Developing Internal Coaches and Mentors
Peter Senge and others have persuaded thousands of companies to become "learning organizations"—companies that constantly measure feedback and learn from that process.
To enhance corporate learning, many are now developing their own internal coaching and mentoring programs. Executives, managers, and frontline supervisors are being encouraged to lead through coaching and mentoring.
Good leaders, however — even great ones — are not necessarily great coaches. Most of them must master the art. They face a number of challenges in making that transition:
- As successful executives and managers, they have built their identity around solving problems and providing answers. Now, as coaches and mentors, their job is to ask probing questions, not offer brilliant solutions.
- Accustomed to being in a "directing" role, they must now accommodate themselves to a facilitating role. They are guiding others through a process of self-discovery.
- Having been bottom-line oriented, they must now become "holistically" oriented in order to be effective as coaches and mentors.
- Trained to monitor organizational behavior, they must now become expert in personal psychology, the "inner workings" of the people they coach and mentor.
This sounds like a tall order for people who still have a business to run or a division to manage. They need coaching in how to be a better coach.
Dr. Mike Armour is an ideal coach's coach. As a crisis counselor for many years, he truly knows "how people tick." He is also a credentialed trainer in business applications of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), one of the most effective tools for internalizing new skills and capabilities.
Moreover, Mike excels at teaching people how to build effective rapport and to maintain the trust of those they coach. And equally important, he is an experienced specialist in ethics, with the insights to help coaches and mentors work through difficult ethical issues that often arise in their work.
If your company does not have an internal coaching or mentoring program, Mike Armour and his colleagues can help you establish one. Mike and his SLDI associations will help your organization