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Coaching and Mentoring in Learning Organizations by Graham Guest

Introduction

The world is witnessing rapid changes in the way we work and learn. The effectiveness of traditional organizational structures is being questioned and new 'buzz-words' are entering our vocabulary. We talk about the global economy, the knowledge-society, and the networked company.

One approach to dealing with change is that of the learning organization, where learning holds the key to both economic prosperity for the organization and personal well-being for the individual. The traditional, and somewhat mechanistic, techniques of management and supervision are being supplemented with, and in many cases replaced by, a more holistic approach involving the processes of coaching and mentoring.

In this paper I describe the features and benefits of a learning organization and explore how coaching and mentoring form an integral part of the model.

Individual and Organizational Learning

There was a time when professionals would obtain an initial qualification linked with training and feel reasonably confident about entering the world of work and being able to keep up to date with changes in technology and business practices by attending the occasional course and reading appropriate journals. Their updating might have been referred to as continuing professional development (CPD) but it was, more often than not, regarded as an optional extra.

Prosperity, and even survival, in the modern world needs a different set of attitudes towards learning and development. CPD and the wider concept of lifelong learning are all-important in our increasingly networked world, where the growth of information and communications technologies (ICT) dissolves distances and the emergence of knowledge-economies puts the focus very much on individuals and their capacity to learn effectively.

There are many definitions of lifelong learning and each definition can depend upon the particular agenda or philosophy of the person giving it. Should the learning be vocationally oriented or directed towards personal fulfilment? Should it be pursued as a solitary or a community activity? Must it be directed towards obtaining recognized professional qualifications or can it be eclectic? My answer would be that it is all of these and more. It is learning from the cradle to the grave for both personal and professional enrichment, with the focus on the learner.

An individual undoubtedly has the capacity to learn, but can the same be said of an organization? The concept of the learning organization is not new, but there seems now to be a resurgence of interest, with many companies, universities, professional institutions and other bodies seeking to become learning organizations. In doing so not all of them are clear about what they are aiming to achieve; as with trying to find an agreed definition of lifelong learning, trying to define a learning organization also gives rise to many different answers.

The Learning Organization

We can begin with a simple definition and say that a learning organization is an organization that prioritizes learning. This means that each individual within the organization is invited to commit himself or herself to lifelong learning, whilst the same commitment is made by the organization itself. A proper understanding of this idea requires the application of systems thinking, because whilst in one sense the organization is the sum total of individuals, in another sense it is much more. As each individual learns so does the organization, and the organizational learning process in turn produces learning among the individuals.

The individual and the organization are thus linked in a very profound sense. This link is far removed from the idea of the 'company man' or 'company woman', where the individual makes a one-sided commitment. In a true learning organization personal values and vision become aligned with those of the organization in mutually beneficial and reinforcing ways. As an individual you bring your whole self to work and there ceases to be a barrier between who you are in the workplace and who you are at home.

There are fundamental differences in operation and philosophy between the traditional company and the learning organization. In the traditional company selected people are sent on courses to be taught by experts, the training department is responsible for the teaching, and the courses relate closely to the needs of the company. In the learning organization everyone learns from everyone else and responsibility for learning is shared by all. The learning is a continuous process and is fulfilling for both the company and the individual. The learning organization is essentially non-hierarchical and is characterized by co-operation, teamwork, creativity, empowerment and quality.

The concept of the learning organization is closely associated with Peter Senge, whose book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, is something of a standard text. Senge (1990) says that to practise a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. You never arrive; you spend your life mastering disciplines. A company can never say, 'We are a learning organization', any more than an individual can say, 'I am an enlightened person'. Senge has built on and developed many of the ideas of Chris Argyris. In Personality and Organization, Argyris (1957) argues that organizations depend fundamentally on people and that personal development is closely related to one's work.

