 192
Coaching is not done in a vacuum. In the case of PharmaQuest,
coaching was one developmental initiative as part of an overall leadership
development effort. The more all of the developmental activities
can be integrated into one cohesive effort, the greater the value
is likely to be from these activities. Integration optimizes the value
for the whole effort.What does this mean for coaching? For starters,
the coaching conversations can serve as a way for clients to reflect
on and deepen their learning from other developmental activities.
The coach, for example, can help a client reflect on how well he or
she led the action learning team to solve a product development
problem. Together, the coach and client can explore how effectively
leadership and communication skills were applied and what could
have been done differently.
Coaching conversations can also bring into sharper focus the specific
developmental needs of each client. The client is then better
able to seek those developmental activities that best address these
needs. Coaching conversations are a journey that may end up in
some unexpected places. The starting place for a client may be, for
example, setting clearer goals for a team. As the coaching conversations
dig deeper into the root causes for the lack of focus, what
emerges is not goal setting but rather the need for the client to facilitate
stronger partnerships between team members, fostered deeper
appreciation for how the various disciplines represented on the team
can work more effectively together. The real solution and development
need for the client becomes deepening his insight into the
underlying dynamics of the team and learning how to influence
them more effectively. The client may seek additional developmental
opportunities outside of the coaching sessions to address
this need.
Integrating coaching with other developmental activities is
accomplished through two major avenues: competencies and curricula.
Many organizations have developed and validated a set of
competencies that define success behaviors for people in the organization.
Leaders are assessed according to these competencies, and
then developmental activities, such as coaching, are offered to
address the competency gaps. For example, cross-business unit collaboration
and business acumen are two commonly revealed competency
gaps. Organizations, especially larger ones, are under a great
deal of pressure to have business units that are aligned, integrated,
and focused on doing the greatest good for the entire business enterprise.
Business units that act as a lone wolf—even if successful—are
no longer tolerated by the rest of the pack. Business unit leaders
must do more than run their own show; they must reach out to their
peers to collectively run the business enterprise, even if it means
suboptimizing the performance of their particular business unit.
Understanding the big picture of the business taxes the business
acumen of leaders. Someone who has spent his entire career in
manufacturing now has to also understand inventory and distribu-
tion and appreciate the special challenges facing inventory management
and the logistics of product distribution.
The learning curve for many leaders is steep, which brings us to
the curriculum. Developmental activities are meant to accelerate the
learning curve and speed a leader’s time to develop required competencies.
Coaching is an important piece of the curriculum, but not
the only piece. Action learning, job rotations, job shadowing, leadership
workshops, university courses, and other activities all make
up the curriculum for leadership development. Coaching may be
used to help leaders integrate all of their experiences, draw essential
learnings, and apply these learnings to their leadership responsibilities.
For example, a leader may be coached to build more effective
collaboration skills while she participates in an action learning team.
Coaching is most effective when it is integrated with other developmental
activities and grounded in a validated competency model.