Coaching processes The new approach to work productivity. To think about the productivity of work, especially in non-manual work, although it does not exclude it, is to think about the magnificent tool that we humans have to generate available potential when it comes to our work in the world. Man is a being of language and is inhabited by him, his humanity is chained to language, and this in turn frees him, thanks to him he can appropriate the leading role necessary for the design of his own life and bear the consequences of your decisions. Language builds internal conversations, and with our peers.
Conversation is understood to mean every word in action. In Taylor's way that unbundled the physical skill in movements and times, it is possible to say, of Echeverría, unbundling the transforming power of the word in a specific and concrete set of conversational competences. Mastering these skills is the strategic point to positively intervene in the productivity of non-manual work.
Mastering the difficult art of conversation, makes us open doors and possibilities permanently, makes us communicate with others efficiently, the word produces an encounter and sometimes that encounter takes the magic form that we find in narration and poetry, we find ourselves then, dialoguing with the author in a conversation that denies time.
In a conversation, we find three important components: language itself, emotionality, and corporality. These three elements are linked because they must correspond if we want our conversations to have communicational quality.
If we affirm with the words something that our emotionality and corporality deny, we will only obtain the disbelief of the other and the subsequent mistrust that begins to damage the bond manifesting itself, in the poor performance of the tasks.
In work teams, the quality of the conversations is directly proportional to the quality of the results.
Both listening and speaking are essential for a manager as well as for an employee. The manager who is able to take time to listen to one of his employees, be it in the difficulty of a task, or in a personal problem, which even has nothing to do with daily work, will manage to start building true leadership because nothing makes people respond more than being taken into account as subjects. That is, the other is capable of seeing it in its humanity and accepting it. At the same time, a team, in which its members can listen to each other, build a system of unbeatable performance, since listening directly affects processes and satisfactory results, transforming the emotionality of the group. A good emotionality, translated into enthusiasm, in cooperation, in the interest of building community,it is indissoluble of sharing mission, vision, and the necessary strategic alignment, to make things happen in tune with the objectives set.
As for speaking, if it generates action as we conceive it, it is also necessary to learn the conversational tools that will lead us to handle conversations capable of opening worlds and not closing them.
Requests, claims, declarations, judgments, are acts of speech that require appropriate contextualization, to issue them properly.
Many times, we find ourselves saying things that we did not want to say, or we listen to ourselves speaking to the other in a way that is not adequate for us to understand, despite the fact that in our heads things were well located and we knew well what we wanted to communicate to them…
Impossible then to achieve the coordination of actions essential for the tasks, impossible then effective leadership, we began to move in the field of the not possible, of the stumbles, misunderstandings, defensive behaviors, everything seems to be oriented then to create rarefied climates, with adverse emotionalities, being the least conducive to productivity fear and mistrust.
Mistrust resents the bond with the other in such a way that it toughens it up, lacking flexibility, actions become routine and repetitive and are stripped of creativity. Mistrust puts the subject in a retreating position, his attention is focused on guessing where the other's attack may come from and the obsession of "what will he say to me" appears when he tells me what he tells me.
Extreme mistrust leads to fear, which is a crippling and destructive emotionality for tasks. When this happens, resounding failure arises and frustration replaces enthusiasm. The gray coloration is imposed in such a way and symptoms can appear that translate even into physical alterations such as permanent nervousness, physical illnesses that cause absenteeism… and the system begins to collapse, showing its disease openly.
Peter Sengue in his book "The Fifth Discipline" speaks of the vocation of service that should encourage a true leader, if this does not happen, he says, nothing could convey the importance of the task to his people, perhaps it would only remain in "things well done ”, but things must go further, they must seek the excellence that transcendence implies, I would be encouraged to say that optimal productivity goes hand in hand with the transcendence of work, the other function of the labor role.
Currently, there is a lot of talk about corporate social responsibility, it implies their contribution to the social environment, to the improvement of the society in which they arise, develop and grow.
In our country there are many companies that are committed to educational improvement, there are many programs that collaborate in different ways, because they have understood that without education there is no future for the country.
Just as they know that the main asset of a company is its people, they also understand that the future of the country is in the proper development of new generations, since if this does not happen, the country would be isolated from the international community… and therefore stalled in its development.
The power figure, in the previous conception of a company, was the foreman.
Let's say that the foreman exercised an authority rather oriented to the control of tasks and the productivity of the people in his charge.
The foreman was ultimately the one to assess their performance.
In my opinion, this brought a certain non-commitment to the task in that he did not feel ultimately responsible for it. If someone controlled it, it was that someone who should ultimately take responsibility, even if this had the effect of not optimizing the use of time by both parties and its consequent psychological resonance.
Currently, we find in some companies a certain displacement of the issue, the idea that it is the employee who knows how to do the task optimally, not their boss. This would actually have the function of facilitating your performance, in other words, it would be at your service.
Here, then, a different modality may appear, a form of behavior on the part of a boss who would intervene catalyzing work processes in such a way that would help resolve arrests, which employees alone could not achieve. A new system would then be created by incorporating an element capable of enhancing the coordination of actions, improving processes, streamlining procedures, etc. The system would improve in performance and the emotionality would improve remarkably if the employees manage to grasp the mission of this new boss, become a leader.
