Business Brains: Quality Coaching = Commercial Success

With more than twenty years consultancy training experience under my belt I have lost count of the number of times a company’s staff have complained to me about being given a difficult task to do by a manager who has then left them to muddle their way through it without any proper instruction or support.

…….And then there were those who had been told to do a job in a particular way that they knew was not the best way, but negotiating a better alternative was never going to be an option.

Today less and less companies have money to spend on external training, which means that effective training through direct experience in the job – supported by the individual’s manager, is an essential tool to drive business success.

Coaching skills should be a basic requirement of every manager you, as a business owner, employ - together with the flexibility to span a whole range of management styles and the ability to be directive in a real crisis. An essential ingredient of coaching is to guide without imposing your own ideas or solution to a particular problem. A coach should instead work alongside staff, to find a solution which takes account of their situation together with their personality and strengths.

The obvious advantages of good coaching are twofold. Firstly it helps managers to support those who report to them, as it increases the amount of information available to them. Secondly it improves their own success as a problem-solver, which benefits the business.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, encouraging individuals to self-improve is rarely viewed by them as an opportunity to develop in readiness for their next job. It is in fact far more likely that they will see it as an opportunity to improve their skills within their current job.

The actual process of coaching alone promotes the development of excellent working relationships and builds trust between managers and staff. By engaging in the process of coaching it is likely that right decisions will be made more regularly, because blind spots are being checked. So, whatever the business: quality coaching = commercial success.