Coaching and mentoring in modern Project Management Offices (PMO) plays a very significant role in building consistency, capability, and confidence across organization’s project team. While coaching is a temporary goal-oriented process, mentoring has a longer lifespan when it comes to career development.
Mentoring, on the other hand provides the organization with the right framework to pursue a more holistic, and permanent relationship where experienced experts are required to lead those ones with lesser knowledge of the art.
Here, they’re required to share knowledge through their lived experiences, and support career advancement. This piece will be geared towards getting a deep understanding of coaching and mentoring, why it’s relevant from a PMO standpoint, and the role of PMO as a development hub.
The Concept of Coaching and Mentoring
While it can comfortably be used interchangeably, coaching and mentoring serve entirely different purposes. For coaching, it is a temporary and performance-oriented. It’s focused on improving a particular skill sets or fix an immediate problem affecting the organization.
When put to effective use, PMOs can leverage the art of coaching to guide team members towards navigating particular challenges. It also helps them come up with a practical solution to develop their self-confidence.
Mentoring, on the other hand, is a permanent and focused approach that emphasizes knowledge transfer and professional growth. Organizations that adopt and practices mentoring gain a significant amount of knowledge, and career counseling for its staff. It also often comes with certifications.
Mentoring is a perfect tool to develop relevant soft skills like emotional intelligence, communication, and leadership. It’s also a perfect way to build employee’s confidence hence, expand their understanding of project management and it’s methodology.
Why are Coaching and Mentoring Important in PMO?
Organizations need coaching and mentoring now like never before. This is because of increased economic and career uncertainties that most of the time emanate from different technological advancement. Some of the known reasons include (but are not limited to):
• Improve Performance
When properly done, coaching and mentoring significantly improve the performance of the project team, while increasing turnover.
• Promote Best Practices and Relevant Knowledge
Coaching and mentoring encourages team members to embrace knowledge-based activities. It standardizes best practices over speculative suggestions.
• Aligns Execution With Goals
Coaching and mentoring have a way of making every execution process strategically align with the project goals. This is largely because it is always present constant guidance throughout the execution process.
What Are the Major Coaching Skills for PMO Leaders?
To perfect coaching in PMO, there is a need to develop some relevant skills. These skills include:
1. Active Listening
Project managers are advised to master the art of paying full attention to both their team members and their business environment. This will aid them in understanding some of the challenges affecting the team and the environment at large.
2. Strong Feedback
It’s advised that PMO must normalize providing pragmatic, balanced, and offer-driven feedback. This will compel all factors working for the improvement of the organization to brace up for the occasion.
3. Accountability
This is where PMOs are tasked with helping mentees achieve measurable progress. This can happen through occasional motivation using real time scenarios – especially events that happened within the organization.
What is the Known Mentoring Framework for PMOs?
There are some structured approach designed for mentoring PMOs that ensures measurable results and consistency. They include:
• Mentor-Mentee Matchmaking
This is where mentees and mentors get paired based on career expectations, skills, and work experience. They are expected to share ideas and make viable suggestions where necessary.
• Set Goals
PMOs are expected to define a clear working development plan that can be measured at some point in the implementation.
● Evaluation
PMOs should be able to evaluate the impact of mentoring and periodically assess its effectiveness on team members.
Conclusion
Coaching and mentoring will always be the solid ground upon which every visionary organization walks. When applied effectively, it affects both project team members and the organization in general. Organizations should be wary of the type of mentors they invite.
It must be people who have gone through the same process and have gathered strong experience through their years of experience. Finally, PMOs must endeavor to choose both mentors and coaches from within the organization. This will enable them to mentor and coach employees using stories and experiences related to the organization’s operations.