Senge maintains that five new disciplines are gradually converging to bring about learning organizations, with each providing a vital dimension in building organizations that can continually enhance their capacity to realize their highest aspirations. These disciplines are

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions by which we make sense of the world. In a learning organization these models will always be challenged to discover whether they are the best representations of what is actually happening at any one time. Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening personal vision; it represents the learning organization's spiritual foundation.

Team learning starts with dialogue, which in turn involves learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction in teams. Building shared vision involves adopting shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment rather than merely compliance. Systems thinking, Senge's fifth discipline, sees beyond isolated events to deeper patterns and connections; whereas event thinking is linear, systems thinking is cyclical, relying on constant feedback.

To these five disciplines I would add the three complementary processes of

In this context benchmarking is the process of transferring learning from one organization to another.

Managing

Many businesses proclaim that their people are their greatest asset. This is an attractive idea, particularly to the assets themselves. Some of the businesses making this statement actually believe it. Of those that believe it some will try to put the philosophy into practice.

This statement sounds cynical, but it is true that if we observe businesses closely we see that manipulation and control are still the favoured tools of management. Kofman and Senge (1995) ask, 'Why do we confront learning opportunities with fear rather than wonder? Why do we create controlling bureaucracies when we attempt to form visionary enterprises?' They suggest that the main dysfunctions in our institutions - fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness - are actually by-products of our success over thousands of years in conquering the physical world and in developing our scientific, industrial culture.

What, from a modern-day business perspective, are indeed dysfunctions, in the past served humankind well in the battle for survival and in trying to understand the workings of the universe. To find out how something worked it was necessary to break it down into its component parts. It was then understood as being no more than the sum of those parts. It was not only inanimate objects that were understood as mechanisms, but also organizations and the human beings which they comprise. If something is wrong with a mechanism we try to find the part responsible and either fix it or replace it. This procedure works well for most objects, but can be disastrous when applied to organizations and people.

Managing an organization has traditionally been a mechanistic operation. When part of the organization malfunctions the manager attempts to put it right by some form of localized intervention, only to discover something going wrong somewhere else. Consider the carpet-laying metaphor. When we amateurs try to lay a carpet we find that a bump mysteriously appears in one part of it. Being amateurs, we put our foot on the bump and it disappears. We think we have cured the problem, but when we turn around another bump has appeared as mysteriously as the first one. Indeed it is the same bump manifesting itself in a different way. We need to adopt a systems approach to solving the problem which is holistic rather than mechanistic - an approach involving the whole carpet!

Mental Models

Senge places great importance on the function of mental models of reality in helping us to make sense of the world. A simple example of a model is a map of a city's metro system. The chaotic arrangement of tracks, stations and interchanges existing in reality is represented on the map by an orderly pattern of coloured lines, small spikes and circles. It is perhaps unlikely that anyone would assume the tracks to be prettily coloured in reality, but people might well assume that the actual layout of the tracks is accurately mirrored by the map. In any case it is the model that we carry in our mind. How we imagine the metro system does not have a great effect on our life or that of our friends and colleagues.

But we also carry more important models, such as models of how people think or act, or of how organizations are structured and operate. From these models we can draw generalizations, such as 'all the people I work with are dishonest' or 'my organization doesn’t trust anyone to act on their own initiative'. Senge (1990) says that the problems with mental models lie not in whether they are right or wrong - by definition all models are simplifications. The problems arise when the models are tacit - when they exist below the level of awareness. Some of our models, including those of people and their roles, can be deeply ingrained and have negative effects on the way we act in group situations.

Learning and Change

When we are faced with a problem, such as the bumpy carpet, we can take some sort of action to resolve it. If we solve the problem by our action we have had a learning experience such that if the problem occurs again we can draw on our learning and apply the same solution. But what if the problem, when it occurs a second time, is not solvable by the same action? Generally we will look for another way to solve it. However, when problems occur in complex systems it is not always easy to detect causal connections and we might go on applying one solution because our mental model of the situation tells us that that is the correct solution.

