The secret to success in your business performance is employee coaching.
It can often go overlooked, but coaching has been proven to increase both individual self-confidence and productivity in a phenomenal 80% of people.
But how beneficial can it really be?
We've homed in on the feedback aspect of coaching, in particular, to show you the numerous ways in which coaching can help both your employees and your business itself.
The Many Benefits of Employee Coaching
Self-confidence and productivity boosts are two of the many ways in which employee coaching can help your employees.
This form of coaching can be beneficial in building the relationship between you and your employees. It can help your employees feel a sense of involvement in your business and its successes.
This sense of togetherness is brilliant for promoting a friendlier, more collaborative workplace. [quotesright]This can help put employees at ease, while also encouraging continued productivity. [/quotesright]
Encouraging collaboration itself is vital for businesses to thrive in the 21st century. It's been proven to build creativity in individuals. Not only that, but it also improves problem-solving skills, causing faster productivity.
This level of engagement on an individual scale, for all your employees, can be a priceless intervention. It can improve their professional performance and their private enjoyment of the workplace.
There are also more obvious benefits to employee coaching, in that it helps train your employees in new skills. These could help them work more effectively and garner more enjoyment out of their role.
[quotesright]The more talented your employees are, the better your business can function as a unit and create a profitable venture. [/quotesright]
Now that you know some of the benefits of coaching, let's go into how feedback specifically improves staff coaching and mentorship.
Feedback in Staff Coaching: How is it Done?
Feedback through staff coaching can be integrated in a number of different ways.
The most obvious of these is verbal or aural communication and feedback. This can be as brief as a simple thanks for engaging particularly strongly in a coaching session.
Or, it can be a detailed post-interview, where individuals can go over what they've just experienced in a particular session. In addition to verbal feedback, coaching feedback can be given in a written format.
This can be more beneficial in the long run, as it provides a physical document for employees to take home or keep in the office. They can review this feedback in the future, with a number of its own benefits that we'll go into below.
Finally, feedback can also be provided on a group scale to an entire workforce following a session. It is an excellent format for helping teams understand each other and work better together. It can be in person or via Zoom, etc., and can be role plays, audiovisual and often contains a “long tail” follow-up component to make sure the information is absorbed and applied.
There are numerous benefits to these different methods, as well as with feedback as a whole in staff coaching initiatives.
Feedback as a Building Block
The first key benefit of staff coaching feedback is to enable it to function as a building block. Done properly by trained facilitators or manager it is where ordinarily somewhat negative feedback can be delivered in a way to encourage positivity in the future.
There's an art to giving bad news; in the same way, there's an art to giving feedback on negative or counterproductive behavior. An experienced coach will know how to tell someone they're doing something wrong. They do this by kindly focusing on the ways in which they can improve.
This effort can help people see that things they have been doing were wrong but they may not have recognized that. Crucially, it does so in a way that isn't aggressive or dismissive of their effort.
[quotes]Instead, it acknowledges that people can make mistakes and that these mistakes can be built on.[/quotes] This then provides a more positive problem identification and resolution framework for employees. It helps people accept change and ensures that employees are able to change their behavior in the future.
Feedback as a Form of Connection Building
Feedback is another great way of building connections within a workforce. The process of giving feedback can build connections between those of a different hierarchy in a company.
It can help managers connect with employees where they might not otherwise get the time to do so. This face-to-face interaction can help them get to know each other on a more personal level in a professional environment.
This is particularly useful in that the communication is tailored towards personal growth in the workplace and in managing remote workers. Connections are forged around work, which can help build productivity and a sense of involvement within the whole team.
If this involves negative feedback, then the feedback giver and the individual are able to work together on a solution. This process provides feedback to those higher up in the loop on what a worker is doing to change things in the future.
[quotes]A higher level of communication makes it easier to manage employees.[/quotes] Employees feel they have a greater level of support while discussions with their boss helps communicate that the company values them and is concerned with their wellbeing.
Having good support structures are vital to productivity and a feeling of fulfillment within an enterprise.
This is important in larger teams where face-to-face talks between different teams are rare. It can create a sense of wholeness within a team that's hard to replicate or create outside a coaching environment.
Feedback as a Continued Form of Personal Assessment
Written feedback, as mentioned above, is a great way of creating a physical example of support for the future. It can be used to guide employees not just on the day of coaching, but well into the future.
This can be perfect when combined with future coaching sessions. If you schedule weekly or monthly sessions, feedback can create realistic goals to reach. Employees can be challenged to change before the next coaching session occurs.
This can then help to build a route map of change for employees. These small changes will seem far more manageable than an instant change in behavior.
It allows an appropriate schedule of improvements to happen where necessary. This is also managed without putting too much pressure on managers or employees.
If this feedback is provided as an audiovisual video, then it can be played back to a whole team after a session is complete. This then provides yet another form of togetherness between employees of different areas.
[quotes]All of this works to encourage a sense of individual employees working towards a whole, singular purpose.[/quotes] Coaching manages this in a light-hearted, enjoyable way.
Feedback and Coaching Can Solve Conflicts
The right kind of coaching can also aid in rectifying conflicts. Conflicts in the workplace are rarely problems that can't be solved.
Coaches can identify which individuals need to improve their work patterns.
Or they can identify who doesn't work well together within a unit. This can help managers change patterns and approach conflict resolution in the best way for everyone involved.
Make sure to read through our previous post on employee conflicts if this is an issue your business is currently facing. Because coaches are independent, they have a neutral position that all parties can trust.
Independent Coaches Can Build Bridges and See What Employees Can't
With outsourced coaching, a coach can serve as an independent figure, integrating within an entire workforce. They're able to talk with both managers and employees to create a bond between them. Using a combination of personnel assessments, individual and group coaching programs, we bring out the reasons why there is friction, misunderstanding, mistrust and progress sapping feelings then change the way people view what they see.
Sure, we can help put the right people together with scientifically validated tools and pinpoint specific training which is needed for each individual to both improve their effectiveness and “round of the rough edges” but the payoff is happy employees and proud managers.
These bridges may have been hard to create from within the company, as they'd need to be built through internal processes and a breadth of tools and training not commonly found in managers. [quotesright] By being able to see the reality of a situation, a coach can make important connections to identify the underlying problems that wouldn't be visible from the inside. [/quotesright]
The best coaches are able to identify misperceptions and broken connections and discuss with a business owner what the real issues are and how to make changes for greater productivity in the future.
Business leadership is a challenging thing for anyone. Coaching can help lighten the load on both business owners and managers. That way they can focus their time on other matters in the knowledge that employees are being coached appropriately.
It works as a behavior management tool, as well as a way of helping employees work more productively.
Much of this wouldn't be possible without their independence as an external figure.
Businesses, both small and large, can often get stuck in their processes. [quotesright]They do the same things each day because they work, but these processes are rarely optimized. [/quotesright]
A coaching session can shake things up in the workplace in the form of connections as well as processes. This heightened level of creativity that's encouraged can then cause real changes to a business model that wouldn't have been recognized beforehand.
Where Can I Find Out More About Employee Coaching?
If you're interested in finding out more about coaching and want to explore further, or have questions – Get in touch and let's set up a time to talk. Brian Tracy USA: 877.433.6225 Email Me