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Setting coaching up for success: three common coaching scenarios
There are a plethora of reasons that people arrive at coaching.
Sometimes they arrive and they’re not sure why they’re there. They’ve been sent by HR, maybe as part of a leadership programme, but they’re not really sure what coaching is or how they might benefit from it. Let’s start by saying that this is not ideal (but it is common)!
Oftentimes, people arrive at coaching with some organisational direction about the purpose of the coaching. This is much more likely to give you some ROI on your coaching spend.
What I’d like to explore in this short article is three common scenarios which might prompt organisations to request coaching for a colleague, and some thoughts and ideas about how to set these development opportunities up for success.
The individual who needs to improve their communication skills
Issues with communication can be career limiting, even for individuals that might perform brilliantly in other areas.
In our experience, it is a very common topic for coaching and frequently forms at least part of the ‘public goals’. These are the goals agreed between the coachee and the organisation, usually in the form of a line manager or HR. The need for improved communication could be picked up from feedback. This is commonly feedback like: “Rubs people up the wrong way by being too direct in their communication style” or “Doesn’t deliver clear instructions when delegating”.
The first step in setting this coaching up for success is to ensure the content of the feedback and desired improvement are described well. “To improve communication skills” is not a coaching goal. “To improve delegation such that team members have clarity on their role and responsibilities” is something more concrete to work with.
This clarity can be further enhanced through involving the line manager or HR in a triangulation meeting before the coaching begins, to ensure the ‘public goal’ of the coaching is understood by all parties.
It should be noted that the broad topic of ‘communication’ frequently comes up as a ‘private goal’ for coaching as well. This is a goal that is not shared with the organisation but that the individual wishes to work on themselves. We work with many people that find communication tricky, even if they may appear to be good at it from other people’s perspective.
Common issues can be:
There are a multitude of reasons that people might be experiencing any of the above phenomena and coaching can provide them with a safe space to explore that and to experiment with their self-curated solutions to addressing the issue.
Either way, the coaching support itself can have a profoundly positive impact for the individual, their skill-set and potential, and correspondingly the organisation.
The new leader
Coaching can be powerful for new leaders who are stepping into this role for the first time. Often they will have become a leader having already been a subject matter expert in their field, but they do not yet have any leadership skills or perhaps they don’t even know what it means to be a leader.
Some new leaders will come to coaching as part of a broader leadership development programme and the coaching will therefore sit alongside training interventions. However, some new leaders come to coaching with little knowledge and experience of what leadership is.
To set this coaching up for success, it is important to define what the organisation expects from its leaders and to collaboratively identify areas that the individual can develop in order to become a better leader.
In our opinion, whether the leadership coaching sits alongside a training programme or not, the provision of coaching is essential for new leaders, because ‘who you are is how you lead’. The organisation may have defined what they expect from leaders in the form of skills or behaviours, and the training may have taught them some leadership models and ideas, but each individual will do leadership in a different way, leaning into their personal behavioural preferences, strengths and values.
In order to become a successful leader, they need to explore questions like:
In exploring these kinds of coaching questions in a safe environment, your new leaders will soon be performing in a way that enables them to shine and to flourish.
The individual that is highly valued but doesn't have an obvious progression opportunity
Frequently, we have been approached by organisations who have a high performing and high potential individual who they really want to keep but for whom no clear progression opportunities exist at the current time.
From an organisational perspective, it is really important to frame this coaching well.
A common, but not ideal, approach is:
“We really want to keep this person but we can’t offer them a promotion. Can you give them some coaching so that they know they are valued by the organisation and let’s cross our fingers that they’ll stay with us.”
Really savvy organisations would use an approach more like this:
“We really want to keep this person but we can’t offer them a promotion. We know that this means we might lose them but we’d like to offer them some personal development in the form of coaching. One of the goals of the coaching would be for them to work out how they can stay and develop within our organisation or, if they can’t, to leave well and with our support.”
This approach can be pivotal in retaining that valued employee. Our personal experience is that when an organisation has overtly taken the second approach, the individual has stayed with the organisation in the full knowledge that they are valued, that they will be given development opportunities and, when appropriate, will progress their career within the organisation.
And, let’s say that the individual does end up leaving for pastures new: their personal experience as an employee within your organisation will be universally positive which will have a great impact on your employer brand and increase the chance that they may come back to you in the future with more skills and experience under their belt.
Conclusion
We can see that coaching would support these individuals in slightly different ways. A common theme is that there needs to be clarity from the organisation about the purpose of the coaching. In a coaching relationship which is sponsored by an organisation, there will always be public and private goals (more on this in my next article). The clearer that the organisation can be about the public goals, the more likely it is that the private goals will align. And this is where the organisation gets return on investment.