Business Coaching: Unlock Employee Potential with Coaching

We believe coaching is about helping a person change in the way they wish, helping them in the direction they wish to go and empowering them to go there.

“It unlocks a person’s potential to maximise their performance. Coaching helps them to learn rather than teaching them.”

Managerial coaching

Whilst coaching is more recognisable within sports, there are great strides with coaching in the workplace. It is now recognised that coaching is a vital piece in the managerial toolbox and often overlooked – remember it’s not just coaches who coach.

Bill Gates once said, “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”

Managers need to be comfortable asking coaching questions, not just telling but allowing employees to grow and develop. It can be uncomfortable but long term the benefits are more engaged, empowered and confident employees.

Beyond the employee/manager coaching dynamic, companies can provide internal coaching either using employed coaches or internal employees. But there will be occasions when using an external coach will be useful and a better strategy to employ.

Workplace coaching

Two popular types of workplace coaching are Executive Coaching and Team Coaching.

Executive coaching is a helping relationship between a consultant and a client with managerial authority and responsibility in an organization (Kilburg, 1996). Executive coaching occurs for many reasons, including integration into a new role, performance issues, or consultation on strategy. It is often performed by an external coach.

Team coaching aka Action Learning is a coaching engagement with an entire team, to help team members coordinate efforts and use their resources more effectively (Traylor, Stahr, & Salas, 2020). Team coaching often occurs internally, with the team leader adopting a coaching leadership style.

Activities linked to coaching

There are other activities which are linked to coaching and its important to distinguish these to ensure all parties are clear on what will be involved:

Mentoring – similar to coaching but the mentor usually has industry experience and is mentoring a less experienced colleague. Over recent years “reverse-mentoring” has become popular, with younger employees educating senior members on new technology, social media etc.

Counselling – a talking therapy that involves a trained therapist listening to you and helping you find ways to deal with emotional issues. Unless properly trained, coaches should refer situations like this to professional counsellors.

Training – we arrange training courses and e-learning and coaching can link to these. Employees can learn theory and practical aspects and then use coaching to keep their development going.