232 The Coaching Toolkit for Child Welfare Practice
The check, the key and the axe have no
place here [in the coaching relationship
between manager/supervisor and staff]
as they can serve only to inhibit such a
relationship.
~ Whitmore, 2009, Chap. 2, Paragraph. 1
Supervisors and managers can help staff, through coaching and
support, succeed in learning new tasks and taking on new
responsibilities. John Whitmore (2009) makes a persuasive argument
for supervisors or managers providing coaching to direct reports,
but notes that coaching “demands the highest qualities of that
manager: empathy, integrity, and detachment, as well as a
willingness, in most cases, to adopt a fundamentally different
approach to staff” (Chapter 2, paragraph 2).
Whitmore furthers describes that coaching is most successful
when the desired outcome is (a) quality of the work product or
(b) learning a new skill. If the desired outcome is timeliness,
sometimes the supervisor or manager will find it most appropriate
to delegate or simply do the task themselves.
Many child welfare organizations share the same lament, they
have attempted to implement several different programs and
practices and have not witnessed success or real change. As
described in Chapter 7: Implementation, real change takes time.