Applied Articles on Facilitating the Work of Others

Armentrout, B. W. (June 1995). "Make Coaching Your Management Metaphor (119KB)." HR Focus, v72n6, p. 3.

General information about six aspects of coaching: challenge, expectations/accountability, caring, employee development, manager development, and work planning.

Ball, A. (November 1993). "Coping with Dysfunctional Work Teams (118KB)." HR Magazine, v38n11, pp. 131-132.

Tips on improving or creating team effectiveness: establishing group rules, monitoring group behavior, and rewarding positive behavior. Dysfunctional work groups need clear rules and an understanding of consequences because they are populated with people who have no personal boundaries. They are more than willing to step on others and be stepped on. Often there can be out-and-out attempts at sabotage if there is a previously existing agenda or relationship that is threatened by the mission of the team. It should be remembered that all groups go through a period of heightened antagonism and friction before they move to a more productive stage. Leaders should constantly reward positive behaviors. These good behaviors often tend to clear the path for incremental process improvement gems. One should be sure to celebrate the team when they do the right things as a group.

Grove, Andrew S. (January 23, 1984). "Why Training is the Boss's Job." Fortune, pp.93-96.

A manager's output is the same as the organization's, and a manager's productivity depends upon getting more from subordinates' performances. Because of the manager's influence over productivity, training should be the manager's responsibility. Training and motivation can improve subordinates' performance, yet what is taught must be tied to actual work and must be continuous. Managers should be responsible for training because they are the only suitable role models available. At Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, California), 2%-4% of employees' time is spent in the classroom. To begin training employees, managers should develop: 1. a list of areas in which workers need training, and 2. a list of resources available to help in training. Managers should start small, set schedules for courses, and write up course outlines. Anonymous critiques after the first course, with ratings and open-ended questions, can help supervisors determine areas that need improvement. Although training is hard work, it is rewarding to both trainees and trainers.

Knippen, J. and Green, T. (May 1990). "Coaching (330KB)." Management Accounting, v71n11, pp. 36-38.

The most important function of the manager's job is ensuring effective performance by subordinates. Coaching is one of the most effective ways to accomplish this. In the managerial sense, coaching is a form of on-the-job training in which the manager works directly with an employee to teach or improve job-related skills. The need for coaching arises when expected job performance is not consistent with the actual performance and when the organization has a situation that clearly speaks to inefficiency of operation. The 6 steps of coaching are: 1. creating a need to know in the employee, 2. stating the specific learning goals, 3. telling the employee how to perform the skill, 4. showing the employee how to perform the skill, 5. having the employee practice the skill, and 6. providing the employee with feedback on the performance of the skill. 

Morris, B. (Feb 21, 2000). "So you're a player. Do you need a coach?" Fortune,  pg. 144-154.

Corporate coaching is one of the stranger wrinkles management these days - one of the hottest things in human resources, except that is does not usually come out of human resources. It is a grassroots movement that is spreading in some of the unlikeliest corners of Corporate America, including IBM, AT&T, and Kodak. Coaches are everywhere these days. Companies hire them to shore up executives or, in some cases, to ship them out. Division heads hire them as change agents. It is not that executive coaching is particularly new. Chief executives and those approaching the top have long sought counsel from personal consultants, wise board members, or industrial psychologists. But in the past 5 years coaching has gone mass-market. In the age of Every man for Himself, every man can have a coach - and, in an ever more commonly held view, needs one. 

Russo, F. (September 25, 2000). "Play of the Day: Fostering Employee Loyalty in a Tight Labor Market, Companies Are Offering Workers Personal Coaches as a Tool to Help Them Thrive." Time, pp. B27-B28.

Eastman Kodak is one of many corporations using coaching management to offer personal guidance to managers and to train managers to coach their own people in turn.  At a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, coaching is being used to shape employee behavior, making employees more valuable.  The main reason given for the trend is the booming economy, which makes good staff harder to get and harder to keep.  Founded in 1992, Coach U is a university that trains coaches by teleconference to help people set priorities and solve problems.  Coach U is by far the largest coach-training institute, even with the growing number of similar training programs.  Although coaches use a wide variety of coaching techniques, many of the program participants reported positive results: practical solutions to problems, increased job satisfaction, even advancement.  Corporations believe that coaching helps keep employees and that the dollar investment in coaching is far less than the cost of replacing an employee.

Schermerhorn, Jr., J. R., Gardner, W. L., & Martin, T. N. (Spring 1990). "Management Dialogues: Turning on the Marginal Performer." Organizational Dynamics, pp. 47-59.

