Coaching is a process that improves the performance of an individual. Coaching focuses on the individuals ability to learn what they need to do in order to achieve a certain goal. It focuses on the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the individual and not on their past.
Coaching is a partnership that takes place between an expert who is called the coach and the client the coachee. The coach will take his client through a powerful thought provoking inquiry process that will support the individual in identifying their strengths, develop them and make an informed choice of how they will meet their personal or professional goals.
Through this coaching process, the coachee is upheld as someone who has answers to his own need. There might be some underlying issues such as fear, limiting thoughts and beliefs etc that are holding him back from performing as expected. The coach hence comes in to help the coachee learn and acknowledge what is holding him back and in the process, the coachee is able to forge a way forward for himself.
In most cases, if coaching is not done, the individual will not improve on his work performance, neither live his best life either professionally or personally.
Let us use a simple example to explain the above. Company X has trained their employees on what is expected of them in order to meet their KPIs. The company has gone further to ensure that their employees have all they need at their disposal like work tools, gadgets, and attractive employee benefits. In other words, their employees are well equipped to perform their tasks as required.
However, in the performance review of the quarter, the managers discover that, their employees have not performed as expected. This situation leads into a greater level of disappointment on the managers part who doesn’t understand why, after providing all that is necessary, the performance of his employee is not satisfactory. This situation can result to serious consequences for the employee.
If such a scenario is not carefully handled, company X may end up loosing an otherwise valuable employee from their team. To avoid this from happening, this is where coaching can take place. Coaching will support the employee unearth what is holding him back from performing and propel him to improving.
Benefits of coaching
- Coaching helps the employees focus on the desired goals hence improving their performance in workplaces.
- Coaching helps the employees remain in the company. It reduces turn over rate at work places hence saves the company money that would have been spent on exiting employees and in hiring new ones.
- Coaching creates an open culture in the organisation where employees feel they can freely express themselves without fears of being victimised.
- Coaching increases high employee satisfaction and commitment to the company.
- Coaching gives employees space to grow, receive honest feedback and pursue the organisation goals.
Organisations should create a coaching culture which should be practiced at all times. Infact, coaching should be included as one of the company objectives at any given financial year. Training your team is a good thing. However, it is important to remember that, training in isolation is not enough. Training enhances skills while coaching accelerates the inner ability of the person to perform.
The best news is, everyone in the organisation can be coached, right from senior management to the entry level employees. We all need coaching to unlock our potential to maximise our performance.
Talk to us today for life changing coaching of you and your team.
Ayaka Management Consultancy 