Why a coach is more important than a business coach

A familiar situation for many companies: the usual business trainings and seminars for managers and employees no longer bring the desired effect. No matter what you try, the company’s performance is not growing, employees lack motivation, you expect more leadership from managers who are already overworked, and cross-functional communications within the company also leave much to be desired.

And at the same time, in order to preserve, increase, and in some cases even survive in the market, companies need to urgently change – change not only the organizational structure, but also the culture.

The effectiveness of coaching in an organization

In conditions of constant time pressure and high intensity of work, difficult ambitious tasks of developing employees and managers – both personal development and group development – and when all known development tools no longer work, business turns to coaching.

And – let’s face it – he does the right thing, because the result of using coaching technologies in the form of improving business performance and increasing employee performance is an indisputable fact. A study on the results of coaching in business conducted by the consulting company Manchester Inc. among the leaders of 100 major global business companies, demonstrated that a coaching approach to individual and group development helps:

• improve the quality of work of teams of employees by 48%
• reduce the number of conflict situations in teams by 52%
• increase the productivity of managers and employees by 53%

Moreover, according to a study on the use of coaching in business, employee satisfaction with their work increased by 61%, and working relationships in teams improved by 77%.

Coaching for managers and employees, external and internal

When the company’s management decides to use coaching approaches in the development of its employees and managers, the position of a coach is often introduced in the organizational structure, for example, of the training and development departments.

But more often coaches work not with ordinary employees, but with business leaders. It is believed that the result of such individual work will be more effective, since the manager has more powers and opportunities to implement all the business development ideas that the coach helps to reveal.

In many large companies and corporations, each top manager hires a personal, individual coach. Management considers these costs justified, since a good “top manager-coach” relationship will bring more benefits to the company (more profit, more new opportunities).

The question of “in-house coach or freelance” is solved by companies, according to our observations, in this way: an external coach works with the management team, and a full-time coach is employed with ordinary employees. This approach “closes” many problems: coaches from outside can lead managers to clear business development decisions, and a full-time coach, working in a company, knows what features of it should be paid attention to when working with a client.

The main tasks of coaching in business

The main task of the coach today is called balancing the client’s focus between the state and achievements. That is, the coach must take care that the client does not work to the detriment of himself, that he does not burn at work, but does exactly what he can, without suicidal workaholism.

So, if in the USA it is more common to teach a client to perform tasks, then in the post-Soviet space it is still to take care of his state of mind. Probably because the American clients of coaches go to psychologists separately – this is accepted in society.

And if the coach works with a leader, it is very important to teach him the right leadership. The leader can be driven by two driving forces – love and fear. Either they are afraid of the boss, therefore they obey (but they will do everything as he said, no better and no worse), or the boss is respected and loved, therefore they will do everything even better to please him.

So the task of the leader is to learn how to involve people in their activities so that people seriously want to do this activity, out of love, and not out of fear. And the task of the coach in this situation is to find in the leader the love that he can apply in his work as a leader.

That’s why a coach is needed, that’s why he is sometimes more important than a business coach. As a rule, at various awards for successful top managers, it turns out that each of the managers has his own coach. It is very difficult to act effectively and make the right decisions in such posts.

The tops have too much responsibility, too serious a waste of resources – physical and mental strength. Therefore, the best way to cope is to entrust at least help in making decisions to the coach, to understand that you are not alone. For any person, whether he is an ordinary employee or a top.