What is Effective Coaching and How Can it Benefit Your Organisation?

Do you ever wonder if coaching contracts you have in place in your business are effective? You may find the following guide of assistance.

Coaching assists individuals, teams and organisations to transform their capacity to learn and perform so that extraordinary goals are achieved. Effective coaching leaves a legacy – the performance is sustainable and the skills developed and insights uncovered can be reapplied after the coach has departed.

Effective coaching helps people have more effective conversations and think and act at all levels – often with extraordinary results for an organisation.

Effective coaching interventions are concerned with the achievement of business objectives, enabling the coachee to fully understand their situation, to develop a meaningful vision and plot a course of action that supports them in bringing their strategy to life.

An effective coach acts as a facilitator, listening partner and occasionally guide.

Effective coaching interactions are structured around highly quantifiable objectives, agreed at the outset of the programme in terms of organisational, group and specific individual outcomes.

Effective coaching provides feedback, insight and guidance throughout the process. During individual coaching partnerships, assessment tools and 360 degree feedback can be used both at the outset and upon completion of coaching, to measure results and lessons learnt; sustainability and on-going development plans should be agreed as coaching draws to a close.

Effective coaching follows a process, just as with any business problem or opportunity. Together the coach and coachee will:

Define the problem or opportunity that needs to be addressed
Gather data to understand the situation and determine the specific results the coachee and their organisation want to achieve
Analyse the situation from various perspectives, bringing in subject matter experts to minimise bias
Make a plan for improvement based on analysis of the data, for implementation over a specific timeline, with evaluation of the results
Set up a system and create an environment to sustain the improved results now being achieved.

So what are the tangible benefits of coaching?

Increased performance and productivity by:

Inspired leaders communicating a compelling vision of the future, clarifying goals, energising their people and aligning them with the goals of the organisation
Empowering your community to take responsibility and leverage their strengths therefore tapping into as yet unrealised performance and potential
Business leaders operating at enhanced levels of personal performance and coaching their people to do the same
Cohesive and high performance team-work enhancing individual and group performance.

Enhanced retention of talent through

Business leaders inspiring and building trust with their teams so their people feel valued as their contribution is recognised.
The outcome is that people stay with the organisation as it values them as individuals
Stimulating growth, so employees feel they are expanding their capabilities and being supported and encouraged to develop
Greater clarity of purpose and team-working, making work more fun and the organisation a great place to be part of.

Enhanced profitability by:

A positive and engaged employee community resulting in lower voluntary staff turnover
Effective customer/client relationships
Leveraging learning and ensuring new skills are embedded and retained, thereby making better use of investment in training.

Positive culture change through:

Creating employee buy-in and ownership of new initiatives, so people play a proactive part in co-creating positive change
Culture change being championed, fully embraced and celebrated from within the organisation, which ultimately generates a more profound impact externally.

If you are interested in exploring the potential of effective coaching to enhance your own performance or that of your business, we’d love to hear from you. We recognise a coaching relationship is one built on trust and mutual respect so we encourage you to meet with us to find out if we’re the right people to support you in achieving your goals. Initial contact can be by email or by phone on +353 (0)1 477 3916.

Additional resources:

The Oneocean approach to performance coaching

Why do leaders hire executive coaches?

What happens during a typical coaching session?

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