Organizations today must balance quality, information security, worker safety, and environmental responsibility while navigating constant change and potential disruptions. ISO standards offer proven frameworks to address these critical areas: ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO/IEC 27001 (Information Security Management), ISO 45001 (Occupational Health and Safety Management), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), ISO 31000 (Risk management) and ISO 22301 (Business Continuity Management Systems) are some of the main ISO’s I come across. They provide structured approaches to enhance performance, mitigate risks, and ensure business continuity. Implementing these standards demonstrates a commitment to best practices, builds stakeholder trust, and drives sustainable success in a complex world.

Effective knowledge management is paramount for any organization, especially within an Integrated Management System (IMS). It requires strong leadership embodied in three key roles: Lead Designer, Lead Teacher, and Lead Steward. While foundational knowledge is essential for these roles, their true effectiveness—and consequently the success of the IMS and its audit outcomes—absolutely depends on comprehensive and ongoing coaching. Coaching is no longer a peripheral benefit; it is the critical catalyst that transforms theoretical knowledge into practical competence and drives demonstrable improvements in performance.

This article emphasizes the critical role of coaching in achieving robust knowledge management, facilitating successful ISO certification, and supporting risk management and business continuity.

Three Key Leadership Roles (with a Coaching Focus):

1. Lead Designer (IMS Knowledge Architect):
• Core Focus: Designing the knowledge architecture aligned with IMS requirements.
• Key Activities: Designing systems, policies, and processes for knowledge capture, storage, retrieval, and sharing, ensuring seamless integration with IMS processes.
• Coaching Focus:
• IMS Standards Mastery: Deep understanding of relevant ISO standards (9001, 14001, 45001, etc.) and their knowledge management implications.
• Systems Thinking & Process Mapping: Ability to design interconnected systems and map knowledge flow within IMS processes (e.g., risk management, document control, internal audits, management review).
• Data Analytics & Metrics Development: Coaching on analysing knowledge usage data and developing KPIs to measure the effectiveness of knowledge management initiatives and their contribution to IMS goals.
• Change Management & Stakeholder Engagement: Coaching on implementing changes to knowledge management systems and engaging stakeholders effectively.
2. Lead Teacher (IMS Knowledge Champion):
• Core Focus: Fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and IMS awareness.
• Key Activities: Promoting knowledge sharing, delivering IMS training, and encouraging continuous learning related to the standards and the organization’s IMS implementation.
• Coaching Focus:
• Training Delivery & Facilitation Excellence: Developing engaging training materials and easing effective knowledge transfer.
• Communication & Interpersonal Mastery: Communicating complex IMS concepts clearly and persuasively to diverse audiences.
• Mentoring & Coaching Proficiency: Equipping the Lead Teacher to mentor and coach others on knowledge sharing and IMS-related topics.
• Adult Learning Principles & Learning Styles: Applying adult learning principles and adapting to different learning styles for maximum impact.
3. Lead Steward (IMS Knowledge Guardian):
• Core Focus: Ensuring the integrity, relevance, and security of IMS-related knowledge.
• Key Activities: Supporting knowledge quality, identifying gaps, managing access, and ensuring compliance with confidentiality and legal requirements related to IMS information.
• Coaching Focus:
• Information Security & Data Governance Expertise: Coaching on best practices for protecting sensitive information, implementing access controls, and ensuring data integrity.
• Risk Management & Knowledge Loss Mitigation: Developing skills to identify and mitigate risks related to knowledge loss, misuse, or inaccuracy, particularly concerning IMS-related information.
• Auditing & Compliance Proficiency: Ensuring knowledge management practices comply with ISO standards, legal requirements, and internal policies.
• Knowledge Auditing & Gap Analysis Techniques: Performing knowledge audits to find gaps, assess quality, and ensure the relevance of organizational knowledge to IMS objectives.

The Role of Coaching in Achieving Positive Audit Outcomes:

Effective coaching directly contributes to positive ISO audit outcomes by ensuring:

• Demonstrable Compliance: Coached individuals can clearly articulate how knowledge management processes meet IMS requirements, providing objective evidence to auditors.
• Effective Implementation: Coaching ensures that knowledge management systems are not only documented but effectively implemented and used throughout the organization.
• Continual Improvement: Coached individuals understand the importance of continual improvement and are equipped to identify opportunities for improvement in knowledge management processes and their contribution to the IMS.

