Mentoring, Coaching and Action Learning

APM Presents…

16 October 2014

Agenda

Introductions

Mentoring, Coaching and Action Learning

Live Interview

Open Audience

So, what are ‘Mentoring’, ‘Coaching’ and ‘Action Learning’?

Your thoughts please…

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring is a long standing form of training, learning and development and an increasingly popular tool for supporting personal development.

Traditionally, mentoring is the long term passing on of support, guidance and advice. In the workplace it has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses their greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff.

Mentoring is used specifically and separately as a form of long term tailored development for the individual which brings benefits to the organisation.

The characteristics of mentoring are:

– It is essentially a supportive form of development.

– It focuses on helping an individual manage their career and improve skills.

– Personal issues can be discussed more productively unlike in coaching where the emphasis is on performance at work.

– Mentoring activities have both organisational and individual goals.

Source: Mentoring – CIPD Factsheet Revised 2009

What is Coaching?

John Whitmore who in 1992 wrote one of the seminal books on coaching in a business context, describes coaching as, “unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their performance at work” and “helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.

Miles Huckle, a contributor to the newly released ‘Coaching in the Project Environment’ APM eBook states:

– Coaching is a series of structured conversations designed to enable a client (project manager/project team) to achieve their own goals.

– The client decides what they want to work on. – The coach helps the client get there by questioning, challenging and supporting

them. – The coaching session is confidential. – Coaching is about change; the client has to be willing to change.

What is Action Learning?

A process which involves working on real challenges, using the knowledge and skills of a small group of people combined with skilled questioning, to re-interpret old and familiar concepts and produce fresh ideas

Gives you:– A simple yet powerful tool for personal and professional development.– The opportunity to work on real problems and implement solutions – management development which is learning

by doing. – A powerful way for leaders to learn from other leaders.

Can offer you:– Space for individual reflective learning.– Learning to take back to the workplace and translate into action.– Support and challenge from peers.– The chance to work smarter and find creative ways to bring about change. – A chance to test beliefs and assumptions and learn what works.– A safe environment to explore new ways of thinking and doing. – Personal, as well as professional, learning and development. – Insight into how others achieve different solutions.– A chance to progress new opportunities and develop new ideas.

Source: Action Learning Associates

First of all – a health warning

Not everyone, and not every organisation is ready to do this...

Typical project issues encountered

Difficulty with some ‘assertive’ stakeholders Problems agreeing the scope of a project Needing to stop a project Poor project governance Not using project controls effectively – i.e. poor project

control! Dealing with changing organisational policy at project

level – ‘Agile’, ‘Procurement Strategy’, ‘Perceived Constraints’

What it comes down to...

It’s mostly about improving skills like ‘assertiveness’, ‘negotiation’, ‘active risk management’, and ‘daily prioritisation’ in the PM role

Its also about helping a PM to see things from other peoples perspective or experiences

Mentoring/coaching etc. might help resolve a problem either from another’s perspective - It’s about increasing your specific PM skills

Action learning is about releasing the power of experience in a specific organisational context

Specific training might be better in some instances

Project Mentoring – When to Use

Mentoring works well where the individual needs sustained assistance in dealing with an enduring contextual or scope problem, or needs to develop specific project skills to operate effectively

Example use: The development of Acceptance and Testing approaches in a specific project context i.a.w. Prince 2 requirements, by a qualified Prince 2 expert, for instance

Likely to be functionally PM based, and organisation independent (although scope issues may be affected by organisational culture)

Project Coaching – When to Use

Works well around assurance, audit or review activity – both in preparation, and subsequently dealing with actions

Usually the PM will already be ‘competent’, but may require assistance with taking a necessary different view or approach

Example use: The implementation of a new procurement strategy or PPM methodology for instance. Organisational dependence increases depending on level of organisational tailoring

Things to think about…

Action Learning – When to Use

Dealing with very complex problems via a group of experienced, but ideally diverse, peers. The approach is non-judgemental and not directive, and is focussed on finding all the different perspectives, approaches and context to a problem.

Example use: Considering and developing implementation strategies, such as dealing with a change strategy requiring the re-skilling or redundancy of team members, in moving to a new project phase.

Decision making is very personal and very culturally and organisationally dependent.

Questions…

This presentation was delivered at an APM event

To find out more about upcoming events please visit

our website www.apm.org.uk/events