Peer Coaching Plan for AOL CEO Tim Armstrong

This report discusses the importance of peer coaching for AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and recommends a plan to improve his skills and leadership abilities. It also highlights the need for CEOs to take ownership of their decisions and provides recommendations for the company to address the current situation.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Findings...........................................................................................................................................2
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................3
Recommendations............................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5
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Introduction
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has wasted a golden opportunity to take ownership of a situation in
which he fired the creative director of the company in an unconvincing manner. After few days
Tim Armstrong sent an apology to all the employees of the company regarding his behaviour by
giving them excuses. As the company is planning to initiate changes in the company by reducing
the number of patchy website, therefore the CEO should have demonstrated ownership of the
incident what he had done and share his reflections among the employees which would have
helped in increasing the morale of the employees. The main aim of the report is to develop a peer
coaching plan for Tim Armstrong which would also contain various long term, medium and
short term goals for the CEO and also self-reflecting on the soft and hard core skills, problem
solving ability critical reflection skills, teamwork and management of self and others in a work
environment required by the CEO.
Findings
As stated by Parker, Wasserman, Kram& Hall (2015) peer coaching is very essential for AOL
CEO Tim Armstrong in order to expand, refine and build new skills which would enable him to
act and decide more swiftly during various challenging situations in the organization and will
also enable him to solve problems in the workplace in an effective manner so that it does not
disrupts the operations of the organization.
As stated by Alabi &Weare Jr (2014) the soft skills of Tim Armstrong are good communication
skills, strong work ethic, positive attitude and adaptability.
The hard core skills of Tim Armstrong are aggressiveness, speed of acting and decision making
and follow through.
Tim Armstrong lack effective critical reflection skills which is very essential for CEO’s of top
organizations as it enables them to analyse their decision in a detailed manner and identify any
room for improvement in the future regarding such decisions.
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Tim Armstrong possesses limited problem solving ability which is evident from the fact that
when he attempted to boost the morale of the employees regarding the changes to occur in the
organization, he ended up demoralizing them by sacking the creative director of the company.
Tim Armstrong possesses team work abilities which is evident from the fact that he spoke to
1000 employees of the company on a conference call in order to involve all the employees of the
organization towards the change but lack skills regarding management of self and others which is
evident from the fact that issues an apology to the employees for his behaviour regarding sacking
the creative director, instead of taking full accountability and responsibility of his decision and
reflecting what could have been done better in the situation.
As stated by Soisangwarn & Wongwanich (2014) the short term goals of the peer coaching plan
are to improve the self-reflection skills of the of the individuals in the workplace so that they can
better reflect on their own activities and identify scope of improvement, help individuals of the
organization identify their soft skills and hard skills of the individuals so that they can better
utilize their skills to perform their day to day task.
According to Swarbrick, Gill & Pratt (2016) the medium term goal of the peer coaching plan is
to improve the accountability of the individuals of the organization so that they take full
responsibility in what they do which improves the quality and efficiency of their day to day jobs,
effectively cope up with the changes in the organization and contribute to the organizational
goals and objectives.
According to Ladyshewsky (2017) the long term goals of peer coaching plan is to enable
individuals in the organization develop their leadership skills so that they can lead each and
every task effectively in the organization and improve their self-management and others
management skills so that they can easily manage themselves and other team members of the
organization in achieving the goals of the organization.
Conclusion
From the above report it is clear and evident that peer coaching is a very important tool which
can be used by organizations as it helps in increasing the accountability of individuals helps in
identifying teamwork opportunities, building leadership skills and also improves elf-reflection
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skills which turn helps in increasing the efficiency and productivity of organizations. From the
above report it can also be concluded that the CEO’s which possesses higher hard skills are more
likely to be successful than CEO’s who possess high softer skills. From the above report it can
also be concluded that every CEO must take ownership of their decisions taken by them in a
direct and heartfelt manner instead of backing away from it creates a negative impression among
the employees of the company. The future directions which can be recommended in the current
field will be to conduct research regarding the perceptions of employees regarding the top
management of the company during lack of ownership of situations.
Recommendations
The recommendation to the company board regarding solving the current situation which is
being observed in the organization is that the board of the company must develop various
incentive and bonus plans regarding performances for the employees of the company so that they
do not resist the changes which are being planned in the company and rather work by embracing
the change in order to receive the bonus and incentives from the company for their performances.
(Thalluri, O'Flaherty & Shepherd 2014)
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References
Alabi, J., &Weare Jr, W. H. (2014). Peer Review of Teaching: Best Practices for a Non-
Programmatic Approach. Communications in Information Literacy, 8(2), 7.
10.15760/comminfolit.2014.8.2.171
Ladyshewsky, R. K. (2017). Peer coaching as a strategy to increase learning and development in
organisational life-a perspective. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and
Mentoring, 15(1),<https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=645612265350968
;res=IELBUS> ISSN: 1741-8305.
Parker, P., Wasserman, I., Kram, K. E., & Hall, D. T. (2015). A relational communication
approach to peer coaching. The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 51(2), 231-252.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886315573270
Soisangwarn, A., &Wongwanich, S. (2014). Promoting the reflective teacher through peer
coaching to improve teaching skills. Procedia-Social and Behavioural Sciences, 116,
2504-2511.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.601
Swarbrick, M., Gill, K. J., & Pratt, C. W. (2016). Impact of peer delivered wellness
coaching. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 39(3), 234.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kenneth_Gill/publication/299983033_Impact_of_Pe
er_Delivered_Wellness_Coaching/links/59332ead45851553b6c653fb/Impact-of-Peer-
Delivered-Wellness-Coaching.pdf
Thalluri, J., O'Flaherty, J. A., & Shepherd, P. L. (2014). Classmate peer-coaching:" A Study
Buddy Support scheme". Journal of Peer Learning, 7(1), 92-104.
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.co.in/&httpsredi
r=1&article=1097&context=ajpl
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