The headline on the Forbes article says it all: “CEOs are Terrible at Management, Study Finds.” Here’s a quote that sums up the headline.
“The researchers say that CEOs need to reach beyond numbers and care about people management. Two other statistics from the survey that underline how disengaged CEOs are from concern about employees: When asked about their CEOs’ greatest strengths, 70% rated ‘decision-making skills’ at the top. At the bottom: 27% said ‘compassion/empathy,’ 23% said ‘mentoring skills/developing internal talent’ and just 23% said ‘listening skills.’ The lowest-rated skill was ‘conflict management.’ Likewise, when asked about CEOs’ biggest weaknesses, 24% said ‘mentoring skills’ and 22% said ‘sharing leadership/delegation skills.’”
That’s no surprise. Those are the kinds of skills that our senior executive clients say they want help with. They’re the skills that are often identified by 360 degree appraisals. They’re also the skills that many top MBA programs just don’t teach.
Those programs do a great job on the “head skills” like strategic planning and what the article in Forbes calls “decision-making skills.” That usually isn’t a problem right away because the graduate is usually working in his or her functional area where soft skills aren’t so important. That changes as they start climbing the promotion ladder. Roxanne Hori of the Kellogg School of Management points out that:
“As you move into leadership roles, the key skills that will determine your success will be around your ability to interact with others in a highly effective fashion.”
She suggests that students take courses in soft skills. That helps, but it’s not enough.
One reason is that “soft skills” are what training experts call “far transfer skills.” Those are skills that must be applied in a situation very different from the place where they were learned. Most courses on soft skills concentrate on theory with very little application. And the application is usually in artificial role play situations that are very different from the situations the graduate will confront on the job.
To make things even harder, the challenges change with every promotion. Marshall Goldsmith wrote a whole book about that fact: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
That’s why more and more companies are turning to executive coaching as a way to close the management skills gap. Good coaching is based on an assessment of the situation, followed by individualized, one-on-one work to help a top executive improve.
Coaching is especially effective at helping a top executive improve soft skills. That has a multiplier effect. The executive becomes more effective which improves team results and sets an example for others. And coaching sessions are not only more effective than classroom training, they’re easier to fit into a busy executive’s hectic schedule.
According to Harvard Business Review research, almost half of the organizations using coaches use them to help with specific soft skills. Twelve percent use coaches to work with otherwise excellent candidates who have “derailing behaviors.” But most coaching is part of normal talent development.
Companies assign coaches to high potential candidates to help them accelerate their development and be more effective at every stage in their career. They coach men and women being promoted or moving to a new position to help them adapt quickly and avoid serious mistakes.
But does it work? The research increasingly says, “Yes.” In 2001, Sheila Kampa-Kokesch and Mary Z. Anderson conducted a comprehensive review of the literature. They found evidence that coaching was effective at improving performance, but also said that more research was needed. A little more than a decade later, the 8th Annual Survey of Executive Coaching reported the following.
“Only two percent of our participants overall had problems with the results of coaching, while sixty percent described results as ‘excellent’, and close to forty percent described results as ‘good.’”
Executives need to develop “soft skills.” Coaching is the best way to get that job done both for learning basic skills and for quickly acquiring the soft skills demanded by a new position. It’s the best way to close the management skills gap.
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