Audit Outputs Facilitating ISO Certification:

Well-coached personnel contribute to the following audit outputs that facilitate ISO certification:

• Documented Information: Clearly documented knowledge management processes, procedures, and records that demonstrate compliance with ISO requirements.
• Evidence of Competence: Records of training, coaching, and competency assessments that demonstrate the competence of personnel involved in knowledge management and IMS implementation.
• Management Review Inputs: Data and analysis related to knowledge management effectiveness that informs management review meetings and drives continual improvement.
• Corrective Actions & Preventive Actions: Evidence of effective corrective and preventive actions taken to address knowledge gaps, security breaches, or other nonconformities identified through audits or other feedback mechanisms.

Integrating Risk Management and Business Continuity:

Coaching should emphasize the crucial link between knowledge management, risk management, and business continuity.

• Risk Identification & Assessment: Coaching personnel on finding knowledge-related risks (e.g., loss of key personnel, outdated information, data breaches) and assessing their potential impact on the IMS and business operations.
• Business Continuity Planning: Coaching on incorporating knowledge management considerations into business continuity plans, ensuring that critical knowledge is preserved and accessible during disruptions.
• Knowledge Transfer & Succession Planning: Coaching on implementing effective knowledge transfer processes to mitigate the risk of knowledge loss due to employee turnover or retirement.

The Power of Coaching:

Coaching is not merely a training activity; it is a developmental process that empowers individuals to achieve their full potential. It offers personalized guidance, feedback, and support, enabling individuals to develop the necessary skills, knowledge, and mindset to effectively manage knowledge within the context of an ISO IMS. Without robust coaching, even the best-designed systems and processes will fall short of their potential. Coaching is the critical ingredient that transforms knowledge management from a theoretical concept into a tangible driver of organizational success and successful ISO certification.

Summary:

A robust IMS is business-critical in today’s volatile market, maximizing ROI and mitigating risk. Effective knowledge management, led by skilled Designers, Teachers, and Stewards, is essential. But knowledge alone isn’t enough; comprehensive coaching delivers the demonstrable competence needed for tangible performance improvements, positive audits, and maximized IMS performance.

Unlock the full potential of your IMS. Invest in coaching and achieve tangible, measurable returns. Contact me today.

Narrative

There was a coach who had worked with various teams in different industries worldwide. She was known for her ability to motivate and engage with various team members, but she faced a new challenge when she was assigned to coach a team of software engineers in a well-known propulsion systems company.

The team was led by a determined, old-school team leader who valued adherence to rigid guidelines. He would discipline and penalise team members if they said or did anything out of turn, which made it challenging for the coach to build relationships with them. The coach tried a few engagement strategies, but none proved to be effective.

She started by observing the team’s work process and identifying areas where she could provide guidance. However, the team leader was always hovering around, making it difficult for her to have one-on-one conversations with team members. The coach then tried to organize team-building activities, but the team leader refused to give them time off from work.

The coach decided to discuss the situation with her coaching supervisor, and during the session they established that the problem wasn’t with the team members but with the team leader’s management style. She made the decision to approach the team leader honestly and explain how his stringent guidelines were impacting the team’s morale and output. Although he initially resisted, he eventually conceded to giving the coach more freedom to interact with the team members. She also made a point of making sure he didn’t feel excluded or usurped by her actions.

With the team leader ‘s support, the coach was able to connect with team members on a personal level and understand their individual strengths and weaknesses. She encouraged the team leader to identify training programs that helped team members improve their skills and boost their confidence. The coach also encouraged open communication and feedback, which helped build trust between the team leader and his team.

Over time, the team’s performance improved significantly, and they started delivering high-quality software products within tight deadlines. The coach had successfully overcome the challenge of engaging with a team managed by a strong-minded team leader.

In conclusion, the coach’s decision to utilise supervision to help find a solution to her problem resulted in the fact she was able to establish a positive and productive relationship with the team, despite the potential obstacles posed by the team leader’s personality or leadership style and all parties benefited from the coaching process. Without supervision, this probably would have not worked out!

Introduction

With the recent debacle in the UK regarding Lighthouse, many people are rightly concerned about the coaching community and are calling for stronger regulation.

The coaching community has successfully self-regulated for some time, and the community has come a long way to being more transparent and in having recognisable certifications awarded by representative bodies such as AC, EMCC, and the ICF.

