The Competent Use of Competency-Based Strategies for Selection and Development

Many organizations are getting into the competency act, selecting and developing employees against standards of performance needed for present and future business success. This article focuses on critical elements of successful competency-based performance strategies from the practical vantage points of two performance consultants with significant experience in a variety of business settings. Definitions and examples are provided for Key, Team, Functional, and Leadership competencies. The competency strategy process defined in the article outlines a four-step cycle including business alignment, project planning, competency model-building, and rollout and ongoing performance management. Tools and approaches for use with selection, training and development, coaching, multi-rater assessment, and performance review are discussed from the viewpoint of the hands-on practitioner. “Lessons learned” are noted in all phases of the process to emphasize the rationale for continuous involvement of stakeholders and for attention to project management. Also included are behavioral competency profiles for 1) the competency practitioner and 2) change management.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Coaching Behavior

Proponents of the learning organization acknowledge that leaders and managers must assume roles as coaches in organizations that aspire to become learning organizations. The concept of the manager as coach is becoming increasingly popular as a way to facilitate learning and improve employee performance. Yet, despite the research that has been done on coaching, studies generally focus on characteristics of good coaches, requisite coaching skills, and employees' perceptions of the improvement in managers' coaching skills following such training programs. This article describes some of the findings from a larger qualitative critical incident study. Specifically, the triggers for coaching and the outcomes of coaching interventions for the individual employee, manager, and organization are examined and reported here. This study identifies gaps and discrepancies, political, and developmental issues as the primary triggers for coaching. Additionally, this study suggests that managers' commitment to coaching has the potential to impact performance at the individual employee, manager, and organizational level.     

Managerial coaching: A review of the literature

Managerial coaching has become increasingly popular despite limited empirical evidence of its impact on the individuals giving and receiving coaching, and its impact on the workplace overall. This article reviews the literature on the definition of practice of managerial coaching, and what managerial coaching looks like in terms of skills and behaviors, and examines the empirical evidence that currently exists. Models representing new current research and gaps within the literature are advanced, and future research implications are explored.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Coaching Behavior

Proponents of the learning organization acknowledge that leaders and managers must assume roles as coaches in organizations that aspire to become learning organizations. The concept of the manager as a coach is becoming increasingly popular as a way to facilitate learning and improve employee performance. Yet, despite the research that has been done on coaching, studies generally focus on characteristics of good coaches, requisite coaching skills, and employees' perceptions of the improvement in managers coaching skills following such training programs. This article describes some of the findings from a larger qualitative critical incident study. Specifically, the triggers for coaching and the outcomes of coaching interventions for the individual employee, manager, and organization are examined and reported here. This study identifies gaps and discrepancies, political, and developmental issues as the primary triggers for coaching. Additionally, this study suggests that managers' commitment to coaching has the potential to impact performance at the individual employee, manager, and organizational level.     

Teamwork in secular and faith‐based organizations

The word teamwork has become a favorite of corporate leaders; however, many employees view teamwork as a word devoid of meaning. Part of the problem is that teamwork has an entirely different meaning to people at various levels in an organization, and this prevents individuals and different departments within a company from moving forward with a single vision. Another factor is the issue of fair compensation. Traditional managerial views emphasize individual incentives or piecework compensation as the key to employee motivation, while more modern managerial theory contends that giving workers autonomy and showing them appreciation is just as important as financial incentives. There is also a growing trend of mixing religion and business principles to create a harmonious work environment. This article examines research and best practices around key factors that contribute to a team‐based work environment and also explores whether employees at faith‐based organizations are more willing to embrace the team concept than their secular counterparts.     

The Role of Demographics as Predictors of Successful Performance of Sales Professionals in Business‐to‐Business Sales Organizations

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact demographic variables of gender and sales experience have on the performance of business‐to‐business (B2B) sales professionals. If a deeper understanding can be established of how gender and sales experience variables relate to B2B sales performance, human resource development (HRD) and human performance improvement (HPI) professionals can use these indicators during the hiring and selection process. This article reports findings of the study and offers implications to the field of HRD and HPI.     

Perceived Level of Personal Control Over the Work Environment and Employee Satisfaction and Work Performance

The purpose of this article is to provide a review of background information regarding perceived level of personal control over the physical features of the work environment and its impact on individual satisfaction and outcomes. In today's business with the fast growth of technology, e‐market development, and innovative methods of communication, the workplace will continue to change rapidly. To control and accommodate these fast changes while sustaining or enhancing outcomes, organizations have increasingly turned to a model of work teams; therefore, employees’ skills in working within team environments has been emphasized. To guarantee that the work environment itself supports these new approaches of working, flexible workplaces are often suggested. Open‐plan offices offer more flexibility when compared to completely closed and private ones and they are considered to have more capabilities and are, therefore, highly valued in today's industry. Apart from its advantages, open‐plan office design does create some problems due to lack of personal control over the work environment, which can negatively affect employees’ satisfaction and performance. It is, therefore, important to emphasize the significance of personal control over the physical work environment and the impact of that on employees’ satisfaction and outcome.     

