3 business benefits of external coaching
As a conscientious business owner or leader, you know that the more empowered and engaged your team, the more productive they are. And the more productive they are, the more profitable your business will be.
And I’m sure you already know the benefits of taking a coaching approach to management, doing your best to implement this in your interactions with your team members.
According to coaching pioneer, John Witmore, “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
So, you’re a good listener. You have your team’s best interests at heart. You want to empower them to learn and grow in the role. Why bother getting external support, when you can do it yourself?
An impartial sounding board
Working in the business, you still have the pressure of delivering against business goals and objectives. So, sometimes it can feel easier to take the lead and just tell a team member what to do. It’s quicker, right? But allowing an individual to work something out for themselves is so much more powerful. It gives them autonomy and empowers them to deliver.
An external coach will be able to support your team without preconceived biases or assumptions.
It enables complete honesty
One of the key benefits of an external coach is that your team can be completely honest, in a way that they can’t if they are coached by a member of the senior management team or a peer.
Even with the most supportive manager, an employee may find it hard to be completely honest about how they are feeling or what they need – their issue may be with their manager, or they may be worried that by being completely honest it will impact on their future potential within the business.
When speaking with an external coach, an employee can speak with confidentiality, knowing that what they say will not be shared with the business and giving them the space to work through what is right for them.
You will benefit from a fresh perspective
As they are not embedded in the business, an external coach can help your team think differently. They are not bogged down by processes or the way things are usually done. By asking questions that haven’t been asked before, and encouraging the employee to consider things they haven’t before, new solutions to difficult problems can arise.
No matter how supportive you are as a manager, and how honed your coaching skills are, it’s hard to deliver pure coaching when you are also engaged within the business.
If you want to know more about engaging and motivating your team, check out these other articles:
3 steps to improving employee engagement — With 81,396 hours of our life spent working it’s understandable that we want to feel connected to our work. This article looks at three simple steps you can take to help your employees feel engaged with their roles and the wider business.
Quiet Quitting. It’s not them, it’s you — If you want to drive your business forward, you need your team engaged, motivated and committed. So, here are three things to consider if you feel your team’s output or motivation has decreased.
How to create an environment where your team can flourish — You can't deny that the cost of recruiting new staff is high, so consider how you can create the right environment for your team to thrive.