Part of my coaching journey has been facilitated and empowered by having a fabulous mentor and accredited supervisor in the form of Dr. Clare Beckett-McInroy and she has recently encouraged me to get more involved in supervision, which is now being recognised by several bodies and adopted as a necessary element that every coach should be subject to. I believe that this stems from the helping professions/medical industry (plus education) and the success they have had in many departments by encouraging regular supervision sessions with a view to improving standards of service.

What is coaching SUPERVISION and why is it essential for coaching professionals?

Supervision is a key component of coaching that ensures the quality and effectiveness of coaching interventions. It involves a collaborative and reflective process between a coach and a supervisor, where the coach presents their coaching cases, and the supervisor provides feedback, guidance, and support.

The primary purpose of supervision is to enhance the coach’s skills, knowledge, and self-awareness, which ultimately leads to better outcomes for clients.

Supervision is essential for coaching professionals for several reasons. Firstly, it provides coaches with a safe and supportive space to reflect on their coaching practice. Through supervision, coaches can explore their strengths and weaknesses, identify blind spots, and develop strategies to improve their coaching skills. This reflective process helps coaches to become more self-aware and mindful of their actions, which can lead to better decision-making and more effective coaching interventions.

Secondly, supervision provides coaches with feedback on their coaching practice. Feedback from a supervisor can help coaches to identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to address them. It can also help coaches to identify their strengths and build on them. Feedback from a supervisor is essential in ensuring that coaches are delivering high-quality coaching interventions that meet the needs of their clients.

Finally, supervision is essential for ensuring ethical practice in coaching. Coaches are required to adhere to ethical guidelines set out by professional bodies such as the International Coach Federation (ICF). Supervision provides coaches with guidance on ethical issues that may arise in coaching practice and helps them navigate these issues in a way that is consistent with ethical principles.

Conclusion

In conclusion, SUPERVISION is an essential component of coaching practice that ensures the quality and effectiveness of coaching interventions. It provides coaches with a safe and supportive space to reflect on their practice, receive feedback on their coaching interventions, and ensure ethical practice. The ICF is working on supervision competencies right now, and it is an essential requirement for you if you are applying for the Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC). EMCC and AC have required supervision for becoming an accredited coach practitioner for a number of years.

In my next article, I will look at some of the different perspectives and explore four different views of coaching supervision: traditional, humanistic, systemic, and integrative.

References

Reference publications used:

1. The International Coach Federation (ICF)

2. European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)

3. Beckett-Mcinroy (www.beckett-mcinroy.com)

Shutterstock, Corund ID: 159452003

Most companies introduce change through a project or a programme comprised of multiple projects. The need for good project management is obvious but I come across many companies experiencing difficulties in delivery. This is often because their project managers lack experience and simply do not know how to properly manage risks or are short on techniques to keep things on track.

Too often cost reduction means human resources are shared over-optimistically, assigned to achieve too much and, with tight scheduling, this invariably leads to over-utilisation. Such poorly managed people become resentful, stop delivering and become disenchanted usually resulting in them leaving the organisation.

Think about the costs such poor leadership incurs – this does not reduce costs, but creates more cost such as hiring a new employee to replace the one that is leaving, along with all the disruption to the teams and to any projects they are involved in plus the need to spend extra time on handover. How much is the loss of company related knowledge as it walks out of the door accounted for? In addition, there is the impact of their departure on all the established relationships which were built during their service with the company.

What a waste and all because somebody in senior management wanted to save a few dollars!

Cost reduction decisions need to consider the strategic goals of the company and any current and future planned projects. The whole management team should be involved, to identify potential threats to their teams and working processes and to design risk contingencies enabling the company to continue forward in its planned change programme with as little disruption as possible.

One of my specialities is coaching teams around risk and contingency.

Such coaching around risk and contingency is well worth the investment just from the benefit of having managers come together and discuss some of their issues thereby providing greater appreciations and understanding of all the challenges. Risk contingency design and development provides greater alignment and gives managers planned and already agreed actions.

Such basic practice gives everybody confidence in the rest of the team and creates a higher performing organisation.

Coached Training

Much of my work is based around the provision of coached training designed to help individuals and companies develop towards a higher performing organisation and too keep their many change projects on track. Last week I met with a client and we discussed some of my training modules and he responded … “Training … oh we have stopped all training this year except health and safety mandated training, we are in a cost reduction phase!”

It is common knowledge that sports stars and world class athletes use coaches to motivate them to step up to challenges and to work towards higher standards and I do the same with business teams, managers and corporate executives by developing new knowledge and coaching habits that enable better performance. Can you imagine a young athletics superstar having a spell of bad results saying – oh I am going to stop training because it costs too much?

