Good leadership is more than just developing strategies and assigning tasks. Exceptional leaders are gifted at helping others acquire new skills and guiding them on a path that leads to better performance and the achievement of personal goals.
And when this correlates with organizational goals, everyone benefits: Employees enjoy personal development and a supportive work environment, and organizations create a high-performing, engaged and loyal workforce.
When leaders actively invest in developing employees’ skills and competencies, they will see their efforts pay off. In addition to robust training and development programs, coaching plays a valuable role in the day-to-day development and engagement of talented employees, leading to a wide range of benefits, such as empowered employees, improved performance, and higher engagement.
Here are the top 3 benefits of developing coaches in organisations:
1. Empowered employees
Coaching helps empower employees to propose solutions and implement their own ideas. This benefits the organisation as empowered employees realise that they have the freedom to be proactive and make decisions that will contribute to a better running company.
How coaching helps
Determining the appropriate level of autonomy for an individual is not as simple as using a standard. Since every employee has a different work style and every task has unique requirements, boundaries need to be set at the individual level. Often, when an employee has too much freedom, they can feel overwhelmed. On the other hand, when they are too limited, they can become frustrated and demotivated because their talents are not being used to their full potential.
When employees work directly with their coaches to find the right balance between freedom and limits, they can develop to their full potential. As employees learn and develop, their boundaries should be adjusted to continue the circle of empowerment. Communication is an essential element of this. Coaches need to both listen to the feedback of empowered employees and have the ability to provide honest feedback that will help them grow.
2. Increased performance
Another benefit of coaching is that it can greatly improve individual performance.
Why performance matters
Most employees want to do a great job. In addition to providing the training and resources needed to do their jobs, organisations that also offer individual coaching are able to improve individual performance, which ultimately leads to better organisational performance.
How coaching helps
The importance of ongoing interactions within a coaching relationship cannot be overstated, especially when the goal is to improve performance. This starts with setting a clear direction for a specific task or goal and charting a course to achieve it. If the interaction stops there, the employee may be able to complete the task based on the clear direction, but if that’s all they get from their manager, it’s a missed opportunity to improve performance.
A good coach will regularly review the situation, ideally at least weekly, to review progress, help you overcome any obstacles and highlight areas for improvement. This ongoing involvement gives the employee the opportunity to make incremental (and sometimes drastic) improvements that will enable them to become more effective overall. Modeling behavior is important, but even the most insightful employees can’t rely on observation alone. When coaches explain why something is done a certain way and how that method evolved, employees gain new knowledge and can apply it to other activities.
3. Greater commitment
Increasing employee engagement is a goal for many companies, and coaching is one way to get individuals to stay engaged.
How coaching helps
Engagement is directly proportional to the frequency of communication with a manager and the content of those conversations. Employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are 3 times more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less.
Coaching can help eliminate negative feelings. Actively defining goals together, developing milestones to achieve them and tracking progress along the way gives employees the opportunity to be involved in their own development and feel that their leader has their best interests at heart.
Creating accountability through coaching and goal setting also helps to improve engagement, because employees take ownership of the results of their actions and behaviours and are accountable both to themselves and to their coach. When people know they are accountable for performing a task or behaviour – and have the skills and competencies to do so – they are motivated to stay engaged and achieve their goals.
Conclusion
The benefits of coaching extend beyond increased engagement, better performance and more accountable employees. Developing leaders within the organisation helps build a leadership network and increase knowledge at an institutional level.
Coaching leaders also helps them become better at their jobs. They learn how to give and receive feedback, set measurable goals and track milestones. They also need to model the behaviour they want to see in their employees, which means they are more accountable for their own actions and behaviours. All of these skills can be applied to future leadership positions.
Our coaching programs use a deeper perspective, choosing more advanced models to help leaders succeed. These models will take the client to the next level of coaching experience.
