The key to coaching is to foster a culture of learning

Coach­ing – both receiv­ing and deliv­er­ing it – has nev­er been so impor­tant. Accord­ing to the Insti­tute of Coach­ing, 80% of those who receive coach­ing report increased self-con­fi­dence, while more than 70% ben­e­fit from improved work per­for­mance, rela­tion­ships and more effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. Mean­while, 86% of com­pa­nies claim they more than recouped their invest­ment.

Pro­vid­ing coach­ing to employ­ees helps ensure that every­one per­forms at their best and that teams work as cohe­sive units. It can also enhance the lead­er­ship and inter­per­son­al skills of busi­ness lead­ers. Once they recog­nise the val­ue of coach­ing, they begin to incor­po­rate it into their organ­i­sa­tion­al frame­work. Empow­er­ing your employ­ees to deliv­er coach­ing can increase their self-aware­ness and help them devel­op a more entre­pre­neur­ial mind­set. Over­all, this can improve the work­ing envi­ron­ment and, ulti­mate­ly, com­pa­ny per­for­mance.

Boosting the self-reliance of staff

Coach­ing can enhance employ­ees’ self-reliance and their abil­i­ty to take the ini­tia­tive. They are more like­ly to find answers to prob­lems and to solve chal­lenges them­selves as they make more of their own deci­sions. They will feel safe ask­ing ques­tions and express­ing their ideas freely in a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment. All of this improves pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and align­ment.

Yet despite the man­i­fold ben­e­fits it offers, coach­ing is often seen as the respon­si­bil­i­ty of spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als. Many of these are senior man­agers who strug­gle to find the time in their busy work­ing lives to actu­al­ly do it. Yet a grow­ing num­ber of organ­i­sa­tions are start­ing to recog­nise that coach­ing can be applied across all areas and through all lev­els of man­age­ment, from senior exec­u­tives to mid­dle man­agers, and from face-to-face teams to remote work­ers. Who­ev­er deliv­ers it, coach­ing should be per­son­alised to meet indi­vid­u­als’ needs and reflect their evolv­ing roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties.

The key to deliv­er­ing coach­ing effec­tive­ly and reap­ing its exten­sive rewards in today’s fast-mov­ing cor­po­rate world is to cre­ate a learn­ing cul­ture. This means fos­ter­ing a curios­i­ty-dri­ven envi­ron­ment that sup­ports a growth mind­set. Organ­i­sa­tions ben­e­fit from improved employ­ee engage­ment and tal­ent reten­tion. Employ­ees, in turn, ben­e­fit from devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties that can sup­port ver­ti­cal or lat­er­al growth, as well as the chance to pur­sue new and rel­e­vant skills. Organ­i­sa­tions that base coach­ing on a learn­ing cul­ture adapt bet­ter to change, suf­fer low­er staff turnover rates and expe­ri­ence high­er employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion – a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion as com­pa­nies strug­gle in the cur­rent cli­mate to recruit and retain tal­ent.

Lifelong learning

Coach­ing that is based on a learn­ing cul­ture moti­vates employ­ees to become life­long learn­ers who can adapt to change quick­ly and effec­tive­ly. This type of learn­ing requires easy access to rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and a cul­ture that pro­motes infor­ma­tion shar­ing. Coach­ing there­by rein­forces a com­pa­ny-wide quest for knowl­edge. Learn­ers need access to per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion at the point and time of need. Online plat­forms, mean­while, fos­ter knowl­edge shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion. ‘Peo­ple are our great­est asset’ is the proud boast of many organ­i­sa­tions. Today, with tal­ent in greater demand than ever, organ­i­sa­tions that encour­age coach­ing based on shared learn­ing expe­ri­ences will be best placed to make that aspi­ra­tion a real­i­ty – and to ben­e­fit from it.

Coaching and a learning culture

• Coach­ing empow­ers deci­sion-mak­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing
• An acces­si­ble, rel­e­vant learn­ing tool can help sup­port these skills
• Coach­ing sup­ports a lead­er­ship pipeline and extends to skills beyond tech­ni­cal and pro­fes­sion­al capa­bil­i­ties. The can include soft skills, com­pa­ny cul­ture val­ues
• Coach­ing doesn’t need to be hier­ar­chi­cal. It can include cross-func­tion­al and reverse men­tor­ship

Learn, develop, inspire — the best content on coaching

Book: The Coach­ing Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way you Lead For­ev­er by Michael Stanier

Near­ly 75% of man­agers have received train­ing in how to coach their employ­ees, yet 73% of employ­ees nev­er receive coach­ing and when they do that coach­ing usu­al­ly doesn’t help them. Coach­ing involves much more than just talk­ing to peo­ple; it requires pos­ing intel­li­gent ques­tions that inspire employ­ees to talk about their thoughts, their work and their con­cerns. Michael Bun­gay Stanier, the first per­son hon­oured as Coach of the Year in Cana­da, uses the con­struct of sev­en essen­tial coach­ing ques­tions to teach man­agers how to coach effec­tive­ly.

Pod­cast: Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead: episode on Reverse Men­tor­ship with Patrice Gor­don

What comes to mind when you think of a work­place men­tor? It’s prob­a­bly some­one old­er, with years of man­age­r­i­al expe­ri­ence. But junior employ­ees – par­tic­u­lar­ly those from under­rep­re­sent­ed back­grounds – have a lot to teach their super­vi­sors. Lead­ers, after all, must under­stand the chal­lenges their employ­ees face before mak­ing exec­u­tive deci­sions.

In this episode of Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead pod­cast, Patrice Gor­don, a per­son­al devel­op­ment advo­cate spe­cial­is­ing in inclu­sive lead­er­ship, reverse men­tor­ing and women’s devel­op­ment pro­grammes, dis­cuss­es how to use reverse men­tor­ing to build trust and fos­ter inclu­sion in an organ­i­sa­tion.

Book: Coach the Per­son, Not the Prob­lem – A Guide to Using Reflec­tive Inquiry by Mar­cia Reynolds

Mar­cia Reynolds helps coach­es and lead­ers work with clients to cre­ate trans­for­ma­tive con­ver­sa­tions. In this book she promis­es the key to trans­for­ma­tion­al coach­ing: being ful­ly present. She teach­es read­ers to focus on indi­vid­u­als rather than their prob­lems to draw out their coach­ing clients’ true feel­ings and get to the root of their con­cerns. Packed with easy-to-grasp tips and case stud­ies, Reynold’s book includes the five tech­niques of reflec­tive inquiry to help coach­es expand their clients’ per­spec­tives and help them gain
the pow­er and con­fi­dence to
move for­ward.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it getabstract.com

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