Coaching is a critical business skill. Being a good coach is first on Google’s top 10 manager behaviors.
Coaching in human resources development aims to create a high-performance culture by enabling employees to unlock their full potential. Coaching now also plays a significant role in a solid employee retention plan because it drives a sense of purpose, empowerment and self-actualization.
What is Coaching?
Coaching in the workplace is when a leader reviews the performance objectives and helps unleash the potential within an employee to achieve those objectives. As a coach, you can act as a sounding board, facilitate transitions, and address derailing behavior. Coaching can transform people and businesses by helping people better their skills, improve their effectiveness, approach problems with a growth mindset, and improve working relationships.
Coaching Continuum
There are many ways to set up coaching. You can coach one individual or coach groups of employees. In addition, the coaching structure can fall across the spectrum of informal to formal. We work with our clients to evaluate the culture of your company and leadership styles to determine the bests methods for coaching your employees.
“C” is for Coaching and Cultivating
One paradigm that helps to differentiate coaching from supervising is to think about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” In your coach role, you are cultivating ability. You focus on the “journey” by helping your employees find their own solutions to problems. In the supervisor role, you focus on the “destination” with performance reviews and managerial oversite. Of course, you need to fulfill both roles, but playing the coach helps you wear your supervisor hat.
Coaching Considerations
If you want to incorporate coaching across your company, consider how you will coach millennials. They have made it clear that what they want most from their managers isn’t more managerial direction, per se, but more help with their own personal development. Here are some examples of coaching goals.
- Developing employees’ problem-solving skills
- Increasing employees’ confidence in their own abilities
- Helping employees practice how to better deal with challenges and use growth mindset
- Teaching employees how to ask open questions
Be a Good Coach
You either care about your employees or you don’t. If you care, you will invest time and energy to help your employees become better versions of themselves. Caring is the first 50% of being a good coach. The other 50% is knowing you are a facilitator, not a fixer.
