Flexible Working

Flexible working is widely offered and used in developed countries and the trend in developing countries is also rising. Flexible working patterns have various benefits not only for employees but also for organizations as well in the form of retention of its workforce. In this blog, the advantages of flexible working will be discussed.

Flexibility according to Maxwell et.al (2006: p. 138) is “any policies and practices, formal or informal, which permit people to vary when and where work is carried out”. Hall and Atkinson (2006: p. 375) state that “flexible working is for the benefit of the employee rather than (directly) for the employer, involving time, hours and location flexibility but excluding skills flexibility”. Furthermore, “we are seeing a move to more employer-led flexibility, in which the employer increasingly determines the temporal patterns of work, with the emphasis being on whether these patterns suit the needs of the business rather than the needs of the employee” (Rubery et al., 2005 as cited in Dick, 2009: p. 182).

High performance working organizations arrange flexible working arrangements (FWA), and found that one of the main reasons their employees were highly committed was because of availability to flexible working arrangements. Flexibility on one hand is rewarding when there is a balance between job and domestic responsibilities, and on the other hand, it may be expensive because it could create a work life clash between job promotion and family responsibilities.

Survey results revealed that most popular reason for reducing working hours by employees was “spending time with family”, and found that developing work place policies is the complicated task cause of accomplishing  both employee's and employer's interest. Globalization and technological advancement has enormously changed the organizational environment in both private and public sector, as a result leaders and workers are being forced for claiming larger flexibility from their organizations.

Furthermore, employers reported that some of the main reasons which cause employee absence were impact of long hours and home/ family responsibilities, so flexible working play vital role in minimizing absence and help in maintaining work life balance. Research conducted by Cochrane Library in 2010 concluded that employees with flexible functioning patterns and better control over functioning hours had shown constructive results on their health: blood pressure and heart rates. Therefore, flexibility reduce absence rate and keep workers fit, consequently flexible working arrangements could turn out to be a win win situation for both organizations and employees.

Developing leaders and managers via 360 degree feedback

There is a quote by Benjamin Franklin “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”. Organizations plan for the development of their staff, and one key area which almost all of the organizations invest heavily is leadership and management development. So for this purpose, organizations together with HR team endeavor to accomplish leadership development objectives either by their own HR team or they seek external consultants help. There are many developmental techniques such as coaching and mentoring which can be used for management development, another important tool which also play vital role in developing leaders according to studies is 360 degree feedback. It has many benefits, whereas, it can effect organization’s performance too if it is not used in an appropriate manner. Therefore, 360 degree feedback technique in leadership and management development process will be specifically discussed here.

It will be appropriate to start with some definitions of 360 degree feedback in order to understand its meaning. Drew (2009: pg. 582) states that:

 “A 360-degree feedback survey, typically, is where an individual leader’s staff, peers, and supervisor are invited to provide scores on a range of questions relevant to their leadership role. The leader (ratee) also provides “self” scores against which the perceptions of others are compared”.

Rensburg and Prideaux (2006: pg. 563) state that:

 “MSF (also known as 360-degree or multi-rater feedback) is a process of gathering and feeding back useful and relevant information on an individual from a number of different sources. The individuals usually evaluate themselves as well as receiving feedback from a number of potential sources within and external to the organisation – superiors, peers, subordinates and in some cases, clients or customers. Each source of feedback provides a particular feedback emphasis depending on the type of relationship that exists”.

360 degree feedback provides opportunity to managers to rate themselves in various performance related areas, and through feedback they can learn and compare other's appraisals with their own appraisal. It also provides information to supervisors from external sources which identify their self awareness and boost performance.

Moreover, main purpose of 360 degree feedback is to enlarge leader’s awareness in various circumstances which will not only enable the leader to improve but also perform better next time with the raters or individuals that he or she interacts on a daily basis. Leadership and management development programs often use 360 degree feedback: around 90 percent of fortune 1000 firms have used 360 degree feedback in some shapes. 360 degree evaluation is useful indicator which identifies relationship between the leaders and their subordinates, in other words, a tool which can measures leaders' behavior. Majority of the firms also devise and implement competency based leadership and management development approach. Therefore, 360 degree feedback technique help organisations in identifying key areas of behavior, and most importantly the valuable feedback regarding performance from subordinates.

