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In today's turbulent business environment an organization must embrace change, foster innovation and have the ability to attract, motivate and retain talented people by developing a performance culture which is empowering and flexible.
One of the great misconceptions about business coaching is that it is only people who have problems engage with coaches! Nothing could be further from reality.
Research conducted recently as part of a Masters Business Programme in Management Consultancy, at the Michael Smurfit School of Business at UCD concluded that due to the “wide array of management challenges, that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to personal development is no longer adequate and that group training sessions are no longer applicable & need to be replaced by a more personal individual experience” The conclusions clearly portrayed coaching as the best way of addressing inadequacies & challenges for Irish managers & businesses.
The report identified the top five challenges facing business managers today as follows:
- Attracting & retaining key staff
- Maintaining & increasing profit
- Reducing costs
- Managing change
- Increasing innovation
The report also highlighted where our leaders & managers should focus attention if they are to overcome these challenges and they observed a common thread throughout and that was “the necessity for managers to fully engage with employees”
The top five ways listed on how best to engage with employees were:
- Empowerment
- Equipping employees with the right tools
- Regular feedback
- Leadership
- Motivation
Finally the report concluded that business coaching was “the best way to address these problems and that it can serve to engage managers & those aspiring to such positions in the most fundamental ways”. The coaching process is seen as “the most pure form of empowerment, as it seeks to allow the coachee to discover their own solutions by asking effective questions and offering sincere encouragement”.
One of the key questions often asked is- "Do companies and executives get worthwhile return on investment from business coaching”
A 2009 survey by Harvard Business Review actually addressed this question:
The survey found that “the popularity and acceptance of leadership coaching continues to rise even in the current tight business environment”. The survey concluded that clients keep coming back because “coaching works.” The report also found that: “over 48% of companies now use coaching to develop the leadership capabilities of high-potential performers and the typical coaching assignment is from seven to twelve months”. -2009 Harvard Business Review Survey
Most people who use a Business Coach do so, for a variety of some of the following reasons:
Improving Communication Skills: Understanding how the person communicates, and what skills deficiencies they may have in this area. Developing greater skillfulness in communication and increasing awareness of its impact on others in the organization, and in one’s personal life, as well as on interpersonal relationships.
Role Clarification: Getting greater clarity about one’s role; becoming better at firming up the boundaries between what one is responsible for and awareness of the limits of one’s responsibility.
Effective Delegation: Dealing with the internal blocks that cause a business person to assume "over-responsibility". Learning how to help others take more responsibility for their roles & deliver best outcomes.
Work/Life Balance: Achieving adequate balance between one’s business / professional role and one’s personal life; having more fun and recreation!
Leadership & Management Skills: Developing leadership & management abilities; understanding the fundamental differences between both and knowing how to use both effectively in a business setting; also redresses areas of deficit.
Personal Strategic Planning: Commencing with a clear vision of what you wish to achieve and developing this vision into audacious long term goals. Learning how to set & integrate realistic business, career and personal goals in full alignment with one’s purpose & core values; establishing a structure that ensures follow through and full delivery on results.
Values Clarification: Getting greater awareness of what one truly values. Ensuring values are not an impediment to fulfillment at work.
Confidential Support: Especially important for the most senior business leaders is the opportunity to tease out business issues in confidence, with someone outside the organization. Using your business coach to challenge any radical ideas before putting them to your management team is a great way to protect your management credibility with your senior team. This kind of impartial support can be of immense value to senior executives whose role often places them in functional isolation.
Career Path Development: Help is available when planning a career in keeping with one’s values and goals.
Career Dissatisfaction: Understanding the causes of this and working out an alternative future. Along the way you discover your core strengths; that area where skill, enjoyment & meaning intersect for you and where you will be world class.
Newly Promoted: Help in setting goals and grounding oneself in the new role. You only get one chance to make a first impression!
Emotional Intelligence/Awareness & your Personality Type: Becoming more self-aware; knowing & understanding one’s feelings and reactions more deeply. Understanding the effect you have on others. Using psychometric tools to discover & validate innate personality type & dominant themes.
Beliefs: Challenging limiting beliefs & learning how to remove them as obstacles to progress to higher achievement, is probably one of the most misunderstood and under-valued areas of business coaching.
Most importantly:
Choose your business coach wisely. To be the best, you must learn from the best and past performance & achievements must be one of the primary factors in assessing the suitability of your business coach. After all, even in sport when you appoint a coach, one of the main criteria for selection is proven ability in the specific field.
In business also, it's not just what you do; how you do it, is equally important. Fusion Business Coaching responds to both needs, at the individual & team levels.
Dan has an unquestionable pedigree and proven ability at the highest levels of Leadership & Management & he is available to deliver all programmes.
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