Coaching - Project Manager as Change Agent

In the PMI guide, Project Management Body of Knowledge [PMBOK] , coaching is mentioned as one out of several interpersonal skill, that a Project Manager is recommended to possess. However, coaching has explicit strength when it comes to assisting a team member in getting 'back on track' if performance is decreasing due to lack of motivation, knowledge or skills. In this perspective, coaching has great potential for Project Managers who are challenged by a decrease in team performance as a result of a change in the project. An important limitation of the use of coaching is seen when a person-centered coaching uncritically is applied in a business context The recommendations in this article will, therefore, focus on how exactly a Project Manager can assist a team member to get re-motivated in a business context. One recommendation will be to seek inspiration from Change Management and the way a Change Agent apply different modes of intervening to facilitating a change in a demotivated team members mindset or attitude.

A situation of change

Changes happen in projects. They may be initiated by project team members, stakeholder requests, complaints or a wide range of other factors, however, it is the Project Managers responsibility to manage the change and implement corrective actions

Corrective actions are related to activities, XXXXXX scheduling, planning, and budgeting are (explicitly??) covered in the PMI guide, Project Management Body of Knowledge [PMBOK], as opposed to corrective actions as re-motivating and ensuring that a team member gets 'back on track' after a project has undergone change. Developing a team members mindset and attitude in case it is unaligned with new project objectives may be less tangible than enhancing a team members skills and knowledge, but nevertheless it very important in terms of regaining high performance.

Interpersonal skills and competencies

Figure 1 Infinite list of interpersonal skills recommended for a Project Manager]

As the Project Manager is assigned to lead a team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives he must possess three specific competencies, in addition to area-specific skills and general management proficiencies required for the project, to be efficient. These three competencies are knowledge of project management, the ability to perform while applying his/her project management skills, and personal competencies such as attitude, core personality characteristics, and leadership.

Keeping the fact in mind, that a project manager accomplishes work through the project team and other stakeholders, interpersonal skills are worth paying attention to as well. Interpersonal skills cannot stand alone, they are to be balanced with other important project management skills such as technical and conceptual skills in the act of analyzing situations and interacting appropriately.

In any situation where a Project Manager needs to implement corrective actions to the project plan, budget or schedule, there is a potential risk that a team member or the entire team will be negatively affected by the change. In a worst-case scenario, the team members will be demotivated, performance will be affected, the progression of the project will decrease and project objective won't be achieved. In such a situation several interpersonal skills are relevant to possess. Communication, trust building, motivation, conflict management, teambuilding and coaching. However, in a situation of change where fear is known as the main reason for people be resistant to changes, coaching skills stand out. Handling a team member's fear - whether it is fear of poor outcomes, fear of the unknown, or fear of realization of faults with change overlooked by management and their fear of resulting problems - requires some kind of dialog with a focus on regaining trust and confidence in the new situation. Two different approaches to coaching can be taken, either a problem-centered or a person-centered.

Coaching

Coaching is as mentioned, an interpersonal skill that a Project Manager is recommended to possess.

With reference to PMBOK coaching is seen as a means of developing the project team to a higher level of competency and performance. It further mentions that coaching is about helping people recognize their potential through empowerment and development, but almost merely focus on development or enhancement of a team members specific skills, experience, and knowledge. Another take on coaching is given by John Whitmore, who sees coaching as a process of 'unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance'. Here the focus should be drawn to the word unlocking since it represents the change in mindset and attitude that allows a person to maximize their own performance. The latter approach to coaching is person-centered because focus primarily is on empowering a person by a change in mindset and attitude rather than solving a specific problem. Whereas the PMBOK's approach is more focused on the development of a person's skills or knowledge to overcome a problem, why it is having a problem-centered approach to coaching.

To communicate the focus of the two coaching approaches clearly, they will in this article be referred to as empower-coaching and skill-coaching.

