TRAINING BOSSES TO USE INFLUENCE, NOT RAW AGGRESSION, IMPROVES THEIR EFFECTIVENESS.

William P. Milo always thought he did a pretty good job of stroking and motivating his "direct reports," so it came as a surprise when some of his managers at the Phico Insurance Company, a large health insurer in Mechanicsburg., Pa., let Mr. Milo know they felt unappreciated. "Through further analysis, we discovered they felt praised," said Mr. Milo, the senior vice president for administration and planning for Phico. "But when someone does a super job, they feel they aren’t treated differently."

Mr. Milo learned of his very reparable flaw while he was scouting and testing leadership development programs for Phico, in search of solutions to problems posed by changes in the economy and the nature of his business. His is an industry in turmoil, both from the corporate desire for more efficiency and the country’s desire for health care reform. "Re-engineering’s hit," he said. "We need to be much more flexible, more customer-focused. We need to get people to be more creative."

Among the programs he tried was an executive coaching seminar put on by the insurance practice of the Hay Group, the big consulting firm in New York. For three days last fall he was assessed, interviewed, benchmarked and mentored. He listened to feedback gathered before the seminar from colleagues, subordinates and supervisors and soaked it up from his co-participants. He learned that consultants had a word or phrase for every style of work, management, personality learning or ability.

He came away, he says, understanding better what the "core competencies" – the crucial skills – of a leader are, how to match them with Phico’s strategic goals and how to encourage his people to acquire them. The course may have helped him to understand himself better. "It gives you an idea of what your motives are, whether for achievement of power or affiliation," he said. "It gives you a look inside at what drives you."

Coaching – as executive development has come to be called – is not new. But corporate shrinkage and the dawning era of flexible, decentralized management are making obsolete the idea that executives can expect to muscle their way to a career pinnacle and then coast until retirement. Increasingly, they are expected to be, in the words of the anthropologist Harvey Sarles, "Auto-didacts," or self-teachers and lifelong learners, whose performance will evolve and improve.

But it is not so easy to push senior managers into what is essentially a training mode. "We think it’s O.K. for first-line supervisors to get training, but not for higher ups," said Martin Leshner, managing director for the Hay Group and head of its insurance practice. When they think of improving their performance, most employees focus on gaining more technical skills, precisely what they don’t need, in Mr. Leshner’s view, especially if they are moving up the hierarchy. "Mostly, people need the ability to influence people. The way organizations operate these days, you are interacting with people who don’t work for you. You can’t just make them do something, "he said.

What Coaching Can’t Accomplish

It is not impossible to coach a person’s career back to life, but most executive development experts say companies should not regard coaching as the last chance for the employee to avoid being cashiered. "Sometimes it’s hard to ascertain the true motives of a company, " said Martin Leshner, a development expert at the Hay Group. "I ask them not to send people they have trouble with. It’s an especially bad idea if the person goes and doesn’t do well." The message to other employees can be that coaching means their careers are on the line.

Steven Lurie, head of his own executive development firm, frequently sees valued employees who are stalled for one reason or another, but he too is leery of taking on lost causes. "If the person has no real future, but the company feels bad about not giving him feedback for 20 years, then it’s a nonintervention," he said. "If you want a 9 and he’s a 3, it probably doesn’t make sense."

Younger employees, in particular, are not receptive to the send-‘em-to-the-principal school of management. "They aren’t chain of command-oriented," said Steven E. Lurie, head of Lurie Executive Development, a coaching firm based in Valley Stream, L.I.

If learning to use influence rather than raw aggression is a frequent proximate cause for calling in a coach, failing to make the mental leap from technician to leader is another. One of Mr. Lurie’s recent success stories, as he described it, was a manager in a small organization who had recently taken over the leadership of a team, and soon found himself at the center of struggle and tension. "There was a lot of internal competition," Mr. Lurie said. "He couldn’t get straight answers or information from people, even though he was very open and available – the opposite of the previous boss."

The problem turned out to be that he thought his job was to tell his "direct reports" how to do their jobs. His employees felt insulted and devalued. "They were professionals who needed to be left alone," Mr. Lurie said. The boss was panicked because he didn’t know how to prove his effectiveness without measurable results, like sales figures, to show. "That’s pretty typical of business men and women I deal with," Mr. Lurie said. "They get rewarded for very tangible accomplishments. Leadership is habitually referred to as the soft stuff." The executive’s developmental leap, as Mr. Lurie called it, was to be willing to trade his tangibles for "just" being a leader.

Feedback played an important role in helping the executive modify his style. His employees noted his ability to bring them together as a team, to keep the unit visible at the corporate level and to garner good community relationships.

For Phico’s Mr. Milo, who has brought the Hay Group’s program in-house so that all Phico managers may go through it, what he learned about feedback of all sorts may be the most valuable lessons of the seminar. He has already instituted more recognition programs so superachievement is acknowledged. And the strategic core competencies – the ability to influence, for example – rather than technical ability may become the basis of performance reviews. "The biggest skill sets are coaching, counseling, giving and getting feedback and giving recognition," Mr. Milo said, adding, "We’re looking for managers to understand the impact they have on people."