360 degree feedback improve self-awareness, rating himself and then comparing his rating with subordinates or peers help managers in identifying weaknesses in workplace. It not only facilitates in measuring the management behavior at various developmental levels, but also indicates the relationship between them as well. However, it may not be accurate assessment in managerial performance as it can present stereotypes of supervisors or mindset of those doing the 360 degree appraisal. Thereby, 360 degree feedback can improve self awareness in managers, however, it should be cautiously examine before applying because of stereotyping factor associated with it.

Firms exercise multi sourcing feedback as a mean to influence leadership change, however, multi sourcing feedback should be conducted in a way that managers must be psychologically prepared for developing leadership skills. 360 degree feedback from peers, managers and outside partners on individual manager performance play significant role in the managerial development, as 360 degree feedback objective is to provide accurate measurement which will furnish additional information to the managers, and thus it will facilitate managers to identify hindrances in the development process. However, 360 degree feedback also depends on the nature of the business, such as, customer’s feedback can be useful as well but generally managers in 360 degree feedback are rated on different behavioral aspect or competencies. Thus, 360 degree feedback provide plenty of information on leader's behaviors and competencies , and leadership skills can be effectively developed if clear objectives are set based on change and development agenda.

Leadership development will work only when managers are encouraged to openly hear and accept feedback, in other words, to unfreeze their self analysis and most importantly accepting organisational action plan for their development. Managers obtain better self-awareness with the help of 360 degree feedback, and HR managers must specifically design developmental plan together with proper reviews about the progress on performance. Moreover, 360 degree feedback assessment assist in changing organizational culture as it has been proven from the results of cultural survey, therefore, leadership behavior can make a big difference in organisational culture, and 360 degree feedback can be very useful in organizational change. Organisations use innovative techniques, such as, action plan after receiving 360 degree feedback appraisal that helps in identifying weakness and develop new leadership skills. Therefore, it is not only individual manager responsibility to develop him or herself with the help of 360 degree feedback technique, but organisations must also provide learning environment for leadership development which can be done by setting up action plan with a proper review mechanism.

360 feedback is one the powerful tools in human resources development which help leaders in boosting self awareness. Managers and employees develop them-self after rating their behaviors via multiple sources and the information is then used for further improvement, however, feedback obtained should only be used for the development purposes only. 360 degree feedback on one hand provides plenty of information from different sources for managerial reflection, self awareness and behaviors, and on the other hand, different stake holders might have various plans and results could be biased. Therefore, feedback from different sources should be carefully examined particularly in important decisions: feedback regarding promotions or financial rewards. 360 degree feedback is useful when evaluating leadership skills from their subordinates in small groups of ten people with individual feedback, other than that counselling by CEO will add value if they become part of development program. Mangers collect information from multi sources feedback: peers and subordinates, and set developmental targets for accomplishment which helps in checking their performance reviews. Thus, 360 degree feedback is a smart tool in developing leadership skills, it provides load of information which help managers in setting up developmental targets, however, information could be biased if it is used for promotion or financial rewards.

Therefore, like other tools, 360 degree feedback technique  play significant role in leadership and management development. It helps organisation in identifying leadership behaviors, and most importantly the valuable feedback regarding performance from their subordinates. It can improve self awareness in managers, however, it must be cautiously examine before applying because of stereotyping factor associated with it. 360 degree feedback provides plenty of information on leadership behaviors and competencies, and leaders or managers can be effectively developed if appropriate goals are set based on change and development agenda. It is not only individual manager responsibility to develop him or herself with the help of 360 degree feedback technique, but organisations must also provide learning environment for leadership development, which can be done by setting up action plan with a proper review mechanism. 360 degree feedback is a smart tool in developing leadership skills, it provides load of information which will help managers in setting up developmental targets, however, information could be biased if it is used for promotion or financial rewards. So, organizations or HR practitioners should remember the above mentioned points when using 360 degree feedback tool.

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Developing Leaders and Managers via Mentoring

Organizations use variety of tools and techniques for development of its people in general and leadership and management development in particular. coaching and mentoring are some of the key techniques used by organizations. Thus, it is important to know what is mentoring and how it can facilitate leadership and management development skills. 

Kram (1985) as cited in Burgess and Dyer (2009: pg. 465) define mentoring as:

“a relationship between a young adult and an older, more experienced adult that helps the younger individual learn to navigate in the adult world and the world of work. A mentor supports guides and counsels the young adult as he or she accomplishes this important task”.