Empower-coaching

A person-centered coaching with a focus on changing a persons mindset and attitude towards accepting a challenge

Skill-coaching

A problem-centered coaching with a high focus on enhancement of skills, knowledge, and experience to handle a challenge

Coaching is based on a dialog between two people, one is conducting the coaching and the other is being coached and is build on the principle 'helping others to learn rather than teaching them a solution'.

Anyone can in principle provide coaching. Since the middle of the 1990s, coaching professional associations such as the Association for Coaching (AC), the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), the International Association of Coaching (IAC), and the International Coach Federation (ICF) have worked towards developing training standards for coaches.

Coaching can be applied in different contexts. With a Project Managers perspective, it is relevant to be able to understand the difference between two contexts. Personal and business context.

Personal context

Coaching in a personal context, the goals, and needs of the person being coached are seen as the highest objective for the coaching.

Business context

Coaching in a business context, a company's competitive advantage or a project's progression is seen as the highest objective for the coaching.

In figure 3 shows three important differences in focus and prerequisites between coaching in a personal context and a business cóntext.

Figure 3 Differences in focus and prerequisites for a coaching in a personal and a business context.

In terms of providing a picture of the common understanding of coaching it is relevant shortly to clarify that the person-centered approach to coaching is highly linked to Tim Gallway [1] who in the 1970s had great success with empower-coaching in sports as e.g. tennis. Tim Gallway and John Whitmore[2], were the ones who in the 1970s introduced coaching to organizations which means bringing the empower-coaching from a personal context into a business context.

Furthermore, it is relevant to shortly introduce the term, Life Coaching since it is widely used to assist a person in examining and evaluating their life in order to make life-enhancing changes. This way it represents empower-coaching applied in a personal context. Life Coaching emerged in the 1980's and has gained massive ground since.

Application

In practice, a coaching between a Project Manager and a team member is called workplace coaching and can be described as

"a dialog between a Project Manager who has the responsibility of achieving project objectives and a team member, in which the Project Manager uses a wide variety of cognitive and behavioral techniques to enhance a coaching dialog with the team member in order to help the team member achieve a mutually defined set of goals or an adjusted mindset or motivation, with the aim of improving his or her work performance and, consequently, the effectiveness and performance of the project team"

As it can be seen, the term workplace coaching embraces empower-coaching as well as skill-coaching in a clearly defined business context.

Workplace coaching can be applied either formally or informally. If informally applied, then the coaching is more likely to be short, focused dialogs applied at any time during a workday. Also called 'corridor-coaching'. In contrast, formal coaching typically involves formal sit-down coaching sessions where the Project Manager will be conducting the conversation, assisted by a formal structure.

An important limitation regarding the application of empower-coaching in a business context is illuminated in the Limitations paragraph.

Limitations of coaching

Workplace coaching has its limitations, and it is worth noticing that PMBOK does not at any point incite a Project Manager to acquire certain techniques, knowledge or experience within the field of coaching before applying it. This can be risky business due to especially one pitfall:

Due to the fact that coaching is a commonly used term covering empower-coaching and skill-coaching applied in two very 
different contexts with directly opposite prerequisites and focus, it is likely to assume that the exact understanding 
of what a coaching is will differ from one person to another. 

With this perspective, applying an empower-coaching in a business context will represent a risk of worsening a situation 
since the Project Manager and the team member might not be aligned in terms of focus and prerequisites for the coaching.  

A consequence of this is that either the team member's underlying beliefs about essential prerequisites for a empower- 
coaching will be compromised resulting in mistrust and a worsening of a situation or the Project Manager will omit his 
obligations regarding project management since he will be not be coaching with the project's progression as the highest objective.

If for instance, a Project Manager chooses to perform an empower-coaching, it is possible that the Project Manager and the team member will have two different understandings of e.g. confidentiality. If not clearly framed upfront the team member will probably expect that whatever said in the coaching is confidential and that the Project Manager is neutral and equal in regards to power. Contrary, the Project Manager will be aware of his responsibility to ensure a project's progression why he will take any information that compromises a project's progression into consideration and implement corrective actions.

