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If line managers coached their subordinates all management trainers would be looking for other jobs, all, that is apart from a few specialists in techniques. A chastening thought but a possibility that it is not likely to worry us for some years to come. There is no doubt, however, that coaching by the boss is the most effective form of training, just as there is no doubt that the boss is the most powerful influence on how anybody does his or her job.

In recent years the use of formal, centralised training courses to promote the development of managers has been criticised by people such as Alistair Mant, Reginald Revans and Hawdon Hague. Mant calls for a drastic reappraisal of management education and training. He argues that, unless a coherent theory of management action and learning is developed, little real progress can be made. Revans advocates project‐based or action learning as an alternative to training courses, whilst Hague sees the individual coaching of managers as another possible solution to the problem of management training.

It's self‐evident that the boss is usually the man best‐equipped to run a company. But that doesn't mean that he's carrying out the job to the peak of his ability. Isolated from criticism, there's a danger of a chief executive lapsing into complacency — and that is why it is advisable to call in an expert “coach” to question those decisions. Here, award‐winning author, Hawdon Hague, describes how the technique works.

He may be a good production director, but would he make a good chief executive? Training consultant and management author, Hawdon Hague, examines some of the haphazard methods which characterise management selection and offers advice to the promotion makers.

Systematic job changes give the potential manager the necessary breadth of experience for his future role, says Hawdon Hague. It's a policy which is practised in the Armed Services — and one which industry might usefully adopt.

Training courses have their obvious flaws — among them the inability of students to absorb lengthy lectures and the seeming irrelevance of some subjects to the individual's practical needs. Training consultant, Hawdon Hague, gives his views on how to avoid these and other shortcomings.

It is possible to see Management Development as a process peculiarly subject to creative obsolescence, in which the basic purpose of the process (to help create a larger pool of more effective managers) is constantly having added to it new improved features, each characterised by an assumption of priority, significance and technical excellence. Just as car manufacturers tout new features—tyres which grip even a flooded road, petrol without dangerous additives, maintenance free batteries—so new features of management development are identified and thrust upon apparently eager customers (management development advisers) and rather less eager consumers (managers). Self‐Development is clearly the latest technique to be placed before a set of customers apparently hungry for an improved product.

My series of articles on Self‐Development, and the philosophy behind it, ought to raise questions on the role and staffing of the training function. A different training approach is called for, often a different organisational slot; the function needs to be seen differently and it needs to see itself differently.

The Training Services Agency's Discussion Document on Management Development stressed the importance of self‐development. “To be effective learners”, it said, “managers must effectively take responsibility for their own development, rather than relying on any management development scheme and organisations should encourage this” (ref. 2.3(e)).

The first article sought to establish that there is a role for a “catalyst” type of tutor under the self‐development philosophy. This second article will look at the important steps, at both organisational and individual level, which the tutor must take to get self‐development started. The opening article talked of the need to have the right organisational climate (e.g. establishing that coaching by the boss was the norm, establishing that mistakes are allowable, proving that people matter) and of getting the various types of individual (e.g. the high flyer, the top manager, the switched off) to pick up the ball and run with it. This article will continue those metaphors.