Murray and Owen (1991) as cited in Gay (1994: pg. 4) state that:

“facilitated mentoring is a structure and series of processes designed to create effective mentoring relationships, guide the desired behaviour change of those involved, and evaluate the results for the protégés, the mentors and the organisation”.

Other defines mentoring as “The process in which an experienced veteran helps to shape or guide a newcomer” (Brown as cited in Appelbaum et al, 1994: pg. 3). There is a little difference between mentoring and coaching, the former could be extremely structured or may be more open (relationship based), whereas later is goal focused and involve practical type of one-on-one learning (CIPD, 2013). Mentoring has important role in development, and therefore its significance will be further discussed from leadership development perspective.

Mentoring, coaching, 360-degree feedback, job assignments, experimental learning and commercial case studies are useful techniques for developing both line managers and senior executives. Mentoring programs play central role in developing leadership styles, which consequently put organization on the right path to accomplish its objective. Leadership and management development theories also propose that mentoring is the key method in developing individuals. In addition, Abraham Zaleznik suggests that mentors take risk with people, which help in the development of key leadership skills. Mentoring is a developmental relationship which enhances individual development. Furthermore, globally, mentoring technique is enormously popular, in UK, 80 percent of senior executives have described mentoring as key to their success, whereas 70 percent of top 500 firms in the USA have used mentoring technique. Mentors are also described as people who facilitate new leaders to learn the tricks, and consequently mentees portray their mentors as leading role models, which benefit the mentees in the form of learning new skills. Thus, not only mentoring techniques help in the development of new leaders but it also helps in the development of top and middle level managers’ leadership skills.

Appropriate mentoring system in organizations not only develops quality leadership, but that also brings new skill for mentees, organizations and mentors as well. Executive mentoring technique helps junior executives to develop leadership skills, for instance on the job, senior executives encourage mentees to learn and practice skills. Some steps are valuable for choosing the right mentor in order to develop mentee for effective leadership, first step is choosing a mentor who is not directly or indirectly involved in reporting relationship, second step involve assigning senior and interested leaders as mentors who would like to share knowledge one-on-one with mentee. In third step, competent higher executives with strong communication and listening skills should be selected, and they must possess right ability to develop others. Furthermore, mentors should be good narrators who can share his personal experience with mentees. Fifth step involve choosing generous mentors, who can be available to assist mentee at any time, and last but not least good mentors must have the ability to apply mentee’s learning into practice and share wide range of his personal development experiences.

In addition, mentoring technique facilitate change in organizational culture by creating learning environment, which consequently facilitates leadership and management development. Furthermore, Mentoring benefit both protégés and mentors, protégés (mentee) learn leadership skills with the help of mentor’s support or via observing mentors’ leadership traits, likewise, mentors also develop their management traits in leading and managing protégés. Another key method for developing personal or professional capabilities by mentors is to assign the recipient or protégé a difficult and complicated assignment. Group mentoring is one of the key techniques in making and developing new leadership skills, survey results indicate that 75 percent of the respondents agreed that group mentoring helped them in the learning leadership skills. Therefore, individuals can develop leadership skills with the help of mentor support, and in addition group mentoring also prove to be useful in the development of making new leadership.

Furthermore, leadership also develops when they interact with environmental events and features. Mentors assign difficult job roles for leaders to learn from a new perspective. Therefore, mentors develop leaders by giving challenging roles as that will encourage individuals to learn from a different perspective.

Moreover, effective mentoring programs should be designed, for instance Nynex designed mentoring program purposely for the development of women leadership, which involved “mentoring circles”, and proved to be more effective compared to one to one relationship. Mentoring circles included six to ten mentee and two to four senior mentors, who used to meet up regularly for 12 to 18 months. Mentoring alone cannot develop mentee and mentor without proper evaluation, and mentoring must be designed for achieving specific targets. Therefore, mentoring technique will turn out to be more effective in developing leaders, if clear developmental goals and objectives are set.

Moreover, mentor’s networking is vital to managerial success, and managers must build mentoring relationships with talented workers in various business units, as mentor’s networking is more effective than usual one-on-one mentoring. Leading companies develop potential employees with the help of internal mentoring programs, where they are paired with senior leaders for learning. Thus, internal networking in organization facilitates leadership development, and talented individuals can be further flourished by pairing them with veteran leaders.

