How Coaching for Performance Can Help Empower Your Team and Drive Excellence

Even if you are content with your company’s profits, there’s always room for improvement. Coaching for performance can help you achieve its full potential. The terms “training” and “coaching” are often used interchangeably. However, although both these activities are intended to achieve similar outcomes, they differ significantly in other respects.

A well-known adage states that one can lead a horse to water, but one cannot make it drink. Similarly, you can teach someone a new language or a work skill, but that will not guarantee their willingness to apply it or their competence if they choose to. The task of a trainer is to impart new knowledge and skills to those who lack them. By contrast, the coach’s job is to help those who already possess those skills overcome any obstacles that might be preventing them from applying them to full advantage. As a result, motivation tends to play a pivotal role in achieving the ultimate goal – optimal performance. At the same time, business coaches often identify personnel who could benefit from additional training whilst performing their allotted tasks.

What does coaching for performance involve?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to successful coaching. A business coach may adopt various techniques for performance management, of which the two most common are role play and demonstration:

• Roleplay

This approach can be particularly effective as it is generally seen to be a bit of fun, and people are invariably more receptive and more willing to participate when they are relaxed. Also, there will be no real-world consequences if someone should make a mistake in a mock scenario. The coach can then advise how to avoid such errors when faced with a live situation, and the memory of that exercise will be retained far longer than the content of a lecture.

Regardless of the chosen approach, the key to successful coaching is promoting active involvement rather than passive listening. While role play can be a powerful means to reinforce training and develop competence and self-confidence in salespeople and customer service personnel, it may not be the best option for everyone. It is the responsibility of a business coach to identify those employees who appear to be less open to this approach and implement a more appropriate strategy.

• Demonstration

When coaching for performance, learning by example can be a powerful tool. Rather than creating the simulated scenarios used when engaged in role-playing, the coach can elect to demonstrate how to perform a relevant live task correctly and then supervise staff members while they attempt to repeat it. If it appears someone may be about to make a mistake, the coach can quickly intervene.

The same approach is used in on-the-job practical training. However, a coach must attach equal importance to competent and confident performance while also seizing opportunities to strengthen interpersonal skills like communication, empathy, leadership and team participation.

Whichever approach to performance management may be adopted, its success will not wholly depend on the coach’s experience and abilities. In practice, the process is unlikely to be fully effective unless the company’s managers embrace and are prepared to prioritise its importance by allocating sufficient uninterrupted time to this potentially game-changing service.

What are the benefits of coaching for performance?

Performance management initiatives provide multiple benefits, but we shall focus on just three in the following section.

• Employee empowerment: By helping employees gain confidence in their abilities, coaching goes well beyond the more limited boundaries of a typical training programme, which is confined to the transfer of knowledge and skills. Business coaching prepares employees to explore beyond traditional practices and, instead, to think out of the box, solving problems and improving current processes.

• Improved individual performance: Personalised guidance, feedback and encouragement from an experienced coach can help elevate an individual’s confidence, desire to learn and long-term aspirations. It can also help them to develop the qualities and insights essential to a team leader. What benefits employee also benefits employers. Coaching can help employers reduce recruitment costs by preparing existing staff for more responsible roles and internal hiring.

• Improved alignment with company goals: Coaching helps companies identify mutual goals, thus ensuring everyone supports them and will cooperate to achieve them.

Orgro specialises in coaching for performance

Would you like to learn more about how you can empower your staff and optimise your company’s performance? If so, why not contact us today and experience the many benefits of working with a professional performance management coach?

Contact Us for Leadership Skills Training:

Follow us on Social Media:

Facebook: @OrgroConsulting

Instagram: @orgro_

LinkedIn: Orgro