Argyris (1957) labelled the ability to assess the environment and make changes 'single-loop learning'. The ability to look at the mental models we hold about the environment and our resulting behaviour he called 'double-loop learning'. The inability to recognize that we apprehend organizational situations as mental models, with the associated inability to apply double-loop learning to these situations, means that organizations become rigid and resistant to change.

Coaching and Mentoring

Parsloe and Wray (2000) say that their early research in 1990 led them to develop a number of descriptions of mentoring activity and a definition of the difference between coaching and mentoring. At times, they say, people have grown impatient and dismissed the debate as mere quibbling in a semantic jungle. It is indeed the case that coaching and mentoring are often treated as synonymous or seen to overlap, but it is, I believe, helpful to distinguish between them.

Mentors have usually followed a path similar to that along which the mentee is travelling and can therefore help define and work through personal and professional issues. Mentoring generally involves a long-term relationship. Coaches play a more proactive role in orienting a person to the realities of the organization, helping him or her to remove barriers to optimum performance whilst maintaining personal and professional integrity. Coaching is usually a short-term generative process and can if necessary be useful in helping a person through one particular problem.

Mentoring

Many professional institutions operate a mentoring system for their members. Younger members can be appointed a mentor who offers advice and guidance towards achieving higher professional status within the institution. The mentor can play a valuable role in helping the mentee keep a personal development plan to record what has been achieved and learned and identify appropriate career routes, including relevant future formal and informal learning.

Although the qualities required of a mentor are similar to those required of a coach, the mentor-mentee relationship is different from the coach-client relationship. For example, the mentor is usually an employee of the same company or a member of the same professional body as the mentee, whereas more effective coaching usually takes place if the coach comes from outside the organization. Here it is important to distinguish between a coach, whose contract of commitment and confidentiality is with the client (the person being coached), and a manager practising coaching skills, whose prime commitment is to the organization. Mentor of course originated in Homer's Odyssey. He was the friend whom Odysseus entrusted to look after his household, and especially his son Telemachus, whilst he was on his travels.

A mentor therefore

Mentoring involves

Coaching

Murphy (1995) maintains that 'managing' people is a guarantee that one will never create a learning organization. He says that even now most managers don't yet understand how manipulative most human resource approaches are and how such approaches invisibly undermine their very purpose: excellent performance. He calls for a change from managing people to coaching them and refers to what he calls generative coaching, based on the work of James Flaherty.

Generative coaching is a way of understanding people in their wholeness, followed by conversations and actions consistent with that understanding. Such a process requires of both the coach and the client a continual reassessment of their mental models. They need to recognize that all models are 'wrong' by definition and accept that they, like mentor and mentee, are participating in a mutual learning process. The essence of coaching - and to my mind all coaching is generative coaching - requires the coach to:

1. Discover how the client interprets, or makes sense of, the world. What do the client's mental models look like?

2. Help the client see the structure of the mental models she is employing and indeed recognize that they are models and not reality.

3. Assist the client to detach himself from the models for long enough to see that there are possibilities for new choices.

In short, it is the job of the coach to help the client see new possibilities and provide a space in which the client can consider making different decisions based on a wider range of possibilities. By accompanying the client to a new 'meta-position' the coach participates in the client's double-loop learning process. Coaching is not about teaching, supervising or instructing. It is

primarily about listening and establishing a relationship based on mutual trust, respect, commitment and confidentiality. Flaherty (1999) himself presents coaching as a way of working with people that leaves them more competent and more fulfilled so that they are more able to contribute to their organizations and find meaning in what they are doing. He describes the products of coaching as

Long-term excellent performance means that the client meets the high objective standards of the discipline in which coaching is occurring. Well-coached clients can observe how they are performing and are able to make adjustments to their performance without the coach's intervention. This self-correction on the part of clients helps the coach avoid the temptation of feeling that he or she is indispensable. As human beings we can always improve. Well-coached people are aware of this and, through a process of self-generation, will find ways of doing so on their own.

