Coaching

Definitions And Distinctions

“Coaching is eyeball-to-eyeball management.” – Dennis C. Kinlaw

Coaching is a face-to-face process that helps managers and their staff to talk about situations, recognise and develop people’s potential and improve the performance of team members. These activities happen all the time, usually impelled by the need to improve work skills and to encourage an ongoing awareness of the need for continuous improvement. Coaching particular requires the considerable skill of confronting unsatisfactory performance or behaviour because the manager has a responsibility to respond to inadequate or unsatisfactory performance which comes to his attention.

Click here to view a video that explains what Coaching is.

Purpose of Coaching

Coaching is not about simply showing people or telling them how to do something. If one only does that there is no guarantee that any learning will take place, coaching is far more that that. Coaching puts the emphasis on helping the learner to learn, rather than on getting the teacher to teach. It involves guiding and encouraging people to achieve results by helping them to learn for themselves while doing the job. Real work is the vehicle for learning. Its ultimate target is to help individuals to release their own potential and improve their performance.

Coaching is about helping the person to learn a new skill or behaviour by doing the job and achieving the desired results.

It provides for:

• Teaching employees the right methods used in the organisation
• Immediate feedback on performance
• Giving confidence to the employee
• Building working relationships
• Identifying deficiency gaps
• Identifying performance problems

Click here to view a video that explains poor coaching performance conversation.

Mentoring

Mentoring performs a different function. Mentors assist their mentees to understand larger issues such as becoming sensitive to the organisation’s culture and developing in the mentee an understanding of the political dynamics within the organisation. It also involves assisting the mentee with networking and career decisions. Mentoring as a developmental art is likely to have been going on long before the Greek classics gave it a name. It is probably one of the oldest forms of development.

Counselling

Counselling is a supportive function which assists the employee to deal with a wide range of personal and work-related problems. It is less involved with specific job skills. Counselling has best results if the person is encouraged to distinguish between the apparent problem and the real problem, to be prepared to look at possible cues and to formulate their own course of action.

Training

It is a planned and systematic effort to modify or develop knowledge/skill/attitude through learning experience, to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities. Its purpose in the work situation, enable an individual to acquire abilities in order that he/she can perform adequately a given task or job.

Learning

It is the process whereby individuals acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes through experience, reflection, study or instruction.

Development

It is the general enhancement and growth of an individual’s skills and abilities through conscious and unconscious learning.

Benefits Of Coaching

Benefits for the individual:

• Individual coaches can benefit in a number of ways. In relation to their current positions, coaches may gain greater intrinsic or extrinsic job satisfaction.
• Intrinsic job satisfaction may come from performing a task well done and from being able to exercise a new repertoire of skills.
• Extrinsic job satisfaction may be derived from extra earnings accrued through improved job performance and the enhancement of career and promotion prospects both within and outside the organisation to which they belong.

Benefits for the organisation:

• Improved employee work performance and productivity.
• Shorter learning time which could lead to less costly training and employees being “on line” more quickly.
• Decrease in wastage.
• Fewer accidents.
• Less absenteeism.
• Lower labour turnover.
• Greater customer or client satisfaction.

What Does Coaching Entail?

Nurturing benefits everyone. Who wouldn’t be more secure and motivated when his coach believes in him, encourages him, share with him, and trusts him? Employees are more productive when nurtured. Even more important, nurturing creates a strong emotional and professional foundation for workers who have leadership potential. The nurturing process involves more than just encouragement. It also includes modelling. In fact, the coach’s major responsibility in the nurturing process is modelling, leadership, a strong work ethic, responsibility, character, openness, consistency, communication, and belief in people. Here are the things a coach must do to nurture the employee/coachee to reach their full potential.

Build Trust

Trust is the single most important factor in building personal and professional relationships. Trust must be built day by day. It calls for consistency. Learners will not follow a coach they do not trust. It is the coach’s responsibility to actively develop trust in him from the people around him. Trust is built on:

Time – Take time to listen and give feedback on performance.

Respect – Give the potential leader respect and he will return it with trust.

