PIPL - White Paper Mentoring & Coaching (intro)

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Mentoring & Coaching
An Integrated Approach to Personal and Professional Development of
Senior and Middle Management
Mentoring and coaching programs have proven to be both popular and effective because mentoring takes
into account the personal development needs of individual employees, while coaching achieves a balance
by simultaneously fulfilling organizational and performance objectives.
This forms the basis for a 2-way relationship, where employees and the organization work to shared agenda
and jointly gain significant mutual benefits.
Background 2
The Burning Platform 3
Vision 3
Definitions 3
Aim 4
Scope and Guidelines 5
Approach 7
Linking Professional Growth to Performance Assurance 9
Structured Assessment Process 12
Performance Assessment (relative to assigned targets) 16
Capabilities Assessment (areas of strength and further development) 18
Delivery and Growth assessment 20
Opportunities and Aspirations 21
Recommendations for raising performance (Developmental Plans) 22
Conclusion 23

2. © Copyright 2010 Progressive Intelligence Pvt (UK) Ltd.
1. Background
Most organizations have established performance management programs for their employees. Formal or
otherwise, such programs are based on annual assessments against objectives, which are assigned to an
individual at the beginning of the year. Reviews are a forensic analysis, to gather evidence on whether an
individual has (or has not) met assigned objectives and to which extent. Evaluations provide a basis for
determining end-of-year bonus payouts and salary adjustments.
Such an approach is of little value in offsetting the opportunity cost incurred by the individual and the business,
when objectives are not met. It is divorced from the crucial aim of instigating, improving, and securing high
performance, both from the individual and the team as a whole.
Some organizations also provide structured professional development. These might offer an opportunity for the
employees to enrol in academic courses and professional seminars. The more sophisticated HR departments use
scored competency models, identifying core competencies that they expect their employees to possess.
The approach is almost always based on one-off appraisal of individuals against selected competencies and
target scores. It consists of a subjective snapshot of their strengths and perceived weaknesses in each. An
empirical normalization is done of the scores across the assessment group, with an aim to pull-in the outliers.
Such a program may be developed and managed in-house, or procured as “Management Appraisal” services
through external suppliers, e.g., Executive Search firms or other HR Services providers. Note, their core proposition is
to match and place executives in identified roles, or to appraise them, respectively; neither strives to address the
complete lifecycle of human capital asset management, from recruitment through to final exit.
Performance management and professional development are therefore pursued as independent themes under
the umbrella of HR programs in an organization. Sometimes, access to the latter may be made contingent on
achieving good results in the former.
Instead of understanding causality behind observed variance to assigned targets, or contextually interpreting and
augmenting an individual’s abilities, most ad hoc approaches make no attempt at aligning staff’s aptitudes and
attitudes to personal growth and performance opportunities. They neither constructively enable the former, nor do
they proactively inculcate the latter, in the specific context of employees’ roles to build a high performance team.
Dr. Sanjeev B. Ahuja Page 2 of 3

3. © Copyright 2010 Progressive Intelligence Pvt (UK) Ltd.
If you would like experienced and hands-on experts to assist you with putting in place an effective
Management and Leadership Development program, contact us at:
Dr. Sanjeev B. Ahuja
Managing Director
Progressive Intelligence
E: sanjeev.ahuja@piplinc.com
M: +44 7785 336 497
W: +1 847 496 3919
Dr. Sanjeev B. Ahuja Page 3 of 3