When you ask yourself, what do we need to do be even better, the answer is … ‘Employ a Projects Coach’.

A Project Coach

What’s a project coach?.

An experienced projects coach will parachute into your company and help your project leadership find the necessary options and solutions to their current project challenges and issues.

I can be retained to provide ongoing coaching to establish good habits or I can simply be deployed as a consultant for a specified period.

Your choice – Let’s talk!

Thank you and have a great day!

Likes are nice, comments are better, shares are best!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gave us many memorable quotes and the one that has always stood out for me is the simple message from his sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood where he said,

“Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighbourhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.”

Seeking the Promised Land

He was essentially developing the idea that we are philosophically always moving or seeking our promised land – somewhere better and he went on to point out how corrupting this could be if we only focus on the material benefits.  It is hard to believe that he delivered this in February 1965, over fifty years ago!

If you spend a little time thinking about this, we have moved on since then, but we still have a long way to go.  We have created a more global community where we regularly communicate across vast distances, a global village that is moving towards speaking the same language.

But, we can still do more work addressing equality and poverty!

More than half the world’s population live in poverty and One Billion children live in poverty. For you and me, education is a basic right, yet those children living in poverty are the least likely to get the opportunity to attend a school.

NOTHING gets done without action

As a projects coach and I am all about getting people to take action – You can dream and plan and scheme all you want but NOTHING gets done without action!

So have one less coffee or beer, instead of upsizing have it regular, instead of the car, bus or walk and the little bit of money that you save – donate it – every little helps.

I won’t tell you who to or how – you can work that out yourself – but do it, make a contribution to the education of somebody else in OUR world and earn that feeling of satisfaction at having done something positive.

I leave you with my other favourite Dr. King Jr.’s quote. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

We all need to love a little more!

Catch up with me at www.elev8.coach

Once again we are at the beginning of a new year … and everybody is talking about and sharing their “New Year’s Resolution”.

I have to admit that over the years’ experience has jaded my view of resolutions and I know that many will come to nought, so I want YOU to try something different this year …

Let me tell you a quick story….

I was privileged to watch an interaction yesterday between an elderly man and a young lady in a local coffee shop. He was becoming more and more frustrated trying to send a text message and was obviously struggling with the fact that his eyes weren’t as keen as they used to be and the phone message font was a little too small for his eyes.

She watched for about thirty seconds and then sensing his rising frustration, she went over and asked him if she could help? He said, “What can you do?” and she offered to make the text font larger for him. He promptly gave her the phone and she quickly went to setup and enlarged the text message font for him and then spent a little time with him making sure he was okay with it before going back to her coffee.

Would you have got up and offered to help?

Sometimes we forget that we are raised with technology and it seems simple to us – like many of my friends who speak Arabic and English as if it were the natural thing to do! Many people struggle with technology that we take for granted!

When you see somebody having a spot of bother or becoming frustrated – how difficult is it to say, “Can I help you with that?”

So why don’t you make a resolution that you can try and stick to which is …

Set out today with the intention of stopping and helping somebody else, not for any reward, but because you genuinely want to help somebody.

And be patient, remember, your parents were patient teaching you how to use a spoon!

I hope you all have a fabulous 2018

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash – Thank you

John Maxwell (Leadership author) is quoted as saying, “To add value to others, one must first value others.”

I believe he has a point and worryingly, I am seeing a trend where many companies are hiring based upon the least cost. A friend of mine recently shared with me how he negotiated new talent into the company as cheaply as possible and that he was rather proud of his newly developed strong-arm negotiating skills. Personally, I think that his real mission should be to get the best candidate for the best price – and strong arming candidates to save a few pennies isn’t the best option for any company. Do they not realise that as soon as a better offer comes along, these people will be off leaving their team minus one or more as well as feeling disenchanted and probably demoralised themselves.

We seem to have lost our respect for one and other and I believe we should all work together to change this stilted mind-set! We should question the payment of large shareholder dividends and instead, seek to pay people a decent living wage. Trust me, if you invest in your people, you will reap the benefits.

In the military we give medals to people who are prepared to sacrifice their lives in the service of others… in business we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others to benefit themselves!

Somewhere we have taken a wrong turn – We have to change our thinking and get back on the right track!

The Project Coach – “I’m always looking for new problems to fix, like that stalled project you just can’t get sorted … do you need a hand?”