Unconditional positive regard – Show acceptance of the person.

Sensitivity – Anticipate the feelings and needs of the potential leader.

Touch – Give encouragement.

Once learners trust their coach as a person, they become able to trust this leadership.

Offer Time

Employees cannot be nurtured from a distance or by infrequent, short spurts of attention. They need you to spend time with them, planned time, not just a few words on the way to a meeting. We live in a fast-paced, demanding world, and time is a difficult thing to give. It’s a coach’s most valuable commodity. Peter Drucker wrote, “Nothing else, perhaps distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.”

Time is valuable, but time spent with a learner in development is an investment. When you give of yourself, it benefits you, the organisation, and the receiver. Nurturing learners must maintain a giving attitude.

Believe In People

When you believe in people, you motivate and release their potential. People can sense intuitively when a person really believes in them. Anyone can see people as they are. It takes a good coach to see what they can become, encourage them to grow in that direction, and believe that they will do it. Employees/coaches always grow toward a coach’s expectations, not his criticism and examination. You can hire people to work for you, but you must win their hearts by believing in them in order to have them work with you.

Give Encouragement

Too many coaches expect their people to encourage themselves. Most people require outside encouragement to propel them forward. It is vital to their growth. Coaches need to be encouraged. When they arrive in a new situation, they encounter many changes and undergo many changes themselves. Encouragement helps them reach their potential; it empowers them by giving them energy to continue when they make mistakes.

Use lots of positive reinforcement with your people. Praise a person every time you see improvement. Personalise your encouragement. Remember what motivates one person may leave another cold or even irritated. Find out what works with each of your people and use it.

Exhibit Consistency

Consistency is a crucial part of nurturing learners. When you are consistent, your people learn to trust you. They will be able to grow and develop because they know what you expect from them. They become secure because they know what your response to them will be, regardless of circumstances. When you believe in the learners, and consistently support and encourage them, it will give them the added strength they need to hang in there and perform well.

Hold Hope High

Hope is one of the greatest gift’s coaches can give to those around them. Its power should never be underestimated. It takes a great coach to give hope to people when they can’t find it within themselves. People will continue working, struggling and trying if they have hope. Hope lifts morale. It improves self-image. It re-energises people. It raises their expectations. It is the coach’s job to hold hope high, to instil it in the people he leads. Our people will have hope only if we give it to them. Maintaining hope comes from seeing the potential in every situation and staying positive despite circumstances.

Add Significance

No one wants to spend his time doing work that is unimportant. People want to do work that matters. It is the coach’s job to add significance to the lives of the people he leads. One of the ways is to make them a part of something worthwhile. Every coach must ask himself: “Do I want survival, success, or significance?” The best coaches desire significance and expend their time and energy in pursuit of their dreams. Acting on your dreams adds significance to your life. To add significance to the lives of the people you lead is to show them the big picture and let them know how they contribute to it.

Provide Security

Norman Cousins said: “People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.” Coaches who focus on their fears don’t grow. They become paralysed. Coaches are in a position to provide followers with an environment of security in which they can grow and develop. A coach who feels secure is more likely to take risks, try to excel, break new grounds and succeed. Soon the followers begin to think, act and produce bigger than they are. Finally, they become what they think they are.

Reward Production

People rise to our level of expectations. They try to give us what we reward. If you want your coaches to produce, then you must reward production. Coaches find their reward not in money, but in the personal recognition of their production. That is what gives significance and leads a person to give his personal best. Even a person who is industrious and hardworking will finally get demoralised if production is discoursed rather than rewarded. We must give positive acknowledgment and encouragement to the producers, and we must be careful not to reward the idle. Take a hard look at your organisation. What are you rewarding?

Establish a Support System

Develop a support system for coaches. Nothing hurts morale more than asking people to do something and not given them resources to accomplish it. Every coach needs support in five areas:

• Emotional support
• Skills training
• Money
• Equipment
• Social (to belong)

Provide the coaches with what is needed to get the job done. Create a support system for all the people around you. Increase it or any individual only as he grows and is successful.