Why Coaching? (part 1)

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Type ‘coaching benefits' into Google and you'll ask yourself how your business has gone so long without employing a coach. Benefits range from vast financial returns on coaching investment to increased share price and staff retention. And at a personal level, better decision-making, increased self-esteem, stronger relationships and a higher quality of life - it seems nirvana is attainable after all.

Perhaps this is why so many providers have climbed aboard this well-loaded bandwagon now it's in motion? Sole practitioners to global organisations are offering coaching these days. Why, even management consultants are claiming to ‘coach for successful change'.

While a competitive marketplace is good in some ways - it keeps providers on their toes and costs in check - it makes it difficult to choose a coach that's right for you. Will individual Mary be better than the XYZ CoachingCo? Or should we grow our own coaches?

Some coaches focus purely on the individual - for personal development as distinct from business improvement. But businesses are usually seeking performance improvement through business change and coaching needs to link the individual with the actual business situation.

Elements of successful coaching include:

providing business clarity about your role and the role of others
giving feedback in a manner you can understand, accept and use to adapt your behaviour
creating new insights to see your situation in a different way that helps you to ‘un-stick' and move forward freely with new alternatives
discovering how to get the important things done and make real business progress.

Coaching can be delivered in a variety of scenarios:

individual leaders - a sounding board for personal development and effectiveness
high potential individuals - to help them progress more quickly
team-building during major change - to overcome business performance problems or during mergers, for example
project leaders and project teams - to help them deliver new initiatives
to improve bottom line performance and generate business growth.

Fundamentally, great coaching depends on great learning because learning is how we grow. But true learning is based on experience - it's hard to replicate from a book. It's the coach's job to make sure you use your experiences fully and don't miss out by sweeping them under the carpet. A great coach helps you capture and use your opportunities to learn and do things better.

Part two will look at coaching from the coach's perspective.