An organisation’s employees are often considered its most valuable asset; it therefore, makes sense to treat them that way. This is why coaching and mentoring employees, enabling them to grow, learn, develop, is a crucial part of an employee development programme and/or succession planning.
On top of this, coaching statistics are compelling – an International Coaching Federation (2009) survey found that 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence, and over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. Also, 86% of companies report that they recouped their investment in coaching.
Coaching can be defined as a way to support others, (usually a direct line report) with their current role, helping them to improve their performance. According to Tim Gallwey (2015) “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.
This needs to be coachee led, i.e. non-directional from the coach, allowing the coachee to identify their goals, areas of strength, and areas for development, and then come up with a plan or activities to support them to improve. Coaching usually identifies specific tasks, or activities that the coachee can focus on.
Coaching often takes place within the confines of a formal and structured relationship;
Whereas “Mentoring is a long term form of training, learning and development and an increasingly popular tool for supporting personal development through the passing on of wisdom and experience. Anyone can be a mentor if they have something useful and relevant to pass on and the skills, time and commitment to doit.” (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development).
It occurs outside of a line manager-employee relationship, at the mutual consent of a mentor and mentee;
Both coaching and mentoring are incredibly powerful resources when used correctly. They have a common goal or purpose whereby they are both processes that enable and facilitate individuals, teams, and organisations to achieve their full potential.
“The continuous process of improving performance by setting individual and team goals which are aligned to the strategic goals of the organisation, planning performance to achieve these goals, reviewing and assessing progress, and developing the knowledge and skill and abilities of people” (Armstrong, 2014).
One way to consider the use of coaching and mentoring programmes is to consider what may happen if we fail to adopt them.
Quite often, no immediate impact is seen. However, within 3-6 months, team issues can become evident and with limited direction, the team may struggle to perform or achieve their full capability and potential. This can significantly impact on an organisations delivery of its objectives.
Coaching is particularly important for managers, especially if they have new or inexperienced team members. Coaching is part of every conversation, every meeting, every interaction, to help identify an individual’s needs, strengths and development areas...as well as their goals and potential.
It allows individuals to feel valued, grow in confidence, understand key tasks and have a clear plan of how to achieve these goals. Coaching is a behaviour that should be adopted by all. This coaching ethos carries much more power if it is driven from the top of the organisation and enables everyone to see how important it is, to help achieve the company’s strategic goals.
Mentoring also plays a key part in an individuals’ development, team development, and the overall growth of the organisation. It enables individuals to progress, and develop firstly within their own role, but then into their future or aspiring roles. This in turn allows the mentor, and longer-term the mentee, to contribute across the organisation and through different functions, supporting the organisation’s long term growth.
Sir John Whitmore (1992) says that “building awareness, responsibility, and self-belief is the goal of a coach.” Coaching sets clear expectations and goals and primarily supports the individual to achieve these, followed by the individual’s ability to grow in their role.
Coaching an individual is usually most relevant to their own personal growth, which can manage both low, and high performance, with the aim to always facilitate improvement in both. However, coaching can also be of a ‘team’, to help achieve global or joint objectives.
Here the team must first be a team. They must all buy in to the idea of ‘team’ and have a shared vision and goals. It is the manager who must use their leadership skills to engage in activities to drive these behaviours. Sharing best practice, delegating responsibilities, team activities (i.e. bring and share; 2 truths and 1 lie) all help to grow individual’s understandings of their team mates and create a truly cohesive team.
Peter Senge (1990) made the statement that “...teams are the fundamental units of learning in organisations, and for the organisation to learn, teams must learn.”
When a team is functioning as a high performing team, it ensures that the organisational objectives are achieved at a local level. If all managers and leaders in the organisation work with a culture of coaching and mentoring we find that organisations develop quickly. This is because the leadership team empower their team members to accept and relish both coaching and mentoring as part of daily practice. They then start to self-coach and self-regulate, as well as becoming interdependent seeking cross-functional coaching and mentoring via increased communication.
At NeoOptima coaching is our passion. We are proud to have been the capability partner to over 30 pharmaceutical and healthcare companies over the past year and believe that coaching and mentoring, is a powerful process through which organisations can improve business performance through enhancing the capability and commitment of individuals to deliver to their fullest potential.
By pinpointing individuals real development needs, capitalising on existing strengths and overcoming blocks to achieving goals, both individuals and organisations benefit from improved performance.
Our focus is business coaching, all coaching programmes should be designed in the context of the overall goals for the organisation. We work with individuals to help them understand their performance at work, their strengths and motivators and their impact on others.
To facilitate learning we will encourage the use of 360 feedback and other tools as appropriate, with each programme tailored to the needs, motivators and preferred learning style of the individual. The aim is to equip every coachee with tools and techniques that can be easily integrated into their working routine. By drawing on an understanding of the business, individual motivations and the culture within which they work, coaching will support the coachee in designing action plans that are realistic, workable and make a long-standing and positive contribution to the way they behave and perform at work.
We believe true learning takes place over a period of time, providing opportunities from priming, reflection, and embedding of new behaviours.
To support this, our cutting edge learning management platform – Pace, gives global teams on-demand access to world-leading capability coaches, resources and insights anytime and anywhere. Our bespoke programmes facilitate and support positive behavioural change to help you, and your teams succeed and win their critical moments.
References
Armstrong, M. (2014), Armstrong’s Handbook of Performance Management. London: Kogan Page Ltd
Gallwey, T. (2015 reprint). The Inner Game of Tennis. London: Pam MacMilla
International Coaching Federation (2009). ICF Global Coaching Study. [Online] available at: https://coachingfederation.org/research/global-coaching-study [Accessed 18 April 2022]. Senge, P.M. (2010). The Fifth Discipline:The Art & Practice of the Learning Organisation (2nd Ed.). London: Random House.
Whitmore, J. (2009). Coaching for Performance (4th Ed.). London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.