Managers can turn around many marginal performers by employing a management framework based on the individual performance equation: Performance equals ability times support times effort. Basic to this equation is the principle that high levels of work performance result from a combination of: 1. a person's job-related abilities, 2. various forms of organizational support, and 3. individual work efforts. The following managerial strategy is suggested for turning around a marginal performer: 1. bringing the performance gap to the marginal performer's attention, 2. asking in a non-threatening way for an explanation, 3. describing the implications of the marginal performer's substandard work, 4. restating the original and still-desirable performance goals, 5. offering the external support needed for improvement, 6. agreeing on a suitable time frame for jointly assessing future performance, and 7. continuing the process until it succeeds or results in a job change.

Waldroop, J. & Butler, T. (2000).  "Managing Away Bad Habits." Harvard Business Review, Sept.-Oct., pp. 89-97.

In this article, the root causes of psychological flaws are examined, and concrete tactics are suggested which have been used to help people recognize and correct 6 specific behavior patterns.  The behaviors addressed are: 1. The hero 2. The meritocrat 3. The bulldozer 4. The pessimist 5. The rebel and 6. The home run hitter.

Waldroop, J. & Butler, T. (1996).  "The Executive as Coach."  Harvard Business Review, Nov.-Dec., pp. 111-117.

It has been found that coaching - helping change the behaviors that threaten to derail valued managers - is often the best way to help that manager succeed.  Good coaching is simply good management.  It requires many of the same skills, such as keen powers of observation, sensible judgment, and an ability to take appropriate actions.  Similarly, the goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization's valuable resources.  The key to coaching is to be imaginative and to look for a variety of solutions.  Behavioral change requires understanding one's effect on other people - a process that can be painful.  Effective coaches know the questions to ask in evaluation a situation.  An effective coach also draws on a wide variety of coaching techniques to help a manager change problem behaviors.  Coaching must reflect the complexity and difficulty of genuine efforts to change behavior.

Books on Facilitating the Work of Others

Bens, Ingrid 2000. Facilitating With Ease! A Step-By-Step Guidebook with Customizable Worksheets on CD-ROM. Jossey-Bass Publishers (204 pages).

The Association of Quality & Participation says,  "This easy-to-read, totally comprehensive resource covers the art of facilitation from A to Z. Over 200 pages of background tools, tips, techniques, strategies, surveys, checklists, sample designs, and much more are included."

Bens, Ingrid 1999. Facilitation at a Glance Pocket Guide. Participative Dynamics (174 pages).

The Association of Quality & Participation says, "Don't go to a meeting without this comprehensive guide in your pocket. All the tools, techniques and checklists you need to help you run more effective meetings. Includes tips on how to gain buy-in, make decisions and manage group process. Also includes guidelines for using the 14 most practical facilitator tools" 

Providing specific information about performance is key to developing the people who report to you. This guidebook tells you how to give your subordinates effective feedback so they can work more effectively, develop new skills, and grow professionally.

Caproni, P. J. 2000. The Practical Coach: Management Skills for Everyday Life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall (600 pages).

This up-to-date book encourages managers to become critical thinkers in their everyday managerial activities. The Practical Coach is written by a broader group of researchers than most other skills books. Presents new work environment issues, a relationship-centered rather than individual-centered role, critical perspectives, and up-to-date research and examples. Ideal for readers interested in skills development.

HD30.4.D675 2002

Downs, Alan (2002). Secrets of an Executive Coach:  Proven Methods for Helping Leaders Excel Under Pressure. New York: AMACOM (224 pages).

It's not just faulty products and poor fiscal results that can throw an executive into crisis. The more prevalent and pernicious problems are personal in nature. A manipulative or hierarchical boss may be suffering a crisis of confidence; a stressed-out or uninterested colleague may struggle with a crisis of passion.

According to experienced psychologist and executive coach Alan Downs, these often dormant interior conflicts flare up when the crushing demands of the business world collide with the inner needs of the individual. His new book offers a fresh, eye-opening perspective on how to steer executives back to a successful career path.

Secrets of an Executive Coach uncovers six crises that cause people to fail. And unlike the prevailing corporate model, which advocates suppressing crises, Downs explains how to confront and resolve them using 11 essential coaching techniques, including role playing, self-imitation, metaphor map, and devil's advocate. These classic methods gain new relevance in this breakthrough approach that puts crisis management at the heart of effective.

Greenleaf, Robert K., Frick (Editor), Don. M., & Spears (Editor), Larry C. 1996. On Becoming a Servant Leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (394 pages). 

