Is Coaching Right for Your Organisation?
Are you a manager who’s heard about coaching but you’re not sure what it is and if it would be useful in your organisation? This is a regular question from non-HR managers, so I thought it would be helpful if I put together a list of 10 key pointers to coaching – what it is and isn’t and also the benefits – to answer some of your questions.
A Guide to Coaching for non-HR Managers
- Coaching is a way of releasing the potential of people to aid performance. It is not a cosy chat or counselling. The focus should be on how to help people do a better job than they are doing now.
- Coaching can be to help someone with a short-term task, or have a longer-term focus by helping themto think through things for the future such as a career plan.
- Anyone can coach if they have the right skills. The key ones are listening, asking good open probing questions, reflecting, summarising and giving feedback. Many managers have these skills already to some degree however coach training helps them to put structure around their coaching conversations and leads them away from some bad habits they may have got into such as always telling or instructing their staff.
- The benefit of coaching your staff is largely to develop and grow their ability to think differently and creatively about work issues so that you tap their natural ability. Often employees get treated like children who are there to follow instructions. However you are not using the brainpower of the people you have employed and therefore ideas and suggestions that could improve your business may be lost.
- Many managers who have been trained in coaching skills report that it becomes a way of life or mind-set. It just becomes the way they manage and talk to people rather than a tool to be wheeled out ad hoc.
- Coaching is not just about remedying poor performance although it can help, it should be more developmental and transforming. After all great sportsmen have coaches and they are already excellent at their game. They use a coach to get even better!
- Coaching can also be a boon in other areas of work such as appraisals and work monitoring discussions. It is a great way of giving managers confidence to have honest conversations with staff so that issues can be nipped in the bud earlier instead of being left to fester until it lands on your desk!
- Trust is a big issue in coaching and people will only be motivated to engage with coaching and get the best out of it if they have trust and rapport with the person who is coaching them whether this is their manager or another coach.
- Sometimes an external coach is valuable in some specific situations when you need someone with a neutral stance and objective view of a coachee’s issue. Also if it is a more complex problem that’s maybe outside the skills of the manager. More deep seated behavioural changes may require a coach who has a good level of psychological underpinning to their own training and qualifications.
- Ultimately coaching is about facilitating (helping) the performance of your employees.
I’ve also done a couple of posts on how to choose the ideal coach, and how to contract with a coach which will give you further guidance.
Let me know if you’ve found post this useful. And as always you can contact me for a no obligation chat about how your organisation could benefit from coaching. Call 01785 603726 or email me.
Julia