Coaching is exploring the skills, competencies, aspirations, needs and wants of individuals so that they can achieve their potential. Coaching is also a process to encourage individuals to explore different career paths from those originally chosen when starting their careers. This aspect is vital in a changing economic environment as well as the changing nature of jobs.
Coaching involves a consistent and cohesive approach to developing individuals where leaders and managers take responsibility to improving organisational outcomes. Coaching is a powerful tool in contemporary organisations which has proven to be a highly effective way to unlocking capability. Calibre Solutions approach to coaching is a facilitative process with an emphasis on unlocking capabilities which is achieved by guiding and questioning rather then instruction, teaching or training.
The Institute of Leadership and Management’s research evidenced that coaching is a valuable and worthwhile activity in any organisation. There was a clear consensus on coaching as a development tool that assists both the organisation and the individual.
The benefits of coaching are wide-ranging which include improvements in: communication and interpersonal skills, leadership and management skills and competencies; conflict resolution, personal confidence, behaviours and motivation. In performance management, the difficulty is assessing whether the poor performer lacks skill or the willingness to achieve can be identified by effective coaching. Feedback is vital to encourage individuals to improve and forms an essential element within the coaching process.
The GROW model (Whitmore 2002) model is used to explore and develop different careers as well as the spectrum of relationships and the value of feedback.
Coaching is usually the responsibility of those who manage people at any level of the hierarchy and is often associated with the more well-known typology of a coach “the football coach” which is an ideal connection to a coach within an organisation!