Operationalizing Design Thinking in Business Intelligence and Analytics Projects

Design Thinking has been applied successfully in many fields; however, in Information Systems research most early studies focus on applying the specific toolsets to developing product and system designs to solve strategic, managerial, and operational problems. There is little research on how Design Thinking can be embedded in the learning processes in design‐oriented IS research and enabled in the context of business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA). How can Design Thinking be embedded in the learning processes and enabled in the context of BI/BA projects in the classroom environment, especially in the proof of concept stage? A practical view on integrating the mindset and toolset of the Design Thinking approach and in the learning process as a case based in‐class experience is presented along with a guideline for coaching the Design Thinking team and the lessons learned from each stage of Design Thinking. The results of this study show that Design Thinking practices can be enlisted to help students frame their creations and that these practices have a valuable contribution as alternatives when designing curricula for teaching and learning.     

Coaching doctoral students – a means to enhance progress and support self-organisation in doctoral education

In this paper we focus on individual coaching carried out by an external coach as a new pedagogical element that can impact doctoral students’ sense of progress in doctoral education. The study used a mixed-methods approach in that we draw on quantitative and qualitative data from the evaluation of a project on coaching doctoral students. We explore how coaching can contribute to the doctoral students’ development of a broad set of personal competences and suggest that coaching could work as a means to engender self-management and improve relational competences. The analysis of the participants’ self-reported gains from coaching show that doctoral students experience coaching as an effective method to support the doctoral study process. This study also provides preliminary empirical evidence that coaching of doctoral students can facilitate the doctoral study process so that the doctoral students experience an enhanced feeling of progress and that they can change their study behaviour in a positive direction. The study discusses the difference between coaching and supervision, for instance power imbalances and contrary to earlier research into coaching of doctoral students this study indicates that coaching can impact the supervisor–student relationship in a positive way.     

How to Connect Diversity to Performance

Diversity programs are common in the American workplace. Most organizations, either formally or informally, have facilitated diversity interventions designed to educate employees about cultural differences, to recruit a diverse workforce, to enhance career opportunities, or to improve cross‐cultural interactions. Unfortunately, many of these programs have failed to deliver the desired results. One reason for this lack of success is the failure to connect diversity programs to organizational performance systems. This article offers a five‐step process to use in systematically developing performance‐focused diversity interventions and evaluating their impact on individual and organizational success.     

A new model of collaborative action research; theorising from inter-professional practice development

The development of pedagogies to meet the needs of diverse communities can be supported through inter-professional practice development. This article explores one such experience, that of speech and language therapists developing a new video-based coaching approach for teachers and teaching assistants in multi-cultural settings with high numbers of children learning English as an additional language. To support them in developing and trialling the coaching approach, the expertise of a teacher-educator and educational researcher was provided through a university business voucher. It is this working relationship that the article has as its practical focus, as it transformed to one of collaborative action research. The action research is described, providing the context for a discussion of the characteristics of collaborative action research and the proposal of a new model. This model offers a way of conceptualising collaborative action research through time, and of recognising the importance of the partners’ zones of proximal, contributory and collaborative activities in sustaining change and knowledge-creation.     

被教练者的个体特征对管理教练行为认知的影响研究

通过对340名企业管理者的问卷调查,发现在对管理教练行为的认知方面,被教练者的心理控制源倾向、目标导向以及年龄和学历能够产生显著的影响。在此基础上得出研究结论,以期为企业选择被教练者提供参考依据。     

Working with a Critical Friend: A Self-study of Executive Coaching

This article examines the learning by a dean of education through the process of executive coaching. In adopting a self-study approach to explore the experience of executive coaching, we draw on the notion of critical friendship as a way of interrogating the experience and the response to that experience in terms of leadership development and professional growth. We used data from audio-recordings of individual coaching sessions to construct vignettes designed to capture the essence of particular themes and issues germane to the learning through the coaching experiences. The major findings pertain to the notion of default behaviours and show how recognition of one's own default behaviours is important in shifting personal practice. The study opens up for scrutiny important aspects of the nature of the personal side of leading a faculty of education and offers insights into what it means to be a learner as a leader and how productive self-study can be in facilitating that learning process.     

