At The Point.1888, we recognise how massively important it is to have a healthy, happy team. That’s why we have a Talent Director, Rachel Steele, in place to not only find us the best people to come and work for us, but also provide everyone with coaching and developmental support to keep us close, driven, focused and looking after ourselves. Below, she shares her views on coaching in the workplace and how to make it work.
Coaching is a process that helps to move a person’s thinking forwards, find solutions that are right for them personally (as opposed to those someone else advises) and then identify actions that will be most helpful to achieve the outcomes they’re looking for.
If you’re lucky enough to have access to a great coach in any aspect of your life – be it sport, wellbeing, creativity or work, you will likely have noticed an uplift in your motivation and ability to work towards your goals.
At work, coaching can be particularly helpful. Here are just some of the expected outcomes of coaching in the workplace
-for employees:
- Improves managerial and interpersonal skills
- Improves performance and effectiveness
- Better relationships with colleagues, clients and stakeholders
- Increased confidence
- Clearer career plan and identified areas for development
- Self awareness
- Personal resilience and adaptability
- Lower levels of stress
– For the employer:
- Improved productivity
- Supports new hires to reach their best potential quickly
- Increases employee engagement and talent retention
- Demonstrates a commitment to personal development
- Supports newly promoted individuals to make an impact
- Enhanced quality and customer service
- Resolution of cultural issues
- Improved relationships within teams and across departments
But, in order for any of this to happen, one of the most important aspects of effective coaching is the element of trust. It’s essential to the process. The coach has to fully trust in the ability of the coachee to have all the resources within them to find a solution, and over time this increases self-trust.
“Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.”
– Stephen Covey
Although trust is quite a difficult thing to define, it’s easy to recognise when it’s missing. And it can be really demoralising to work for someone who doesn’t trust staff to do their jobs properly, micro-managing them and questioning why they’re not doing things exactly as they would do it themselves. Unsurprisingly, this style of “developing” people rarely builds confidence, and tends to create high levels of stress for everyone involved.
Even outwardly confident people suffer from a lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem at times, which can lead to issues with mental health. Working with a coach can make a huge difference to the way you view issues, situations and your ability to deal with them. Rather than being advised on the best way forwards, when it comes from within people tend to be more committed to the actions they’ve identified, as they take ownership.
This is one of the ways coaching in management can be applied effectively – doing less telling, and more asking, so that people get to think for themselves and own their strategy. This absolutely means that you should then add to this with mentoring and sharing your knowledge, but it encourages a solution that is built together, as opposed to telling someone what to do.
When managers are equipped with coaching techniques and the intention of embedding a coaching culture, this is a great starting point for building a high level of trust. Universally, everyone performs better when they’re trusted to do their job, and they trust themselves to smash it.
I’m a firm believer that increasing the levels of trust in the relationships around you, and within yourself, can have a huge impact on mental health. Coaching provides a number of tools that can foster trust, and this is one of the reasons it can be so effective in increasing motivation if you embrace it within your workplace.
To find out more on this, or to enquire about receiving coaching as well as many other flexible working policies, contact The Point.1888, or head over to Rachel’s LinkedIn