An empower-coaching in a business context is nevertheless a recommendable corrective action for a Project Manager if a team member is low on motivation or has a wrong attitude towards a projects new objectives. A suggestion on how to apply empower-coaching in a business context, inspired by the work of a Change Agent, is given in the Recommendation paragraph.

Country, culture or hazard

Other limiting circumstances that complicate application of coaching is high power distance, command and control paradigm and a hazardous situation.

• In countries with high power distance a coaching approach can be non-applicable since the coaching attitude implies and certain employee autonomy.
• In a company or department corresponding with 'command and control' paradigm coaching can tend to be less successful since coaching is a natural part of the 'interactive learning' paradigm and thus requires a less hierarchical structure, more a fare more value-based motivation than the command and control paradigm supports.
• In situations where a change causes a hazard and an immediate corrective action is needed, coaching will not be applicable since coaching is based on dialog it tends to be

Recommendations

Recommendations are given in perspective of a Program Manager who is challenged by a decrease in team performance as a result of a change in the project, and who wants to apply coaching to get the team member 'back on track'. The Project Manager is aware of that it primarily is a matter of mindset and attitude, secondary a matter of skills, why he chooses to apply empower-coaching.

Get a basic coaching knowledge

Given the pitfall described in the Limitation paragraph, a recommendation will be to get fundamental knowledge about coaching and coaching techniques in a business context, before applying it. Find recommended books in the Annotated Bibliography paragraph [Ledelsesbaseret coaching]

When knowing basic coaching techniques the Project Manager should start practicing e.g. by applying an informal coaching dialog on a daily basis. This will help a Project Manager to detect and immediately respond to minor setbacks in a team members mindset or attitude.

When a need for more formal coaching is detected, it is important that the Project Manager frames a coaching session upfront, by telling that the coaching will be applied with the project's progression as highest objective - e.g. by highlighting the three prerequisites in figure 2.

A next step for the Project Manager will be to get a deeper understanding of how mindset and attitude can be limiting a team member's performance. A way to approach this is to look into Change Management and the role of a Change Agents. Facilitating change is in this perspective another word for applying empower-coaching. Both aims to move a persons mindset and attitude from a current stage X towards a future desired stage Y. In our case stage X could be 'Team member is low performing and lacks motivation due a change that has induced fear" and stage Y could be "Team member is empowered and high performing".

Be a Change Agent

When the Project Manager gets an understanding of the way people typically react to changes and how a Change Agent can facilitate a change, he can apply the Change Agent mindset and start applying empower-coaching. As seen in figure 3 Change Agent skills are very similar to the interpersonal skills a Project Manager is recommended to possess. This argues for the possibility

Figure 3 Shows a similarity between skills recommended for a Project Manager (blue) and a Change Agent (green)

.that a Project Manager is likely to act as a Change Agent in terms of facilitating a change.

Looking into the fact that a Project Manager will be comparable to an internal Change Agent, it is relevant to ensure that the arguements for applying an internal Change Agent are met. In accordance with Hayes the main arguments for choosing an internal Change Agent is as follows:

• the person responsible for managing the unit or subsystem that is to be the (initial) target for change is committed to acting as change agent
• It is agreed that a particular insider has the time, knowledge and commitment to manage the change more effectively than an outsider
• the system does not have the resources to employ an outsider
• issues of confidentiality and trust prohibit the use of an outsider
• it proved impossible to identify a suitable outside consultant.

The two first bullets are actually showing why a Project Manager easily can be seen as a Change Agent. And further, none of the arguments are compromising the Project Managers role and responsibility < ref name="PRINCE2" /> in regards to project management.

In terms of facilitating change or in other words, applying empower-coaching, a Project Manager can be inspired by the intervening modes that a Change Agent uses.

Apply different intervening modes to support empower-coaching

Four different modes of intervening, all with a collaborative approach, is seen applicable for a Project Manager when applying empower-coaching. An important argument for recommending these modes of intervening is the fact that they can assist a Project Manager in helping a team member to empower, simply by replacing a team member's focus on being demotivated and low performing with an opportunity to see the situation from another perspective.