Following Murphy again, we might summarize the coaching relationship and the role of the coach as follows:

The coaching relationship

The coach


The use of ICT

Hastings (1993) says that the purpose of networking within organizations is to break down boundaries and create quick and open person-to-person communications. But networking is also an important approach to communicating between organizations and it forms the basis for virtual organizations. The developments in ICT which are facilitating communication in various ways can be applied to learning organizations both real and virtual. They can certainly enable new approaches to be taken to coaching and mentoring. Already, for example, work is being done by companies and professional bodies to make personal development plans available on the internet. Doubts are sometimes expressed though about whether coaching and mentoring can be carried out meaningfully without face-to-face contact and, if so, which are the most effective means. The options for coaching and mentoring at a distance include the telephone, video links, e-mail and chat rooms.

Research carried out by Weintraub (1995) with IBM reveals that the most significant technology-mediated informal learning comes from dialogues, whether using computers or telephones, although the degree of learning often depends on the skills of the users of the technology. He maintains, from his experience, that it is possible to help change mental models through such media.

There are those who maintain that coaching and mentoring are such personal processes that they cannot possibly be carried out other than on a face-to-face basis. Some coaches and mentors however actually prefer working at a distance. A contact in the USA with over twenty years' experience in organizational development and human resources worldwide says that she prefers coaching over the telephone. She puts her case succinctly: 'When I am coaching someone face-to-face, a few dynamics happen. First, there is the eye contact, which can cause us both to assume we 'get' the other person, even when we may be simply making assumptions. Second, since coaching is sometimes challenging to individuals, I find them asking to be rescued, in non-verbal ways...I actually find that not seeing them makes the conversation more honest, and deeper'.

Transformation

New structures of work, learning and thought, as well as new organizational structures, are needed if we are to prosper in a world that is becoming increasingly chaotic and unpredictable. Transformation is a key concept of personal, professional and organizational development. This can be facilitated for individuals by means of coaching and mentoring, and for companies through a learning organization approach. The path from a traditional organization to a learning organization involves the following types of transformation:


About the Author

With a management background in the international professional institution world, Graham Guest is a 'portfolio person' whose current work is focused on the promotion of continuing professional development and lifelong learning, the theory and practice of the learning organization, and the provision of personal coaching.

His expertise extends to marketing, academic and training accreditation, and the development of vocational qualifications in the engineering sector. He is also Secretary-General of the Zurich-based European Higher Engineering and Technical Professionals Association (EurEta) and a Consultant to The Institute of Continuing Professional Development.

Graham runs workshops and seminars on personal and professional development, writes articles and reviews for general and specialist publications, and makes presentations throughout Europe and beyond on issues concerned with learning and the future of work.

A committed lifelong learner himself, Graham has studied engineering, philosophy, psychology and education. His professional links include Fellowship of both the Royal Society of Arts and The Institute of Continuing Professional Development, and Membership of both the British Register of Complementary Practitioners and the Scientific and Medical Network.

References

Argyris, C. (1957) Personality and Organization. New York: Harper.

Flaherty, J. (1999) Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann.

Hastings, C. (1993) The New Organization: Growing the Culture of Organizational Networking. London: McGraw-Hill.

Kofman, F. and Senge, P. M. (1995) 'Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations' in Chawla, S. and Renesch, J. (Eds.) Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace. Portland, Oregon: Productivity Press.

Murphy, K. (1995) 'Generative Coaching: A Surprising Learning Odyssey' in Chawla, S. and

Renesch, J. (Eds.) Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace. Portland, Oregon: Productivity Press.

Parsloe, E. and Wray, M. (2000) Coaching and Mentoring: Practical Methods to Improve Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Senge, P. M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. London: Century Business.

Weintraub, R. (1995) 'Transforming Mental Models through Formal and Informal Learning: A Guide for Workplace Educators' in Chawla, S. and Renesch, J. (Eds.) Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace. Portland, Oregon: Productivity Press.

Graham Guest



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