Delve into the personal writings of the grandfather of the modern empowerment in business leadership.  In this collection of previously unpublished works, writer, consultant, and lecturer Robert Greenleaf shares his personal and professional philosophy, which postulates that true leaders are those who lead by serving others.  Spanning a time frame of fifty years, these essays and lectures touch on such key issues as power, ethics, management, organizations, and servanthood.  And they offer the reader a wealth of practical suggestions and useful information garnered through the course of a remarkable career.

Greenleaf, Robert K., Spears (Editor), Larry C., & Vaill, Peter B. 1998. The Power of Servant Leadership : Essays. Berrett-Koehler Publisher (378 pages).

The Power of Servant-Leadership is a collection of eight of Robert K. Greenleaf’s most compelling essays on servant-leadership. He coined the term, servant-leadership, almost thirty years ago. Servant-leadership emphasizes leadership that puts serving others, including employees, customers and community, first. These essays contain many of Greenleaf’s best insights into the nature and practice of servant-leadership and show his continual refinement of the servant-as-leader concept. In addition, several of the essays focus on the related issues of spirit, commitment to vision, and wholeness.

Greenleaf, Robert K.1983. Servant Leadership : A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. New York: Paulist Press, (338 pages).

From Booklist
When he retired in 1964, Greenleaf was director of management research at AT & T, where he spent most of his career working in organizational research and development and in management education. He felt that the role of the organizational leader was fulfilled by serving employees, customers, and community. Similar ideas are popularly expressed today by writers who continue to credit Greenleaf, such as Peter Block, author of Stewardship (1993).

Hargrove, Robert 1999. Masterful Coaching Fieldbook:  Grow Your Business, Multiply Your Profits, Win The Talent War!  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (347 pages). 

This companion to the 1995 book Masterful Coaching emphasizes application over theory. Three sections detail the development of coaching mindset, a five-step coaching model, and a series of interviews that explore the use of coaching in he achievement of various objectives. Plenty of exercises and activities accent the text.

HD66. H37 1995

Hargrove, Robert  1995. Masterful Coaching : Extraordinary Results by Impacting People and the Way They Think and Work Together. Pfeiffer & Co (320 pages).

Written as an interactive dialogue with the reader, Masterful Coaching emphasizes core coaching skills--sponsoring, counseling, acknowledging, teaching and confronting. Provides examples of coaching for breakthrough results from leading companies.

The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business introduces an easy-to-implement developmental coaching model based on the authors' extensive work with thousands of managers, executives, and MBA students. The goal is for managers to help employees learn and be more productive on a day-to-day basis. This model encourages employees to take greater responsibility for their learning and development while forging a helping relationship between manager and employee. Such an approach to management will lighten the emphasis on evaluation and create learning opportunities for all involved.

The book includes twenty real-world cases, self-assessment tools, and action checklists to deepen skills and understanding. The Coaching Manager will benefit managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs in business and not-for-profit organizations; those in MBA programs; students in leadership, organizational development, and human resource management; as well as participants in executive training programs.

Comprehensive in scope, yet extremely practical and to the point, The Fieldbook is perfect for both novice and experienced facilitators. Those new to the art of facilitation will find clear guidance on basic how-to information. More experienced facilitators will discover advanced methods for use in more challenging facilitation situations and simple models for facilitating both large and small groups.

Best of all, The Facilitator's Fieldbook contains a wealth of resources such as checklists, samples, templates, guidelines, and step-by-step procedures. It will enable you to perform all the skills of facilitation, including: * establishing ground rules for groups * planning meetings and agendas * building the group database * brainstorming * decision making * conflict resolution, and more.

Formal feedback experiences and career transitions both involve acquiring new skills and honing current ones. Critical to this is measuring progress. This guidebook provides a proven technique on how to get and use the feedback that will help. Tips on how to evaluate the feedback and what to do if the decision is made not to use it are also provided.

In The Empowered Leader, Dr. Miller explores leadership as revealed in the life of King David, the leader who often called himself the servant of God.

HD66.R3918 1999

Ray, R. G. 1999. The Facilitative Leader: Behaviors That Enable Success. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall (173 pages).

Providing future organizational leaders with the tools and know-how they'll need to continually improve their skills and help other employees become more successful, this proactive text gleans insight from the author's 25 years of experience as a production worker, first line supervisor, plant and corporate trainer, and external consultant, exploring the behaviors of the facilitative leader and linking them with the five facilitative leader modes - enabler of change; respectful communicator; developer of people and teams, master of problem-solving skills, and manager of conflict.

Peterson, David B., & Hicks, Mary Dee. 1996. Leader As Coach : Strategies for Coaching & Developing Others. Personnel Decisions International.

