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Essence of managerial coaching in organisations

Opinion & Analysis
There is no doubt that coaching has evolved as a discipline. It is a critical and essential skill for every manager to have coaching skills because everyone needs a coach, even the coach needs to be coached also.

Emmanuel Zvada IN athletics, the word coach refers to a person who trains or directs players. All the managers must play a similar role in organisations. Given the increasingly common expectation that managers must coach their employees, it is clear that managers need to be trained to do so.

There is no doubt that coaching has evolved as a discipline. It is a critical and essential skill for every manager to have coaching skills because everyone needs a coach, even the coach needs to be coached also.

The role of a manager in any organisation is to add value to the decision-making and judgment of people, hence coaching skills are becoming part of every  manager’s toolkit.

Through regular coaching conversations, the manager can have considerable impact on developing trust, awareness, responsibility and learning and ultimately on engagement and performance.

Managerial coaching refers to an effective managerial practice that helps managers to be developed so that they also develop others to realise maximum performance and productivity in organisations.

Managerial coaching is a concept that attempts to provide a fine distinction in terms of who the coach is, the skills and behaviours of the coach, and what the coach is receiving as part of the coaching process.

In actual fact, its main mission is to unlock employees’ potential to maximise their performance.

Managerial coaching can be linked to a variety of goals in the organisation, including improved performance management, long-term business success, employee engagement, productivity, career growth, and many more.

It is an irrefutable fact that if a manager is a good coach, that can cascade down to the employees and the organisation at large.

Purposes of managerial coaching:

Better engagement and higher productivity

It is a fact that managerial coaching leads to better engagement, higher productivity, and enhanced customer service. It also helps an employee improve performance, overcome challenges, reach aspirational goals, and build self-confidence.

Managers who are coaches help their team members to be more self-aware. In that process, the manager embarks on a journey to discover themselves in a better way. Everytime the manager asks their team member a question, it triggers several thoughts and feelings in their own mind.

Building stronger relationships

Coaching, as a prerequisite, needs rapport between the coach and the team member, and at the heart of rapport lies trust.

The coaching relationship is such that it solidifies trust by reinforcing the connection between the two individuals, which happens at several stages.

When a manager listens to a team member without any judgment, the team member’s self-esteem increases as they feel valued, respected, and empowered and at the end of the day it is beneficial to the organisation.

Helps in acquiring new skillsets

Coaching and mentoring provide opportunities to develop and refine specific skillsets that are critical to being a good manager. This can include learning how to be a good communicator and understanding how to provide high-quality feedback.

These are skills that allow managers to better support and develop their team. While acquiring new skillsets is something managers can do on their own, having a leadership coach or mentor can accelerate the process and give them access to firsthand knowledge that might not have been available to them.

Acts as confidence booster to new managers

People, who lack self-confidence, rarely thrive. They see more risks than opportunities, they don’t perform particularly well in new situations, and they often have low self-esteem.

A lack of confidence will inevitably lead to poor performance, low self-awareness, and an inability to provide helpful guidance. Coaching and mentoring sessions are great tools to build self-confidence. Why?

These relationships give managers a feedback loop, which allows them to know where they excel and  the areas they can improve.

First-time managers may also experience a lot of self-doubt. This is completely normal when learning a new set of skills or being in an unfamiliar role.

But, unaddressed, it can cause long-term problems for both the manager and the rest of the company.

Increased level of engagement

Managerial coaching engages participants with its unique one-on-one feedback and lots of encouragement.

When employees become engaged with their workplace, they can contribute more effectively to the team and the organisation.

This engagement also helps to increase retention rates and productivity, benefiting teams’ careers as well as the organisation.

Most managers need to be developed in order to get better at coaching. Coaching will be most effective when the coach understands that his or her role is to help people to learn at the same time maximising the performance and productivity of the organisations.

Improves communication

Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms.

Coaching enables leaders to improve their communication skills. Coaches highlight areas of communication that need improvement and practise those areas with the leader.

More-so coaches can also teach leaders how to communicate with individuals of different personalities, cultures or ages using their past experiences.

Managers need to understand the importance of being a coach. If coaching is seen as a push from HR or executives, there is a risk that managers will comply but with little conviction. Instead, they should be educated on the benefits of coaching as a personal skill as well as how it will benefit both themselves and their team.

The whole company should be educated on the effect of coaching on the culture of the organisation with the executive team leading by example. Every manager should be a role model and empower their teams by focusing on their strengths and developing individual expertise.

Managerial coaching has become increasingly popular in organisations during the past two decades.

On the one hand, organisations are making significant efforts to build internal capability by training managers to coach.

On the other hand, managers, by acting as coaches, help employees achieve excellent performance.

  • Emmanuel Zvada is a human capital consultant and international recruitment expert

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