Shortly described the four modes of intervening helps a team member to empower simply by being.

• challenged in regards of an undocumented belief, known as the challenging mode
• helped by a theorizing cause-effect approach, known as the theorizing mode
• encouraged to collect data that illuminate a point of concern, known as the information-gathering mode
• allowed to express feelings and emotion, known as the supportive mode

The latter is thought to be used only with great attention to the pitfall since this intervening mode directly addresses emotions and feelings which would be expected to be handled in a personal context with confidentiality rather than in a business context.

Apply empower-coaching before skill coaching

With a change in a project's objective, it is unlikely that a change in mindset and attitude can stand alone. Often new skills or knowledge is needed in order to comply with new requirements. This argues for applying skill-coaching as well. In a situation where a corrective action will be to develop or enhance a team members skills and knowledge in addition to increase motivation, it is recommended that skill-coaching will be applied next to empower-coaching. This will increase the outcome of the skill-coaching due a more open mindset of an empowered team member [REF]

Give advise in case of high power distance and Command and control paradigm

Change Management theory also present a fifth way to intervene with team members in a situation of change. This approach is prescriptive, as opposed to the other four approaches which are collaborative. Given its nature, an advising mode of intervening is not to be seen as a recommendable approach in regards to empower-coaching. It is mentioned here as it is important for Project Managers, who might prefer a coaching attitude towards team members, to be aware of the need for clear leadership in situations where circumstances conflicts with collaborative intervening such as high power distance and command and controle paradigm does.

Other ways to prevent or handle decrease in team performance

Team-coaching

(Include examples from the PMBOK - Coaching in regards to changing mindset isn’t explicitly mentioned. PMBOK talks about turning a ‘can’t do’-situation into a ‘can do’-situation – not about changing a ‘can’t do’-mindset into a ‘can do’-mindset. PMBOK focuses on coaching the individual, not team coaching. Team-building is mentioned, but there is a big difference between team coaching and team-building even though team cohesiveness and performance may be positively affected by both [TEMO book: balance divergence-cohesiveness for high performance, Factors important for cohesiveness]. PMBOK in some way mentions the benefit from team coaching and/or team-building: ‘as a team develop their skills, abilities, and confidence, their willingness to take a challenging or demanding task in increased’ but if skills can be seen as 1+1+1, ability and confidence is highly influenced by common understanding and team spirit [TEMO book].)

(Elaborate a little on this - since given in TA-feedback) (1) High-Performance Teams, (2) Project governance, (3) Self-managed work teams, (4) Teams motivation.

Conclusion

(Ensure that conclusion is only based on things that is written earlier in this wiki)

Project Manager can preferably apply a coaching approach in the day-to-day dialog with team members, teams, and stakeholders to help them to a new level of understanding that can clarify their thinking about a problem. The Project Manager can beneficially use one or more of three problem-centered, collaborative intervening modes , typically uses by change agents, in his/her dialog with team members and stakeholders.

Annotated bibliography

Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management, 521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-014-0173-7.2

Peterson, David B. (1996). Executive Coaching at work: The art of one-on-one change. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research — 1996, Volume 48 (2), pp. 78-86 Abstract Outlines the 5 research-based strategies that guide one-on-one coaching by a management consulting firm: forge a partnership, inspire commitment, grow skills, promote persistence, and shape the environment.

Kilburg, R. R. (1996). Toward a conceptual understanding and definition of executive coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal, 48(2), pp. 134-144. A review of the literature on coaching reveals that very little empirical research has focused on the executive coaching methods used by consultants with managers and leaders in organizations. Within the framework of a 17-dimensional model of systems and psychodynamic theory, the author provides an overview of a conceptual approach to coaching activities that incorporates 5 identifiable components plus an emphasis on goal setting, intervention methods, and hypothesized factors in negative consulting outcomes.

References

(Must fix: the same reference is shown multiple times)