The benefits of coaching are real and tangible - have a look here for some of the typical questions that come up during one-on-one coaching sessions. Or read on below about some of the issues with which companies approach me. These are a few scenarios where my specific expertise can benefit your company:
Preparing for Feedback and Performance Review Interviews
Developing a Culture of Customer Value Creation
Managing the Work-Work Balance (especially for woman managers)
Changing Behaviours when a Key Resource is not Available as a Role-Model
Preparing for Feedback and Performance Review Interviews
It is a continual challenge for top managers to cascade corporate goals through the organisation and translate them not just into tasks, but into meaningful development opportunities at each and every level. To these ends, professional feedback and performance review tools can be of great use, provided there is the right preparation, execution and follow-up and that managers and direct reports develop and keep a positive attitude. It can be difficult, but the alternative is a process that is both expensive and futile.
Individual coaching sessions ensure goals are aligned and assist preparation for difficult interviews with each individual They make use of cutting-edge support materials and provide relevant thought-provoking information. In this way, your key personnel are prepared for the challenges they face when dealing with their direct reports in particular situations. Such sessions provide the level of support that enables them deliver real results because it assists managers understand how they can benefit from effective use of the tools. They will come to embrace the tools with renewed energy and ambition, and send the crucial message to their direct reports that this is not a routine exercise, that changes nothing, but really is about professional development.
Developing a Culture of Customer Value Creation
Many managers struggle to create a proactive approach to sales throughout an organisation. Even after implementing quality sales and after-sales processes, a firm can miss many opportunities to position itself as a desired partner that understands their clients' needs and values their clients' business.
Although one of the elements of the problem is often that of missing critical information, at its core it is always a mindset issue that can be effectively addressed by coaching. Coaching provides stimulating and thought-provoking insights, addresses the heart of the matter for each individual and, within a very few months, shows results that transform the company.
Managing Work-Work Balance (especially for woman managers)
A commonly accepted difference between men and women in the workplace is the amount of time spent on activities designed to win recognition and sell one’s accomplishments within the firm on one hand, and low-key, low-prestige activities that simply “need to be done”, on the other. Women can often be their own worst enemies…
Finding ways in which unrewarding yet necessary activities can be dealt with, without costing the woman manager precious time and focus is an issue that has to be addressed at a deeper level than the merely rational; women are perfectly aware of how much stress and de-focus these habits cause them, as well as actively inhibiting their promotion and progress in the organisation.
A coaching project repositions the woman manager for better results, creates thinking time and focus time and ensures that both she and the company can maximise her potential that would otherwise go unnoticed and unrealised.
Changing Behaviours when a Key Resource is not Available as a Role-Model
A very frustrating experience for top managers concerned with making their company and its processes more professional is where top experts who are on their payroll do not share their highly valued expertise with others in the firm. This expertise often resides exclusively with the expert, putting the employer into a precarious position where the knowledge may be lost. All the while, others in the company are denied the benefit of both the depth and width of that person’s knowledge and experience.
Moreover these key experts are often not happy with the leverage they are creating within their company and are aware that everyone else is not contributing at the same rate as they are. Yet they do not have an easy way out of this imbalance.
Here again, a coaching process can overcome this mutually unsatisfactory deadlock by carefully exploring the legitimate concerns and limiting beliefs of the unwilling sharer, as well as how he or she could benefit by changing their attitudes and opening their styles and minds to overcoming the issue. Coaching brings out the tangible benefits that are either already obvious to the person in question, or can be easily negotiated in the course of the process. Since there is always insight into the limitations of the status quo, which can be exposed by reasoned argument, the door to a more solution-focused attitude is usually already ajar.