Thus, mentoring technique assists in the development of new leaders as well as in the development of top and middle level manager’s leadership skills. Individuals can develop leadership skills with the help of mentor support, and in addition group mentoring also prove to be useful in the development of new leaders. Mentors develop and strengthen leadership skills by giving challenging roles as that encourage individuals to learn from a different perspective. Mentoring techniques turn out to be more effective in developing leaders, if clear developmental goals and objectives are set. Internal networking in organization facilitates leadership development, and talented individuals can be further flourished by pairing them with veteran leaders.

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Developing leaders and managers via Coaching

Leadership and management development is significant to organisation success. Organizations invest a lot on training and development of its leaders and managers as part of talent management and succession planning such as retention and promotion. Some organizations hire new leaders; this will be discussed separately in detail in recruitment, whereas some develop their own using various methods. Furthermore, organizations use different methods and tools for the development of leaders and managers, coaching is one of the key methods used by organisations. Therefore, developing leaders and managers via coaching will be specifically discussed in this blog.

It is important to understand coaching, and it will be appropriate to start with some definitions of coaching first. Lloyd (2005: pg. 133) define “coaching as the art of facilitating the unleashing of people’s potential to reach meaningful, important objectives”. Others state that “It is a relationship between the coach and the coachee, focusing on developmental discussions and on current and future performance or behaviour” (Boyatzis and Akrivou, 2006 as cited in Rezania and Lingham, 2009: pg. 578). Furthermore, Kilburg (1996) as cited in Rider (2002: pg. 233) define coaching as “helping relationship between a client (who has managerial authority and responsibility) and coach who uses a wide variety of behavioural techniques and methods to help the client achieve a mutually identified set of goals to improve his or her professional performance and personal satisfaction and consequently to improve the effectiveness of the client’s organisation within a formally defined coaching agreement”. CIPD (2013) states that “Coaching and mentoring are development techniques based on the use of one-to-one discussions to enhance an individual’s skills, knowledge or work performance”. Thus, coaching is one of the key methods used for leadership and management development because of its various advantages, so it essential to know the importance of coaching in leadership and management development context.

Day (2001) as cited in Vardiman et al, (2006) suggests that there are plenty of popular organisational practices such as coaching, mentoring, action learning and 360- degree feedback which are used for leadership development and human capitol. Effective coaching is one of the main core elements for developing leaders and managers (Gold et al, 2010). Furthermore, Toit (2007) suggests that coaching environment provide opportunity to offer valuable feed back from those in the leadership position. Mullins (2010) argues that the role of existing line managers play crucial role in developing leadership skills by sharing their tacit knowledge, unwritten knowledge learnt practically on the job, with potential individuals. IRS (2003) as cited in Marchington (2011) proposed that coaching has various advantages, such as it helps in identification of personal learning and development needs, provide feedback on strength and weaknesses and a developmental tool to be used for effective learning. This means that coaching can help in identification of weaknesses, as a result leaders and managers can be further developed, or those with high potential can be coached for leadership and managerial role.

In addition, Toit (2007) argues coaching is based on active experimentation learning not on a passive methodology, and coaching as tool play a bigger role in development of senior management and most importantly when it comes to skills related to managing employees effectively. Conlon (2004) suggests that coaching is also a type of informal learning where employees with high potential can learn from various perspective, in other words facilitating and encouraging individuals to focus their attention for further development. However, in the constant shifting world, workforce should take initiative themselves to develop their skills for effective leadership (Dalakoura, 2009). In other words, such learning attitude comes from inside of individual which is called intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, Clutterbuck (2005) proposed that by polishing existing skills via coaching, talented individual can jump into next step of professional ladder. Therefore, Coaching has great importance in leadership and management development, if proper coaching methods are used, not only individuals can flourish but also organisations can obtain competitive advantage over its competitors in terms of saving cost related to recruitment and retention. So, after discussing the importance of coaching, next significant and critical part is to understand various types of coaching.

Ulrich (2008) suggests some type of coaching: behavioral and result coaching. The former type facilitates managers to identify and build up their approach, whereas the later type facilitates leaders on focusing and the delivery of required results (ibid). The outcomes come out from behavioral and results coaching build up the individual leadership brand (ibid). In addition, developing middle or top level managers, external coaches in majority of the firms around the globe today use one to one coaching technique which play fundamental role in the development of leadership skills (Wilson, 2011). In other words, organisations can effectively develop middle and top level managers with the help of external coaches. In contrast, Rock and Ruth (2008) argue that study shows that external coaches had powerful influence over developing leadership skills, and bringing external coaches will dramatically increase the cost per person being coached at higher level. Internal executives and middle managers if used in coaching role can help in minimizing the cost (ibid). Therefore, organisations should develop their middle level managers in order to do effective coaching, that will not only reduce their cost and bring organisational change but will also develop effective leadership.

