Why is coaching essential in today’s climate?

You need not look far to see the talent shortage many markets are facing in a continuing pandemic climate. From closed international borders and fluctuating state borders, the need for businesses to look to their current talent and their company’s bench strength is more important now than ever.

So, the next question is, how does a business identify and develop high-potential employees?

The literature of the benefits and effectiveness of coaching has grown in the last two decades with evidence of increasing moral drivers and performance measures such as wellbeing, coping, work and career-related attitudes and behaviours, and goal-directed self-regulation.

The impact of coaching in a business has the capacity to create a fundamental shift in the workplace which can increase employees? self-confidence in bringing more of themselves into the workplace making themselves and their teams more resilient and assertive.

At Peopleconnexion, creating high-performance teams and optimising business performance is central to our values. We recently had the pleasure of sharing these values in our Coaching for Leaders pilot to a large financial services company in PNG. This pilot was run with the aim to support the company’s leadership journey and implement a development framework for coaching and mentoring their staff.

The workshop objectives included:

• high-level overview of coaching and the existing barriers to coaching;
• foundations of coaching contracts and the coaching process;
• understanding the role of coaching in changing behaviour;
• understanding principles of conversation skills and coaching conversations;
• the foundations of Emotional Intelligence (EQ);
• key concepts of feedback; and
• awareness of the tools available for coaching and mentoring.

Here are some things some participants said about the workshop.

?It provided a high-level approach to coaching and to developing a coachee’s capacity in identifying or setting goals, to define their situations, and how best to approach their work more efficiently to achieve better outcomes and take ownership of a task.?

?The workshop reinforced some aspects of coaching we were already practicing but the course provided the theoretical structure we needed to enhance the basic skills that we already have.?

The overall goal of coaching is exactly this, to optimise what you already have. From soft-outcomes such as increased wellbeing and less burnout, to positive outcomes on coping mechanisms, resilience and self-regulation, having coaching programs in your business undeniably contributes to its output effectiveness and increase your bench strength.

We asked the participants to name three things they would do differently at work as a result of undertaking the workshop, and here are a few of their answers:

• Active listening in communication and facilitating open conversations
• Focusing on strengths while understanding areas of improvement
• Utilising and sharing knowledge
• Being self-aware as a leader

By implementing these simple yet crucial factors into your management of teams, you will be on the way to effectively engaging in coaching behaviours.

We look forward to sharing more of our Coaching for Leaders workshop successes in the coming future!