Leader As Coach is the second in a series of books dealing with practical approaches to individual and team development. Its five coaching strategies enable leaders to partner with others to accelerate learning and development in a busy, demanding world. 

Schwarz, R. 2002. The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches (Rev. Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (432 pages).

When it was published in 1994, Roger Schwarz's The Skilled Facilitator earned widespread critical acclaim and became a landmark in the field. The book is a classic work for consultants, facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, and coaches--anyone whose role is to guide groups toward realizing their creative and problem-solving potential. This thoroughly revised edition provides the essential materials for facilitators and includes simple but effective ground rules for group interaction. Filled with illustrative examples, the book contains proven techniques for starting meetings on the right foot and ending them positively and decisively. This important resource also offers practical methods for handling emotions when they arise in a group and offers a diagnostic approach for identifying and solving problems that can undermine the group process.

HF/5381.S515 2002

Richard Sharf goes beyond simply presenting theory to show the reader how to apply the principles in a counseling setting, making this book useful for both practicing counselors and counselors-in-training. Sharf covers three major theoretical areas (trait and type, life-span, and special-focus theories) in Parts I-III, then discusses theoretical integration in Part IV, with each theory providing a unique perspective on career development. The book also offers numerous case examples, discusses career testing from a practical and theoretical perspective, and integrates labor-market information with career theory. In addition, this book has been praised for having a clear writing style, useful case examples, and material included throughout on diversity.

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Spears, Larry C. 1995. Reflections on Leadership : How Robert K. Greenleaf's Theory of Servant-Leadership Influenced Today's Top Management Thinkers. John Wiley & Sons (368 pages).

Robert K. Greenleaf's ideas are the watershed for today's empowerment movement in business leadership, and his thinking has inspired a cross section of America's foremost management gurus. Offers a fresh look at Greenleaf's revolutionary concept of servant leadership. Contains his most important essays as well as writings by his prominent business and intellectual disciples including M. Scott Peck and Peter Senge.

HF/5549.5T7/T53 2001

Personal coaching, where trainers work on a one-to-one basis with employees to develop skills, is a growing trend in many organizations. Kaye Thorne applies her accessible style and practical approach to the latest training technique. Developed from skills used by trainers to train senior managers and executives - where one-to-one coaching is often the norm - the author shows how the same techniques can transform the effectiveness of staff development at all levels. An ideal tool to assist the current training trend for individual, tailored self development, the correct use of personal coaching will help organizations to achieve their developmental goals while helping staff in the pursuit of personal development. Packed with practical advice, case studies and providing a structured route to successful implementation in organizations of all sizes, this book provides the essential handbook for the training of the future.

Weaver, Richard G. & Farrell, John D. 1999. Managers As Facilitators : A Practical Guide to Getting Work Done in a Changing Workplace. Berrett-Koehler Publisher (260 pages). 

The Association of Quality & Participation says, "This practical guide presents a new, easy to-understand model of facilitation. It provides practical guidance for managers and leaders in this new role. It shows managers how to capitalize on group dynamics, and build effective work processes. The book's final chapter synthesizes all the material by presenting 'Quick Fixes to common problems.' "

Providing feedback to others about their performance is a key developmental experience. But not all feedback is effective in making the best use of that experience. This guidebook demonstrates the foundation for effective feedback practice, walking the reader through, step by step and in detail, the feedback method used at CCL. For anyone who wants to get better at giving feedback to anyone, whether they be a peer, direct report, or boss, this guidebook demonstrates how to create an effective message with real impact.

Offers beginners an introduction to coaching, with a step-by-step blueprint of successful coaching methods, models and tools. Includes insights on how to permanently enhance personal and organizational effectiveness, performance, and growth in the workplace.

In their first book, The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work authors Zeus and Skiffington focused on explaining the nature of coaching, the competencies for coaches and business applications. Following on from the success of that book, Coaching at Work Toolkit is a complementary handbook of tips to use when employing the coaching model of learning and change. This book is about processes and practices and details actual coaching techniques that can be that can be applied to various coaching interventions. It also examines the changing nature and evolution of coaching, such as the increasing importance of specialization To date, most available coaching books detail the standard practice of goal setting and actioning and some coach interventions but they do not offer too many actual techniques that facilitate the desired change. These techniques are invaluable to coaches in both life skills and business although the emphasis is on business coaching. Coaching at Work Toolkit includes the most recent models and techniques from psychology, facilitation and education that have been successfully adapted to coaching. Techniques are outlined and discussed, and then presented alongside case studies and exercises.