Coaching and developing individuals through ongoing, targeted and specific activities and conversations can have wide-reaching benefits for the organisation and for the individuals. It can develop and retain your critical talent; provide a stabilising factor during change; facilitate knowledge-sharing and skill-transfer; as well as boosting people’s performance and motivation or supporting their career transition.

Coaching to Build the Impact of your People
At its best, coaching is a set of revelatory conversations; creating space amongst all the noise of contemporary life; focusing on chosen objectives with a trusted partner; being asked the right questions at the right time; and exploring both the question and the answer. As we manage more technology and feel more process-driven, this person-to-person focus can be the crucial enabler of our individual high-performance and enable greater organisational efficacy too.

Most coaching is about developing the capabilities of high-potential performers in a way which improves team and organisational performance. Any previously-held perception of coaching as “remedial” rather than facilitating high-performance has changed. Top athletes have always relied on coaches to help them gather marginal gains in their performance. Coaching is most beneficial to organisations, teams and individuals in situations where:

● Coachees are transitioning to a more senior role, developing their strategic capability
● Technically skilled managers require leadership coaching to fully engage and enable their team’s performance
● Senior leaders are tasked with the delivery of complex projects, and would benefit from an external perspective to direct their critical thinking and focus
● There is a business change (such as mergers, acquisitions or outsourcing) which demands leaders’ personal and professional readjustment.

Benefits of a Coaching Culture
There are numerous benefits to both the organisation and to the individuals and teams, which impact on measurable results and the bottom line.

For the Business:
● Development and retention of the critical talent in your business
● “Bringing the outside in” – especially where complex projects would benefit from external focus
● Increasing focus on personal efficiency and organisational productivity
● Providing a stabilising factor when change occurs and leaders need to simultaneously work through the personal and professional implications
● Facilitating knowledge-sharing and skill-transfer across the organisation by highlighting critical networks and ensuring key relationships are prioritised.

For the Individual:
● Improving performance, motivation, morale and stress management
● Providing an unthreatening but challenging environment for discussion, where challenges can be explored without censure
● Enabling the transition from one career level to another
● Giving self-directed learning which builds this learning habit
● Exploring stakeholder relationships, whether internal or external, to build focus and efficacy

Having Great Coaching Conversations
Willingness and good chemistry are key ingredients of a successful coaching relationship. The coachee needs to be ready to be coached, and also needs to make sure that the coach is someone that s/he can have a good interaction with. Research suggests that a coach should not be engaged on the sole basis of their experience and credentials. The “personal fit” for coach and coachee has to be a good one.

Coaching conversations are always bespoke to coachees and their particular challenges, but the following questions give an idea of what may be asked to direct a person’s insight in particular situations:

● Who do you need to spend more time with?
● Which important activities do you procrastinate on?
● How can you improve your relationship with your customers and more frequently ask for feedback?
● What is your unique contribution to a project? How can you accentuate it?
● What is not working optimally on the project or in on-going relationships with key stakeholders? What can you do to address this?
● What capabilities do you value in your team? Do they know that? What tasks can you start to delegate and to whom?
● What are the 20% of activities that deliver 80% of your results?

Partnering with EMCC UK
The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) UK are sponsoring the award for the Best Coaching, Mentoring & Personal Development Initiative at the Business Culture Awards.

EMCC UK works to maintain, influence, develop and progress high quality standards in coaching, mentoring and supervision in the UK. Their 3,500 members include individual practitioners, training and education providers, as well as organisations with internal coaching and mentoring capability, including in-house supervisors.

Coaching Conference Session Overview
Rachael Hanley-Browne, EMCC UK president, will be leading a session on Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in Coaching at Business Culture Connected, 15th November, 2023.

This will explore the subject “How can you be an ally to coaching with a wider lens of inclusion, belonging and equity?” Rachael will be joined by Hande Yasargil, Director of Diversity & Inclusion, EMCC UK, Salma Shah, author and founder of Mastering Your Power; Coretta Hine, founder, Coretta Coaching & Consultancy and Siobhan Lynam, Deputy Director Diversity & Inclusion, EMCC UK.

They will be discussing the outcomes of their recent inquiry process with HR, OD and DEI specialists, which has focused on two key areas:

• Understanding how external coaches are selected, who is offered the opportunity to become an internal coach and how their coaching services are marketed and sponsored within organisations.

• The beneficiaries of coaching; who has access to coaching, how are they selected or sponsored, and how do underrepresented groups perceive coaches or asking for coaching.

They would love to explore their findings with you and to hear your perspectives. As a follow-up you will receive an executive summary of their discoveries, including the overarching themes, issues, challenges, opportunities, and organisational perspectives. The shared learning will inform what they as a professional body prioritise in the future; this could be research, funding initiatives, and hosting future events or seminars.

Register to attend Business Culture Connected in November.

Enter your own Coaching programme into the Business Culture Awards 2024
Judges will be looking to understand how your coaching initiative has supported the organisation’s performance and success and how far-reaching the impact has been in terms of developing a coaching culture or more effective performance. You will need to outline all steps of the project, including planning, implementation, measurement, outcome, and next steps. You will also need to outline clearly who has been involved (and include a rationale as to why these people were selected in the case of coaches, coachees and personal development groups).

Your entry will cover the following key questions:

● What challenge did you face?
● What approach and activities did you undertake to address it?
● What results did you see?
● What are the next steps?

Pre-register for an Entry Pack here. Open for entries from February 2024.

View winning Business Culture Awards case studies in the Coaching category.