The Capturing Business Impact Job Aid

This article will equip performance improvement practitioners with an approach for working with clients to determine business impact. It is based on comparing the current performance (baseline) to the desired performance (goal) in the determination of the performance gap and the calculated business impact. Achieving common understanding of these elements is accomplished through conversation and consensus between the consultant and client via the capturing business impact (CBI) job aid. The result is an informed go/no‐go business decision.     

企业教练技术对管理职能的影响初探

将企业教练技术应用于管理领域是当前的流行趋势,教练式管理模式以其独特的优势受到越来越多的大中型企业的青睐。企业教练技术给计划、组织、领导、控制和创新等管理职能带来了一定的影响。企业教练技术的引入和实施增强了管理实践的效率和效果。     

Managerial Practices and Organizational Conditions That Encourage Employee Growth and Development

This paper focuses on seven major managerial practices and three negative conditions that must be managed to enhance employee growth and development. These managerial practices and conditions have significant potential for human resource development practitioners and performance improvement technologists by providing new perspectives to improve employee performance through employee growth and development activities. Surveys measuring employee perceptions of manager behaviors were administered to 503 MBA and PhD students from the United States, resulting in 463 useable responses. The hypotheses were tested using linear regression and structural equation modeling. Based on the analysis, the researchers found that involving employees in decision making, motivating employees, treating employees as unique individuals, and making certain that managers are effective have the highest influence on employee growth and development.     

Automated performance assessment and feedback for free‐play simulation‐based training

Practice and experience, whether simulated or on the job, are not enough to ensure effective learning. Learners must be able to make sense of those experiences to identify poor decisions and actions, missing knowledge, and weak skills that deserve attention. Using instructors to provide one‐on‐one instruction is effective but also expensive. This article describes ways of using intelligent software to assess student performance and provide feedback automatically in free‐play simulations. Case studies describe applications of these methods.     

Theorising the value of collage in exploring educational leadership

This article contributes to theorising the value of collage as a methodological approach. It begins with a discussion of the methodological difficulties of exploring hidden meanings and individual experience through the research process. The illuminative potential of arts‐based methodologies in qualitative research is then investigated. The article makes the case for the specific advantages of using collage to explore the experience of leadership, through a discussion of two collage‐based studies. It proposes a variant of the ‘think aloud’ process, used in conjunction with collage, as a route to producing deep understandings of the multiple ways in which leadership is experienced and understood as a social process. The argument is made that collage enables the accessing and sharing of profound levels of experience not accessible through words alone, and considers the impact of the physicality of collage on its potential to release these profound insights. A five‐stage process for the analysis of collage is then set out. The article concludes by offering a theory of the value of collage as a methodological approach to exploring experiences of leadership, through use of the concepts of physicality, wholeness and participant agency.     

Competing priorities in professional development: an Australian study of teacher professional development policy and practice

This paper argues that neoliberal and managerial pressures external to the teaching profession, as well as more progressive and democratic approaches internal to the profession, have simultaneously influenced professional development policy and practice in Australia. In making this case, the paper reviews the nature of the teacher professional development that is supported in federal Australian policies associated with the recently defeated Liberal/National Coalition government (1996–2007) and research into how professional development has been enacted in practice in Australia, during this government's tenure. While acknowledging the significant impact of more neoliberal and managerial approaches and how such policy emphases contribute to the continuation of traditional, systemic/employer provided workshops, the paper also provides evidence of competing, more teacher‐centred approaches.     

TradeSmith: An Exercise to Demonstrate the Illusion of Control in Decision Making

Resource allocation decisions are a fundamental class of problems common throughout a business and therefore are found throughout business school curricula. Entrepreneurs must allocate capital, financiers must allocation cash, and production managers must create the best mix of multiple‐use resources. Within this context, a business school's curriculum, instructional materials, and learning processes must consider the implications of individual decision making. Our traditional instructional content and delivery methods may effectively teach how to set up a decision “problem” and how to obtain an optimal answer. Yet, we may not be teaching a key underlying factor: that entrepreneurs, managers, and future leaders appear to have implicit cognitive biases, which discount information and skew individual decision making. The results of this study demonstrate that a phenomenon known as the “illusion of control” presents a fundamental challenge to the efficacy of formalized educational programs on decision making. TradeSmith was designed as a problem‐based learning exercise to elicit for the illusion of control in a basic, resource allocation, decision environment. The subjects in this study demonstrate a decision‐making pattern consistent with the “illusion of control” phenomenon. Finally, by revealing individuals' implicit design‐making paradigms, TradeSmith helps them experience key issues for managerial decision making.