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The open session gave the professionals gathered an opportunity to ask a number of key questions. A selection of the questions and answers are included below.
Q: What about the use of coaching?
A: Tom Smith: I find it difficult to find out where the good coaches are. If I go to the British Psychological Society looking for a Chartered Occupational Psychologist I know what to expect. It’s much harder to make an assessment like that of coaching. I know the field is going through regulation but its still early days. There are some people you try and it does not work and they aren’t invited back. Coaching has such a wide definition of what it is and where it used.
Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe: For me coaching is about encouraging the managers themselves to become coaches. I wish I could encourage managers to seek more suggestions and reflect on the suggestions of their team rather than relying on an external person. Every senior manager should have to spend a week a year seeing what their staff do.
Tom Smith: But there are situations where HR practitioners need to be mindful of managers turning into coaches because it’s a way of abdicating management responsibilities.
Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe: I wanted to add there is a time and place for coaching. But one of the added values of occupational psychologists is they help clients to answer the question ‘what is the purpose, why are you doing this?’ You [businesses] introduce something like 360-degree feedback and you think it’s going to help someone become more effective. But why do you want to transform them? What’s the purpose? There are a lot of organizations introducing 360-degree feedback and doing nothings afterwards. How immoral is that? It creates great cynicism. "My boss has asked me and done nothing about it".
Q: Should organizations have a leadership strategy?
A: Roger Gill: I think generally make sure there’s a strategy and its implemented. Perhaps the best way of doing that is on a collective basis. I think the key issue here is making sure it actually exists because without a strategy you’re more unlikely to achieve what you want to achieve. Tap into the wisdom of the people in the organisation and make sure the strategy plans and delivers against strategic objectives. Have a destination vision and ways of getting there. But have a strategy that’s shared.
Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe: This covers the difference between change leaders and change managers. Some people are good at inspiring visions but maybe lousy at setting out strategy. Change managers and change leaders are so different things. Both might not be in one person. Change strategies that are most likely to fail are those led by the Chief Executive; those that are most effective are led by the people in the middle of the organisation. They say ‘there’s the vision of the organisation but how in our team can we have our own vision?’
Q: The four key things that Gerry described as the core of leadership, those things I do on a daily basis and I see as the chores of leadership. I see the core as things like flexibility, drive, vision.
A: Gerry Randell: They [the four themes] are certainly not what the market wants. The market wants a quick panacea. But I do not know what these others things are. If you go about things in a different way your flexible, that’s not a theme. With motivation we say ‘he’s not working very hard because he’s not got enough motivation’ but it’s an outcome not a cause. So many of the terms get misused; motivation, intelligence, flexibility. They are very seductive ideas because it’s encapsulating something using a singe word.
Q: The challenge I have is to quantify leadership success. If I cannot get measurable results I do not get funding.
A: Tom Smith. This is a new area for occupational psychologists to be involved in, measuring something like that over time. There has been some work done in this area but you have got to get enough responses and ask the right questions and then you get a good idea of whether its leadership that underpins success. It’s a space to watch over the next two or three years because there will be a lot of development in that area.
Julian Rizzello: We say ‘what’s the cost of a leadership programme?’ but we do not say ‘what’s the cost of not doing it?’
Q: What does an occupational psychologist add to an organisation that varies from HR or other management consultants?
A: Tom Smith: I work closely with my HR colleagues but I like to think what a psychologist brings is different. Psychologists collect data first. Projects fail because companies haven’t realised they are collecting the wrong data in the first place. HR Professionals are involved in the day-to-day processes of work and get involved in the same vision. They are the relationship managers and we are the product specialists. We have something unique to offer. We have different ways of looking at the issue that adds value.
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