Coaching at work

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If you intend to introduce coaching as part of your management toolbox, allow your people time to adjust to the idea. Don’t expect them to be swept up by your enthusiasm. If coaching is a new departure, discuss the benefits to be achieved with the people who will be your clients. Sell them on the idea. Allow them the option to choose to participate. Allow the volunteers to volunteer first, whether out of interest or out of cynicism – a successful convert from cynicism will be your best publicist. Allow coaching to evolve rather than revolutionize. Do not introduce coaching like the holy grail. Allow space for your clients to want to learn the new dance. Coaching focuses on the client’s agenda and outcomes. It is not to make the client perform to the coach’s standards and meet the coach’s agenda and needs. That is not coaching: that is managing. Coaching addresses both strengths and weaknesses and should not just be triggered by the need for remedial action.

Coaching is a relationship between a coach and a client that gets switched on and off when illumination is needed. (We call the person we coach the ‘client’ even though we may be coaching a co-worker or colleague and money may not change hands. ‘Client’ focuses our attention on their needs rather than on our own.) The purpose of coaching in the workplace is to help the client perform to their best, by achieving their professional goals, even though they may not yet know what they are, let alone how they might achieve them. It is a tool for helping people to develop new skills and to grow, rather than feel they’re growing stale. It is a process that involves conversation, questioning and suggestion. It will enable the client to consider their own position and their options, and to make informed decisions based on their own preferences within their own situation in their own organization and for their own betterment.

Coaches do not need to be an expert in the field in which the client wishes to develop. They simply need to know what questions to ask, what to do with the answers and how directive or suggestive to be. If you are coaching all aspects of someone’s life, and not limiting yourself to business performance, this is often referred to as ‘life coaching’. In practice, it is difficult to compartmentalize someone’s life, as one part influences another. If someone is having problems at home it is likely to impact on their work. However, if you are a manager who is coaching one of your line reports then you need to be aware of your boundaries and respect the client’s boundaries. Being someone’s boss does not entitle you to impose yourself upon their private life. You may help if invited. Never intrude. Coaching of senior people is referred to as ‘executive coaching’ and is in principle the same as coaching. It may need to be even more discreet in the way it is carried out, but confidentiality remains important in all forms of coaching – for both parties. Maybe coaching is already established within your organization or maybe you are demonstrating initiative by introducing it into your particular group or team. Even if coaching is compulsory within the structure and procedures, it is important that your client feels they have a choice in the matter. Coaching requires openness on the part of the client and this will only happen if coaching is a ‘want to’ rather than a ‘have to’ for them.

Any offer of coaching must be centred on perceived benefits to the client. If coaching is described as something that you, the coach, have been told to do, or as something that ‘everybody has to go through now’, you will receive a lukewarm response at best. We have heard someone say ‘the company has introduced a new concept of learning through coaching, and I’m to do coaching with you, so we might as well get it out of the way’.

Before offering coaching to a client, sell yourself on the concept first. Be clear about the gains you hope to make for your client(s), yourself and your organization. If you are half-hearted about it, or unconvinced, then your client will be as well. When offering coaching to someone, first build a positive framework and describe the purpose and motivation behind the initiative. For example: Describe coaching as an effective route towards personal improvement and achievement. State why you yourself are convinced it is the right route to take and the benefits to all that you believe will follow. Make it clear that coaching is not a remedial action, as it is designed to build on strengths as well as to address weaknesses. Explain how the required skills within their role fit together like the links of a chain and how coaching is designed to strengthen all the links. And that this is especially true nowadays as employees are increasingly expected to ‘skill-up’ in order to multi-task. Discuss whether or not they currently look to compensate for their own weaker links by making the stronger ones stronger, or how else they have approached this. Maybe use the metaphor of the decathlete who has to realize his or her potential in all ten disciplines in order to win one medal. Explain what is involved, the time commitment and the process. Be clear – ask your client for their participation and willingness.

Ensure that they feel they have chosen to be coached. When you start coaching, if it is compatible with your client’s agenda, start by building on a strength to establish a positive association between you, your client and the coaching process. No matter what you are like (as a manager, trainer, co-worker, parent or partner), those who interact with you know instinctively how your relationship works. It might not have been a perfect relationship but there will have been a ‘dance’ that you both understood because you both knew the steps. You might have been the worst dancers on the dance floor but at least you were dancing. On the other hand, you might have been performing very well and you could think of no way of making it better.

The introduction of coaching, handled incorrectly, into a weak relationship can be perceived as a punishment for being an ‘inadequate’ employee. Introducing coaching into a strong relationship can also be received as criticism and may negate much that has gone before. It is important, therefore, to introduce it for its benefits to the individual.This is easier. A new team member will probably welcome coaching with open arms as a way of easing into their new role. It will also enable you to be seen as open, approachable and constructive right from the start.

Offering coaching to new team members is often the easiest way to introduce it into a whole team. You can easily explain why you chose X, as they are new and may welcome some assistance with settling in.

In our experience we have found that other team members can feel left out and therefore ask for coaching voluntarily. In this way it can grow naturally and step-by-step, which is easier for you than having to offer it to everyone simultaneously.