Organisational context
Bombardier is a world-leading manufacturer of innovative transportation solutions ranging from regional aircraft and business jets to rail transportation equipment, systems and services. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Bombardier has a presence in more than 60 countries on five continents, and operates manufacturing facilities in 21 countries. The annual revenue for the financial year ending 31 January 2007 is reported as US$14.8 billion, of which US$6.6 billion is generated by the rail transportation business, where the coaching research was carried out.
Bombardier Transportation employs about 30,000 people (internals and externals) of which 75% are based in Europe, 21% in the Americas (mostly USA and Canada) and 4% in Asia/Rest of World.
Bombardier Transportation has seen a series of mergers and acquisitions over the years contributing to company growth. The most recent major acquisition was Adtranz from Daimler Chrysler in 2001. To react to changing market demands in Europe, the company has had to adjust its geographic footprint in recent years, leading to some plant closures and some downsizing. These activities have been completed and there is now some growth following a number of high-profile orders.
One of the challenges will be to shift from a downsizing into growth mode and to provide leadership and qualified resources to master the large order intake. In parallel, individual functions like HR continue their transformation project of moving to a new service delivery model with improved effectiveness and efficiency. Within this scenario, there is an ongoing need to develop leadership capability in a complex matrix organisation to execute the strategy and manage customer projects in a profitable way. As the majority of leaders in the organisation have a background in engineering or related technical disciplines, they are likely to be involved in the detail of technical solutions as well as holding senior management roles. This inevitably leads to a permanent development objective of shifting more focus to the pure management and leadership element of their roles and away from the technical specialist role.
An overview of coaching at Bombardier Transportation
Within Bombardier Transportation there are 11 operating divisions. As a shared services structure for learning and development has only been created recently, coaching practice still varies significantly across the group, responding to the needs and coaching climate for each division and geography.
Coaching has been applied differently with different target audiences and within different contexts. These are all called coaching, but increasingly the organisation is facing the dilemma that using one word does not always suggest flexibility in the application of coaching.
In the words of Jost Wahlen, Director Workforce Development, ‘Coaching as an attitude and fundamental approach to leading people as their line manager has filtered into the content of our current leadership development programmes and it is not always made explicit any more. It has become common sense, integrated.’ The central talent development team is now implementing internal quality standards for using coaching in the company with a view to moving towards a consistent approach while leaving some flexibility to allow for specific business needs and local cultural customs.
Who is offered coaching
Across Bombardier Transportation’s divisions, external coaching is typically offered at executive level (presidents, vice-presidents and directors) and in some cases to high-potential managers. Participants (directors and high-potential managers) in some of the organisation’s global leadership development programmes are offered coaching as part of the sessions. High-potential managers are also offered mentoring by a more senior manager from within the business. External coaching is seen as an expensive intervention and there is some resistance to offering it more widely for that reason. In Austria, the local HR team has started a pilot to qualify internal managers as coaches to offer an alternative to external coaching to all employees. These managers would then offer coaching to people from other departments.
Throughout the organisation, in addition to specific coaching relationships, efforts have been made to embed coaching skills as part of the way of managing people.
Setting objectives for coaching
Coaching is seen as one instrument among others to generally support and develop leadership in the business. There is no specific strategy for coaching, but there is a strategy to develop leaders, to which coaching contributes.
Typically objectives are set between coach and coachee. Increasingly, there is a discussion about objectives between HR and line managers prior to engaging executive coaches. It is encouraged that the coachee and their line manager separately draft their ideas for individual development objectives, then meet formally to generate a mutually agreed set of objectives.
Throughout Bombardier Transportation coaching is woven into wider learning and development strategies in a number of ways. In some areas the principle link is through development processes, either a leadership development programme (where participants are coached) or management development programmes (which include coaching skills development). In many cases development needs leading to a coaching intervention are identified through the performance management process.
Many coaching interventions were linked to a preceding 360-degree feedback initiative and linked to the internal succession planning process. But sometimes coaching was a stand-alone offer.
Roles within the coaching relationship
The role of the HR teams
Centrally and across the divisions the HR teams play an active role in supporting coaching activities. In the past, in some divisions this role was limited to finding coaches in response to requests from individuals or their line managers and then stepping back and letting the relationship operate independently. However in a number of divisions HR act as the ‘glue’ that holds the various parties in the coaching relationship together. As one divisional HR person explains, ‘As the HR partner, I am leading separate, individual conversations with the coachee, with their line manager and sometimes with the coach. HR is the link between them, but for confidentiality and integrity reasons I prefer to keep the conversations apart.’
Another divisional HR partner played a similar role acting as facilitator to connect development needs, the coaching solution and the expectations of coachee and their line manager. He also undertakes regular review of progress between coachee, coach, HR and line manager, respecting the confidentiality of the specific contents of the coaching interactions.
These proactive approaches to supporting coaching interventions are the role models for HR going forward.
A summary of roles
Across the organisation several subtly different configurations are in operation. One division summarises coaching roles in the following way:
- Line manager orders/requests the coaching intervention for their staff.
- HR manages the relationship with coach and coachee, clarifies ‘to-dos’, makes sure coaching contract is set up and followed up and provides feedback to line manager.
- Coach is an external provider offering defined services for an agreed, finite amount of time/volume.
- Coachee is expected to achieve/change something as agreed in the coaching contract. It must be clear at the beginning what exactly is expected of the coachee and how success will be measured.
The role of line managers
In most divisions within Bombardier Transportation, line managers’ principal contribution to coaching is using their own coaching skills as part of their management style from time to time with their own reports. This way of managing is seen as increasingly critical in a globally active and changing organisation.
