Business Coaching - A Strategy for Success
Organisations are placing growing importance on personal attributes in selecting and developing staff for business coaching. This can bring a number of benefits, mainly where the development of a motivated and organized team is required. For example, in high pressure call centre environments, or where the company recognises that its success depends largely on their corporate culture. However, it does not come without challenges, not least of which may be significant lapses in the core skills or knowledge required to perform the job. Whilst a formal business coaching course may offer wholesale transfer of many of these skills, it is unlikely that the employee will strike gold without further guidance.
Business coaching schemes are recognised as a highly effective way to quickly boost an employee's performance. According to IPD 'Training & Development in Britain 1999, the 800 training managers who took part has said that around 87% of businesses in the UK utilise business coaching.
The Nature of a Business Coaching Program
The nature of such schemes will usually vary between organisations but may stick to the following core structures:
• Business coaching programmes employing external or internal coaches
• 'Established' or peer-to-peer mentoring schemes
• Partner schemes, a type of two-way peer-to-peer mentoring
The best business coaching models will be objective driven, which may range from the development and fine-tuning of specific job oriented skills through to a more holistic approach including career planning or work/life balance. The company's culture also requires consideration. There is no point in introducing an isolated partnering scheme between two individuals if their working environment does not identify the value of mutual support such as a highly competitive sales environment where staff are measured only on their individual performance.
Whatever approach is adopted, it is vital that an appropriate relationship and working style is established between the business coach and recipient, essentially in internal schemes where the business coach’s or partner’s role is 'secondary' to the employee's primary function. In such circumstances, the employee may be unaware of the responsibilities involved with the role and the skills required.
What Makes a Business Coaching Program Successful
To ensure the success of a business coaching programme the organisation should take ownership for:
• Building the culture, processes and procedures to support such business coaching programmes
• Redesigning jobs so that the business coaching function is incorporated into the individual's role and given sufficient time and priority
• Undertaking skills assessment of their business coaches and partners and provides the relevant individuals with appropriate ongoing business coaching and development
• Make sure that staff understand the responsibility they are given for their colleague's professional development, and that they are suitable to the role in terms of attitude, emotional maturity and motivation
• Defining the extent of the relationship and where it fits within a broader development programme. This may comprise of defining boundaries, setting objectives and key performance indicators as well as offering guidelines for how the business coaching programme should be delivered.
• Monitoring, evaluating and tracking the effectiveness at both individual relationship and programme-wide levels, through implementing comprehensive feedback and review procedures
Implementing a Business Coaching Program
Most companies employ business coaching skills as a means of providing ad hoc personalized training but only a small percentage take on business coaching as their core strategy for continuous staff development. Indeed, for every company that achieves business coaching success there are plenty whose programmes never made it off the paper or whose success was short-lived and not quantified.
However, by ensuring that business coaching programmes are suitably designed and implemented, well-monitored and incorporated into the corporate learning culture, 21st century businesses can look forward to developing a workforce better able and motivated to meet the ever-increasing demands of working life.