This new aspect of the boss has to do with the figure of the coach, a new incorporation in organizations. The word comes from the world of sports and was the one that favored the optimal performance of a team achieving unusual behaviors of the same with obtaining optimal results.
The concept of coaching is based on the fact that the capacity of an individual for learning is not continuous, there are discontinuities in the form of stumbling blocks, impossibilities, inhibitions, etc.
The coach would have the necessary tools to unlock these situations and re-establish the learning process.
The system will have found the required leverage point to restart its actions efficiently.
The domain of the competences of a coach is then that of the facilitator of the learning competences. Coaches Echeverría says simply promote learning experiences that individuals and teams cannot develop on their own.
Since learning interruptions are recurrent, occurring with repeated frequencies, it is necessary that the role of the coach is always present, alerting situations to unlock if we talk about productivity.
Trust, we could say that it is another of the coach's domains, which together with the ability that he must show in conversations is of utmost importance, decisive I would say, when exercising his functions, he is more a coach who does not inspire confidence in the another will fail in his task for better models that he has of intervention, for better technique that he dominates.
The coachee must experience the feeling of understanding and containment enough to find an open space where to trust and then be able to relate what happens to him… his impediments, his confusions, his breaks.
The impediments that occur in the learning process, many times act by decreasing self-confidence. It is one of the points to underpin a coach, given that if this is not recovered the energy of the individual will be consumed in patching it as best as possible and not in seeing what is the point where the ability to continue is eclipsed.
The coaching process, be it group or individual, has several steps to follow, but it is necessary to make sure as you go through that the coachee.
You feel immersed in the process that, as you progress, your confidence in the coach solidifies. Only if the process that guides the coach is credible, can you find usefulness in the matter and resort again when you need it.
The processes of change have in recent years (since the 70s) a huge importance in terms of the adaptability of organizations to it.
A company, an organization, an institution that is not capable of accepting and adapting to change, perishes. The stability of other times, the security of permanence through time has disappeared. Globalization, the advance of computing with the communicational revolution it has produced, the deployment of technology launched into an endless race, have precipitated change and continue to do so. So, the learning capacity must be maximized to be up to the circumstances, up to the times.
Changes cost, the tendency is to find a certain stability, a certain continuity in things, in tasks. In general, people tend to continuity and change is scary, because it refers to the unknown, to uncertainty, to the insecurity of what is to come…
And there is also the field of application of coaching processes, being able to understand the importance of adapting to change, of losing fear, of seeing it as a possibility of progress and openness and not of curtailment or danger, change in change, to be able to achieve that new, different state, that obtains individuals more apt for survival, To achieve that the mental model expands and produces different observers who do not fall from crisis to crisis, when they must turn the wheel and navigate change with solvency and emotionality enthusiastic.
Achieving this position through coaching processes in employees is helping them to be able to lead their own lives, that they can be protagonists of their destinies, that they can choose and decide freely despite the situations that one does not choose but invariably they appear in life.
The markets are changing, and the change is not perhaps the one that the companies would have chosen, but already in the new situation, see what can be done with it, at what point you can take advantage of the new to create a new market niche, a New business opportunity, in short, an innovation, is the terrain of stretching the mental model, of learning, of opening, of observer change, of maximum utility of the new discipline: organizational coaching.
Our mental models from which we create conversations with ourselves and with others are responsible for the observer that we are. If that observer remains unchanged, we will always see the same landscape, the change will happen the same and we will not understand why it failed. From this point of view, I see organizational coaching processes as essential, I consider that they are a very valuable tool in all organizations and not only in those that take the form of a company.
To conclude, I would like to explore the issue of values and their impact on the productivity of team work.
When a team shares the same values, there is a different synergy in the tasks than when these values are not the same.
Perhaps in the first formation of a work team, special care is needed in addressing this.
Having the same value system, makes the speed of understanding, in terms of learning coordination of actions and development of tasks.
A person who considers, for example, solidarity as an essential value, will contribute more quickly than another to the help of a colleague who has had a difficulty and cannot unlock it or finish it. The value system is not the same in all people and although certain values are essential to be able to work as a team, the order in which we have them prioritized, facilitates the productivity of a system.
That is why it would seem appropriate to me that the teams are formed in this way, not being one team superior to another, but more efficient in their production if they have an aptitude determined by a corresponding scale of values.
Perhaps the role of a coach may also have to do, with the selection of suitable people aptly for a certain job, perhaps it was an extension of their territory of action, since an experienced coach knows perfectly the dynamics of performance of the different human groups.
Surely the task of coaching can be extended to other areas since there is no area in an organization that does not require learning….
But in the new company, the company that emerges in the new times and in different countries, the role of coahing, as a catalyst for learning and change processes, can make a difference that defines the death or the survival and increasing development of organizations since ultimately it is a matter of transcendence, domain in which the coach has the knowledge, the know-how and applies it in his person, that's why he dominates it.
Bibliographic references:
- Rafael Echeverría - "The emerging company" "Ontology of language" Peter Sengue - "The fifth discipline"