The organisation has invested significantly over recent years in offering leadership and management development to line managers. This has included coaching skills. There have been a number of specific initiatives across the organisation in recent years. For example, on the Belgian manufacturing site there was a major initiative in 2002–03 (known as ‘from chef to coach’) to develop coaching as a key competence for leaders.
The initiative aimed to develop a style of leadership based on dialogue between manager and their reports, building a relationship and offering support rather than giving orders based on hierarchical power. Even in this manufacturing environment, the style has been accepted well.
Line managers are also seen to hold a key role in supporting objective-setting and in evaluating the outcomes of coaching interventions by providing feedback.
The use of line managers as specialist internal coaches is relatively rare in the organisation. They are more likely to be called on to act as mentors to less senior staff. In North America a selection committee appoints internal mentors based on competencies and attitudes (such as credibility and interest in the development of others). In this case, and in some others across the organisation, the role of mentor is not given explicit credit in the individual performance management system. On a global level, a number of senior executives, including the Bombardier Transportation President, have accepted a role as mentor for high-potential managers. In the future it will be increasingly expected of all senior leaders to take an active role in mentoring and talent development to become part of their implicit role profile.
Starting small: piloting an internal coaching offer in Austria
To provide an alternative to external coaching and to open coaching to a wider audience, the HR team in Austria has piloted an internal coaching process. This modest internal coaching project was borne out of a team meeting in 2006 when employees raised the idea of having development conversations with managers from other departments.
HR responded by developing an internal coaching concept and a process for piloting it. In this pilot two line managers and one HR professional qualified as internal coaches, having trained with an external expert (who also provides supervision). The coaches went to their colleagues in the organisation themselves to find people interested in receiving coaching, and so far three employees have signed up. However, the line managers have found it challenging to work as coaches as well as delivering their normal job requirements. Both have found the role rewarding though.
The concept will be presented to the local management team soon for further roll-out.
The use of external coaches
Bombardier Transportation tends to use external coaches for more senior people. There are a number of reasons for this, not least the perceived lack of credible alternatives for this cadre. Some group-based interventions and the use of internal resources are often seen as inappropriate for senior leaders. As a result, there is a perceived risk that their learning opportunities tail off as they move up the hierarchy.
External coaches are seen to offer a number of benefits. A critical benefit is independence from the organisation, leading to a sense of neutrality and freedom from preconceptions. To support this, one part of the organisation stipulates that one external coach should not support more than three coachees from the same organisation.
The perception of confidentiality is more clear-cut with external coaches. This is particularly valued by senior people working on both professional and personal development topics. Externals are also appreciated for their ability to draw on experience in coaching across organisations and offer an outside perspective on issues. In addition, external coaches are experienced as being more available than internal coaches, who also hold other responsibilities.
Evaluating coaching effectiveness
It is considered important to properly evaluate the progress of a coaching intervention together with the sponsor without compromising the confidentiality of the coach–coachee relationship.
In most coaching interventions, evaluation takes place at the individual level and involves a review of the process and its outcomes with coach and coachee. In some cases the line manager sponsor is asked to feed back observations in a review conversation with HR at the end of the planned coaching intervention.
In one part of the organisation HR observes the behaviour of coaching participants, for example with their teams after a coaching intervention to assess progress.
For the mentoring programme in North America, the HR team follow up with participants and mentors to check that mentoring activities are taking place and that they are beneficial.
Jost Wahlen understands the benefits of evaluating outcomes at the organisational level but recognises that, in his words, ‘objectives linked to business objectives are so hard to evaluate as there will be a number of things involved in delivering the changes’. He advocates using success stories as a means of understanding how coaching contributes to organisation development.
Developing coaching at Bombardier Transportation – next steps
The global talent development team is implementing internal quality standards for coaching, which will guide the sourcing of coaching providers and the management of the coaching relationship in the future. Over time, it is expected that coaching will be used in an even more focused and effective way than before, taking the mystery out of it and giving this intervention a key place in the talent development strategy.
Coaching to support a change in ways of working for the leadership team (locomotives division)
Context
The locomotives division is responsible for designing, developing and manufacturing locomotives for customers in the passenger and freight rail business. The division employs about 1,500 employees at five sites in four countries in Europe. A management team of nine executives, including finance and HR, leads the business from sales to delivery. There is also some support from corporate headquarters functions.
The president and his team found that they did not have enough time to focus on strategic issues and to dedicate to relationship-building with key stakeholders of the business. Therefore the core team spent a day together in mid-2005 to generate ideas on how to refocus their capacity on what would be most effective for their division.
Solution
The president created room for about 30% of his time to dedicate to relationship-building and also managed to refocus his direct reports on strategic issues as opposed to close involvement in operational questions.
They achieved this by defining their own ‘leadership model’, which is currently being implemented to the middle management and below in this division. Key elements of this are that the president is no longer part of the management team, in the sense that they prepare their meetings and decisions on their own, and that generally decisions are encouraged at the point where the need for a decision arises. This means delegation away from the management team whenever possible and a shift of mindset along with it.
This initiative has been running for two years and has been supported by both individual coaching for the president and his direct reports by external experts, complemented by an external ‘team coach’ being present at management team meetings to ensure that the group is moving towards their chosen new leadership model. The members of the management were also prepared to act as peer coaches and support each other during this transition process.
The further implementation in the organisation will be facilitated by a training session for the 50 next-level leaders: objectives for them will be to understand the new leadership model, address the required leadership competencies for this step and prepare them to support each other with ‘peer coaching’. The implementation of the model for the next level of 100 managers is planned for 2008.