Bloch (1995) claims that plenty of firms believed that one-to-one coaching is one of the main dominant methods used for developing the “soft skill”, survey conducted by Career management consultancy revealed that almost half of the respondents agreed that coaching can be used as important method in the development of future leaders. Case and Kleiner (1993) proposed that there are plenty of useful coaching techniques, and cautioned that top management should choose according to the needs of their subordinates. And keep in mind that people are individuals, and management should make sure that certain coaching technique works on one might not works on other (ibid). This means that to achieve sustainable result, management should be careful in applying coaching techniques and must place proper evaluation process.

Styhre (2008) suggests that executive coaching is an instituted social exercise which facilitates more organized leading. Jones et al (2006) argues that executive coaching is a personalized type of learning support, which helps in construction of individual’s strengths and identify and remove weaknesses. Furthermore, face-to-face discussion held on regular bases between coach and the coachee help not only help in observing the behavior, but also bringing new forms of communication and information (Styhre, 2008). Jones et al, (2006) propose executive coaching technique that it can have a positive impact on leadership development, such as developing new skills could assist executives to accomplish tasks.  

Paese (ND) argues that coach must be a third party who holds no internal favoritism or organisational agenda. In addition, great coaches should have following abilities (ibid):

Catalyst: initiating action that could not have been taken by someone else.

Listener: great listener and acting as a collaborator in understanding difficult issue.

Facilitator: facilitating a “simple and repeatable process” for setting up a focus.

Integrator: connecting ideas, people and theme.

Independent in Perspective: sharing unbiased feedback, opinion and reflection in order to bring positive outcome.

Honest and accurate: collecting objective and accurate information.

Moreover, Xavier (2007) argues that one to one coaching is a precious tool in developing important skills, and senior leaders should coach potential employees in order to advance to the next level of leadership. Bowles et al (2007) suggest that coaching can facilitate individuals by encouraging them to exercise new leadership skills together with continuous feedback during coaching. Likewise, another important advantage of coaching is that it helps manager to stay on track, in other words to keep their focus in right direction when encountering difficult situation on the job (Landale, 2005). Therefore, the above discussion concludes that coaching is an important tool in developing leadership skills, such as senior managers can be of assistance to existing and emerging leaders by providing continuous feedback on the job.

Rock and Donde (2008) argue that managers can be developed to coaching role by training that cannot only boost their skills but also knowledge as well, and consequently the newly developed coaches can then further develop new talent. However, managerial development depends upon the organisational culture, if learning environment inside organisation is conducive than such development can take place (ibid). Wilkins (2006) suggests that building effective teams are vital in business success, and leaders can be facilitated by coaching to build up high performing team as one leader commented that “with the support of the coach, he developed techniques to create high performing team”. An alternative approach in the development of new leaders is that executives generally like coaching, senior executives can empower the potential people by sharing their workload with them to develop themselves (Rock and Donde, 2008). Similarly, Ideus (2005) proposed that executive leaders can be developed to gain coaching skills which will bring constructive change as they can than easily develop other senior managers via one to one coaching.

Features of coaching: (Chapman, 2010)

Usually coaching contains some or all of these features:

1. one-to-one - involving a coach (teacher, trainer, mentor, coach) and learner (student, trainee, sometimes called the 'coachee')
2. on-going and regular - coaching is commonly a continuing arrangement
3. personalised - by the coach for the individual learner
4. enabling - rather than prescriptive or imposed
5. adapted and adaptable - to the changing needs of the learner
6. planned - the coach normally works to a plan or structure
7. model-based - coaching tends to be based on a structured 'proven' tested concept or methodology
8. focused on aims - coaching normally works towards achieving agreed measurable outcomes or targets
9. measured and recorded - by the coach, and/or the learner
10. time-based - coaching sessions, schedules, and outcomes normally are time-bound

Therefore, coaching is one of the key methods used for leadership and management development. Coaching helps in identification of weaknesses, if proper coaching methods are used, not only individuals can flourish but also organisations can obtain competitive advantage over its competitors in terms of saving cost related to recruitment and retention. Furthermore, organisations and management should be careful in applying coaching technique and must place proper measurement system.

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