don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Can managers coach effectively? Can coaches manage well? No doubt, some coaches and managers can do both, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs, but most need a lot of coaching to develop the skills and experience to do more good than harm attempting either role. (Not everyone can be a Knute Rockne, pictured left.)

As noted in the introduction, I'm with my Aussie "icantdoit" co-creator Dr. Grant Donovan today at a workplace conference in Vancouver. We're facilitating a three-hour workshop entitled, "The Coaching Manager: Six Must-Have Skills to Improve Performance, Profits and Well- Being." The six special "must-have" skills that Donovan has devised include the ability to:

1. Understand and work with clashing personalities.
   
   
2. Create work environments where people can't help but perform well.
   
   
3. Build high performance systems and structures.
   
   
4. Recruit the best talent.
   
   
5. Continuously map the mood of a work force.
   
   
6. Develop effective, targeted interventions before performance drops.

Like the 240 conference-goers preregistered for the workshop, I'm looking forward to learning practical details for developing and utilizing these six coaching skills. My role, later in the session after Donovan has described his coaching ideas, is to introduce two other elements:

1. The nature and implications of our "icantdoit" perspective, and
2. The applications of happiness research for coaches and how coaches might facilitate better conditions for such experiences at worksites. Visitors to SeekWellness and readers of my Wellness Reports are familiar with the "icantdoit" concept; how the latest research on human happiness can be mined to boost work environments for better performance, profits and well-being will be covered in future essays.

With regard to coaching for performance, profits and well-being, Donovan recognizes that it is difficult to get people to perform at consistently high levels at work. He describes a number of reasons for this difficulty, including:

• Most people just don't like each other.
• Most would rather get more money in a more interesting job.
• Most have innate drives that the workplace suppresses.
• Most resent managers or anyone who holds sovereignty over them.

While managers can't change innate aspects of people they supervise, they can create environments where employees can't help but perform at their best. Donovan designed our workshop to help managers who function as coaches to improve their skills, and in doing so to enhance the performance of those they supervise. Donovan's goal is for participants to leave the session with a comprehensive understanding of the coach's role in setting high-performance environments, with an action plan that can be tested back in the workplace.

It seems to me that if Donovan pulls this off, it won't matter that much if things deteriorate after I'm introduced. The attendees will have derived enough value from Donovan that even reruns of Howdy Doody shows would be tolerated.

In time, I'll summarize the latest thinking about happiness. I'll also suggest why coaches concerned with improved organizational performance, profits and well-being might want to be closely tracking the research on promoting human happiness. Who knows? Happiness promotion might turn out to be the seventh "must-have" skill to improve performance, profits and well-being.

Until then and even long after, be well. Look on the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the PHYSICAL DOMAIN under the skill area of adaptations and challenges. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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