Are coaching cultures really relevant in HE?

In today’s environment of rapid change, political uncertainty, and intense competition, having the ability to continuously adapt and generate better commercial results is paramount, writes Dominic Ashley-Timms, Founder and MD of Notion Ltd (www.businesscoaching.co.uk). The idea for this blog arose from a presentation that Dominic recently gave to a meeting of Russell Group HRDs.

Whilst commerciality isn’t a new subject for Universities, operating as viable business enterprises is now a question of survival rather than competitiveness. This forces Vice Chancellors, University Presidents, Deans, Heads of Departments, Subject Leaders, Course Directors, and alike, to pay attention to the interests of their institutions in a much more commercial way.

Now neck deep in targets, measures, inspections, and audits, this emphasis on commercial performance is prudent, but, in the rush to ‘professionalise’ Universities, there is a risk that the human aspect of performance is forgotten. Nevertheless, leading and managing people through change remains essential to success and getting it wrong could have dire commercial consequences.

Is Coaching a Commercial Solution?

Coaching has gained traction in the private sector in recent years in terms of achieving commercial results through higher level human relations. Once reserved for the upper echelons of senior leadership as a way to hone ‘Olympic worthy’ management muscle, it now has a broader application, and is increasingly favoured by L&D professionals as a way to improve employee engagement, performance, and productivity at all levels of the organisation.

However, our research shows how difficult it is to create a ‘coaching culture’ with 79% of organisations still describing their prevailing leadership style as ‘mostly’ or ‘very’ command and control. We also noticed that only 18% of senior executives and directors considered coaching to be something that was part of a manager’s or leader’s natural style; over half of organisations still described coaching in terms of executive coaching, i.e. 1-to-1 coaching with an external or internal coach. And herein is the key to why coaching isn’t delivering the commercial results it’s capable of.

Executive Coaching Only Reaches the Top 5%

You see, executive coaching models, such as John Whitmore’s GROW model, were never designed to drive large scale change. They only focus on the coachee’s own goals and consequently, results are restricted by the ambition, imagination, resourcefulness and rationality of that individual. Realistically, 1-to-1 executive coaching can only reach about 5% of the organisation.  Even deploying internal coaches into the organisation is rarely enough to tip the balance in terms of changing the prevailing culture. We discovered that in order to reach the remaining 95% (i.e. those not enjoying 1-to-1 coaching), the focus must flip from the coachee to the manager, so that the ‘manager as coach’ is properly enabled to mobilise the masses. To help organisations to achieve this cultural change we designed STAR^®, the first ‘Operational Coaching’ model capable of driving behaviour change on a large scale.

Operational Coaching Gets Results

In our experience of helping public and private sector clients to develop coaching cultures, we have witnessed organisations thrive when leaders and managers are unshackled from their traditional, command and control style of leadership and instead adopt our ‘Operational Coaching’ approach that uses more of an enquiry-led style of leading and managing. For most organisations, this represents an important cultural shift that increases employee satisfaction and engagement but what is often surprising to them is how quickly they achieve remarkable levels of return on investment from uplifts in employee retention, customer service, market growth, sales performance, and ultimately profitability.

So, could Universities also experience similar commercial results by developing a coaching culture or is this yet another management fad seeping in from the private sector?

This notion of ‘command and control’ isn’t something we generally associate with Universities. Universities are already regarded as epicentres for learning and acclaimed for their thought leadership, innovation, and creativity, so the question of whether coaching cultures are really relevant in higher education is a valid one.  To help us answer this question there are several features that might be worth exploring that are unique to higher education establishments:

1.           Atypical Cultures

Universities are melting pots of diversity. University staff may share a common cause but they are not necessarily shooting for the same goals. The array of subcultures in Universities can make it difficult to align professional, administrative and academic staff to a common strategic goal. A coaching culture can help to bind together distinct communities of people in a way that encourages higher levels of synergy and social capital between groups which could drive much better commercial results at an organisational level.

