Abstract
The mining sector forms a significant part of the South African economy, but is facing multiple challenges such as unstable commodity prices, increasing production costs, and safety and labour concerns. Poor engagement among mining employees decreases the effects of safety measures and has a negative impact on productivity and performance. Therefore, a need for interventions which will enable employees to function optimally and bring wholehearted discretionary effort to their work was identified. The research question the study aimed to address was ‘to what extent a skills-coaching intervention for team leaders in a specific mining industry affect their team’s work engagement?’ A mixed-methods, experiential, longitudinal, action research approach – using a specific case in point, with two experimental groups versus two control groups – was adopted. Purposive sampling was used to obtain the two experimental groups consisting of two team leaders and their teams, and two control groups consisting of two leaders and their teams. An Engagement Pulse survey instrument was used during the first phase to collect primary data from team members in the experimental and control groups on four separate occasions over three months. During this phase, an action research approach was incorporated; a solution was offered that involved an intervention in the form of coaching sessions between measurements. Semi-structured interviews with team leaders and focus group interviews with participants followed in order to collect rich in-depth data from participants. The goal was to reflect on the engagement and the coaching intervention. Findings suggested that the coaching intervention did not affect team member engagement as measured by the Engagement Pulse instrument. However, themes generated from the perspectives of team leaders via semi-structured interviews and team members via focus groups yielded valuable insights in response to the research question. Leaders benefited personally from the coaching intervention in that they were able to add leadership skills to their technical skills. Furthermore, they could experience support in a safe thinking environment and were able to leverage engagement feedback. They came away from the process with new insights about how to enhance team performance through recognition, delegation, and communication through business storytelling. Leaders emerged with insights about how to enhance team relationships. Team members indicated coachable leadership behaviours and characteristics that would enhance their engagement in their work environment. These were the communication of clear organisational mission, respectful leadership, authentic leadership, caring leadership, nurturing of team relationships and function, recognition, clear communication of expectations, working with strengths, and opportunities to grow. A desired leadership characteristic and behaviour conceptual model is presented that could lead to work engagement in the mining sector.