When I was at school, I played netball each season for around 10 years. I experienced working together to achieve a result, winning and losing graciously, good sportsmanship, respect, self-leadership and discipline. I am sure many of you have experienced being in a team sport and the influence of a team coach in this way.
“Coaching is releasing a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them”, Sir John Whitmore
Personalised coaching trend
Recently, there has been a rise in the number of life coaches, health coaches and career coaches writing on my Facebook feed, publishing blogs on the lifestyle websites I visit and writing articles in the magazines I read. So in my past four years at BDC it shouldn’t be surprising that I have seen coaching emerge as an increasingly popular way of learning and developing within the workplace.
Managers are utilising coaching for its many benefits (see below). At BDC, we help team leaders to develop the skills to coach their employees, helping to support employees in their roles and teach them new skills. In other situations, a coach can be a dedicated person from within the organisation or employed externally. Coaching can seem a little luxurious – something we think we don’t necessarily need, but many organisations are realising the benefits. Personalised, one-on-one time with a coach can help empower employees and unlock their thinking.
Coaching in business
The most popular, global, coaching model was developed by Sir John Whitmore and his colleagues in the 1980’s. Whitmore first published the GROW model in his book Coaching for Performance, 1992. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will. We use the GROW model in our leadership coaching. The idea is to maximise a person’s inner potential through a series of coaching conversations.
I like this idea. I like that a coach and the coachee can come together, regardless of culture or personality to explore ideas, problem-solve, set goals and achieve a purpose. The conversations build self-awareness and then lead through a series of steps – goal setting, exploring the current reality (and any limitations), options and possibilities and the way forward (or, the will to take action). Coaching empowers a person with a responsibility to make change happen. It uses effective questioning and active listening.
Harvard Business Review decided to study the benefits of coaching and the mindset of managers who used coaching to develop their employees. They found that “managers that see coaching as an essential tool for achieving business goals, believe that an organisation cannot be successful on the backs of the extremely talented alone. You need solid players just as you need stars (4 Reasons Managers Should Spend More Time on Coaching, Joseph R. Weintraub and James M. Hunt, May 29, 2015)”. They believe that these solid stars need help to build skills and deal with the changing realities of their workplace in order to succeed in their roles.
The benefits of personalised coaching
We all want fast results and results that are specific to our own unique situation. Coaching ticks both of these boxes. The benefits of coaching are:
- Personalised and tailored content
- Responsive and flexible during the session to move with an individual’s needs
- A blended learning approach – learning methods, pace and format can be best chosen
- Quick turnaround – implement new skills immediately
- Personal attention and focus
- The option of further support and accountability.
Is coaching for you?
Could you benefit from coaching? Picture your role in your family and/or at work. Just like being a member of a sports team, visualise yourself as a member of your family or work team. If you could wave a magic wand to improve the functionality of these teams, what, ideally, would change? Would it be your role or the situation? Coaching might just be the tool to help unlock your thinking, improve your self-awareness and focus, and give you life or job-specific skills. It might just be the secret to achieving your career goals, or life goals. Ready to try it?
Written by Chantell Bramley.
Personalised one-on-one coaching… Computer skills, writing, leadership, wellbeing, communication skills, time management. See results fast and book a session with our trainers – online!