Ten years ago I am fortunate enough to be heavily involved in the implementation of a company wide coaching programme, both as an employee merely to receive coaching but also as a manager and coach who was expected to regular coach my reports and my peers so they can achieve their objectives. I say, fortunate enough, because I found that once i was coached effectively I became really motivated and focused, and when I finally became a proficient coach, I again found it motivational in that I thought i was able to support and enable my direct reports to achieve more.
There were though many pitfalls along the technique to achieving total acceptance of coaching as a skill doesn’t only motivated but also enabled employees to become more capable and productive. In this particular short article I will outline the necessary steps I feel an organisation must take in order to ensure that they implement a coaching programme effectively. Ten years ago I feel that although we made great progress we also made some mistakes which I would encourage organisations to be aware of when deciding to opt for the ‘coaching’ route.
1. Ensure coaching starts at the top and is supported by the ‘top’!
Many organisations are recognising that coaching is a skill that all managers men and women and teams must possess. However, many organisations only concentrate on ensuring that 1st even 2nd line managers are trained as skill. Suddenly middle or junior managers become skilled in coaching but never experience the strength of coaching from extremely own senior management. In relation to making sure that everyone may be involved in the coaching programme ‘buys -in’ to the coaching philosophy they do hear how the ‘top’ executives are have used coaching at terms of promoting the skill but also to seen to utilise the skill themselves because they they are coached in which they coach their own direct opinions. In other words everybody has to ‘walk the talk’.
In my last organisation before going self-employed this was not circumstance. A few senior members on the Board rrncluding a couple of key HR personnel promoted the skill of coaching well and ‘practiced the things they preached’. Unfortunately some very senior managers did not and continued to use very directive behaviours towards their staff whilst communicating that coaching was a ‘fad’ ruin the purpose of soon pass! This caused confusion at middle management levels together with result certain number of managers didn’t take their coaching training very seriously. Fortunately other managers did and their teams eventually experienced advantage of.
2. Will everybody understand what coaching is and this really can do them?
This was one of this first hurdles that we’d to prevented. Simply, people did not understand why the organisation was implementing such a programme plus
people didnrrrt fully understand what coaching was exactly. Some believed features training and all it meant was that you told people what full and showed them tips on how to do getting this done. After all that was what their sports coach did! Others thought includes more about counselling and you only used coaching when there any deep problem causing under-performance.
All buying not everyone had an outstanding understanding goods coaching was and the way it differed of a likes of training, mentoring and talk therapy. Also many people given had not been open to effective coaching had no experience or involving why coaching could deemed a benefit for them; either as the coach or as someone being coached. Before employees can deal with it and take part in a coaching programme they should be 1005 aware of what the skill of coaching entails and what it can do for people.
3. Those who are gonna be act as coaches end up being trained in effect.
Most companies will adopt the services of an exercise provider or consultant to sustain them to implement the health coaching topics programme. Beware. Make sure you do your homework! There are numerous coaching schools, coaches and consultancies who now offer ‘coach training’. Some will be excellent; some not so hot. We had some major problems while using group which people used in this particular not each and every trainers/coaches had the necessary skill and experience however result that not everyone in the organisation received the same quality to train and study. I was extremely lucky in i had a good quality coach merely also a superb trainer.