Coaching increases performance, productivity and job satisfaction at all levels.
The practice of coaching as a tool for work force and leadership development has gained popularity in recent years. In theory, coaching asks supervisors to spend more time giving constructive, individualized feedback on performance to subordinates, rather than barking orders and sending their troops to boot-camp training programs. Does this softer style of leadership produce hard results?Three researchers believe so. Ritu Agarwal and Corey M. Angst, professor of information systems and research assistant professor, respectively, at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, along with Massimo Magni, assistant professor of organization and MIS at Bocconi University, studied the sales force of a multinational manufacturer whose managers had undergone a two-day coaching workshop in 2003. They found that instilling a coaching culture in the sales organization paid dividends.Three months after the workshop, the researchers surveyed salespeople to find out if their sales managers spent more time coaching them — and whether that coaching produced results. Sure enough, those salespeople who reported more intense coaching from their sales managers also reported real performance improvements over the time period.T