2.           Autonomy and Independence

This atypical culture is reflected in the organisational infrastructure. Even in the most forward thinking commercial organisations, the notion of the ‘management hierarchy’ still lives on to some degree. However, in certain areas of Universities, management is more decentralised and symbiotic because of the differentiated, independent and autonomous nature of teaching and research.  The commercial pressures now faced by Universities may challenge this paradigm and serve to unsettle and disengage people who are used to high levels of freedom. The establishment of a coaching culture can help to bring about a collective accountability at the same time as retaining high levels of choice, involvement, and empowerment.

3.           Collegiality

When we think of academics, we are likely to imagine highly collegiate characters. We might even expect that coaching would come easily to them given their choice of career. However, the frustrations that can come hand in hand with University wide decision making, departmental planning and strategy, often elicit much different (and perhaps less helpful) behaviours than those relied upon when making personal choices about what to teach and what to research.  Preparing people to navigate internal politics and to communicate more effectively can be made easier with a collective coaching mindset which can result in much better outcomes.

4.           Academic Career Progression

Even the recent trend for sourcing leadership talent from the commercial arena hasn’t dramatically changed the fact that University leadership teams often largely consist of highly successful academic staff who may not have been readied for a leadership role as part of a planned management career path. However, in a coaching culture, all University staff will experience coaching as part of their management development or as a fundamental part of how they relate with others on an everyday basis - helping to raise the quality of leadership across the board.

5.           Curiosity

Curiosity is central to teaching and research and is a core skill that many University staff have in abundance. Where perhaps coaching cultures can really make their mark in higher education is helping the art of enquiry to escape the bounds of a particular department, faculty or research team, and enter the daily life and everyday interactions of the manager, administrator, academic, and even the student. When creativity and innovation is freed to occur in every corner and crevice, and is then transformed into action through ‘Operational Coaching’, the impact on commercial performance will be tremendous.

So, how can Universities develop a coaching culture?

Our STAR^® methodology has already proven to deliver fantastic social and commercial value in the higher education sector and across all industries, with clients frequently reporting hard results of up to 100 x Return on Investment. However, we became very aware that in these highly competitive and changeable times, a faster and much more agile way to develop coaching cultures is necessary. So, after years of research, we launched STAR^® Manager, which is a game changer in the field of e-learning that helps organisations to develop coaching cultures more quickly by providing an easily accessible, cost effective, and scalable way to build leadership and management capabilities.

This revolutionary, 100% virtual, fully blended behaviour development technology ensures that leaders and managers, in whatever guise, learn how to adopt an ‘Operational Coaching’ approach in a way that is completely flexible and bespoke to their needs; giving them ultimate ownership of their own development and transforming their ability to improve engagement, productivity and performance in their teams.

The University of Exeter, with other Russell Group Universities following their lead, has now become the first University to embark on our STAR^® Manager programme. Jacqui Marshall, Deputy Registrar and Director of People Services and Global Partnerships at the University of Exeter said, “We are committed to creating a positive working environment that enables people to be at their best and thrive. We believe that STAR^® Manager will support our people to continue to make the University of Exeter a great place to work.”

Undoubtedly, Universities must increasingly think like businesses if they are to compete on a global platform. However, this doesn’t have to mean focusing purely on scientific measures of performance at the expense of human relationships. Instead, leadership teams can leverage the abundance of human talent that is already present in Universities by developing effective coaching cultures that infuse coaching into everyday ‘management’ and teaching practices, student experiences, as well as generating even further excellence in research and innovation.

Dominic Ashley-Timms

Notion is a global expert in behaviour change. Click here to read our white paper titled 7 Ideas To Help Build A Sustainable Coaching Culture or for more information about how our revolutionary STAR^® Manager programme can help to accelerate coaching cultures in Universities visit us at www.businesscoaching.co.uk/star-manager or call us for an informal chat on +44(0)1926 889 885.