Coaching or Training for Executive and Management development? Richard Casey

HR managers and professionals in all organisations suffer from the same challenge on a regular basis. They have been charged with increasing the productivity of the company’s employees but they only have a tight budget in which to do it!   The conflict between helping the organisation to achieve it Goals and having to do so within a budget often leads to comprimises being made.  One of this comprimises is choosing training over Coaching.  The folowing will outline the advantages and disadvantages of both Coaching and Training and put forward an arguement where Coaching is a better solution to training.  

The advantages of Coaching and Training

Lets be fair, both Training and Coaching both have advantages. Training has the advantages of

1. Getting the same message to a lot of employees quickly
2. One trainer/training organisation can deliver to a significant amount of employees
3. The training only takes the employees away from work for a short period of time.

While Coaching has the advantages of 

1. The coach can give their full attention to the client
2. The issue being addressed is important to the client
3. Coaching is a targeted intervention as the issue being addressed has been highlighted by the organisation

So there are arguements for an against for choosing training or coaching.  In my experience there are scenarions when Training is not an option and Coaching is the only way to a solution.

When Coaching not Training is required. 

When the issue is only with a small sample of employees

Lets start with a typical scenario in any organisation. A 360 analysis has been completed and a department (Department A) is found to have scored the lowest in Communications.  On review of the data it is decided that department A should go through Communications training.   This is acceptable as that is what the data is saying, But is it?   What I beleiev the data is actually saying that there are three potential issues

1. Everyone in the department is bad at communicating 
2. Some people are really bad while others are good
3. The communications systems in Department A are broken

Of the three options outlined above only issue number one would indicate that training is required (assuming that the systems are in place) and the solution may be to focus on training people to use the systems.  

The other two issues indicate that there are spefic individuals that require upskilling or that there are systems that are broken.  Why would you make all employees go through training to adress the needs of a few?  

The potential outcomes of this include demoralised employees (Why do I have to do this training?) and a lack of attention for those who actually need it.  It's hard to pay attention to those who need the upskilling when there are a large number of people in the room!  This is when Coaching not Training is required.  You need to understand why some people who work in the same department using the same syatems as everyone else are not good a communication!

How do people Learn?   

Research completed by Morgan McCall, Robert W. Eichinger, and Michael M. Lombardo at the Center for Creative Leadership shows that for real learning to take place the 70/20/10 system should be followed

• 70% of learning should be from real life and on–the–job experiences, tasks and problem solving. This is the most important aspect of any learning and development plan.
• 20% of learning should be from feedback and from observing and working with role models.
• 10% of learning should be developed via formal training.

If you take the breakdown from this study one should ask why most corporations spend the majority of their learning and development budgets on training when only 10% of the overall development of employees is enhanced by it?

The solution here is to develop the practice of coaching in your organisation.  If 70% of learning comes from on the job experiences, make sure that you have managers that can coach people.  Coaching helps people to figure out their own solution so if 70% of learning can be achieved by OJT make sure that the people in your workplace have good coaching skills.

The same argument is in place for the 20% learned from feedback and role models.   If your model is to tell your employees how to do things then you will breed a workplace full of employees who become dependant on being told what to do and will look to role models to tell them the answers.   If you embrace a coaching culture then this 20% of learning can be elicited from the employee themselves.   Remember the saying...Give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach him to fish and he'll eat forever!

What if your employees are already trained?

This is a great question to ask before deciding on a training or coaching program.  If your employees have already gone through training or if they have been on the job for a number of years, why do they need additional training? 

An adult in the workplace will already know how to function as an adult and they will typically know when they are doing things right or wrong.   If they are doing things wrong then the question should be ‘What is driving that underlying behaviour and can we improve upon it?’  Putting that person through a training course will not be the answer as this will only highlight to them what they are doing wrong, it will not address the underlying behaviour. 

This is where a Coach will prove invaluable.  A Coach will help the employee to understand the underlying behaviours that are impacting their performance and aid them in resolving these issues.

So now do you choose Coaching or Training?

Training certainly has its place but training should focus on helping people to understand how systems and procedures work.  To further embed the learning’s, to help people address and remove blockages and to help people develop further Coaching will be the stronger process to use.