Coaching as a management style is now a preferred method of delivering high performing teams. However coaching does not flow naturally for most of us. Coaches are normally specialist trained to increase performance, accountability partners, personal mentors supporting the team or individual to succeed and achieve an identified goal. Now managers can learn how to coach their own staff to increase performance in their teams.
Over the past 15 years the concept of coaching has moved from the realms of professional sport athletes into the business ethos of many corporations across America, the UK and now Australia. The concepts and techniques used in coaching should be demystified to allow everyone who manages others to learn how to coach either informally or formally.
Informal Coaching can happend through everyday interactions. It doesn’t need to be a sit down formal session which resembles training, it can occur through every encounter with the right skills and experience. In many ways, this is the best type of coaching as it’s unrecognisable and yet effective.
“Coaching is a gentle way of raising awareness of the imbalances that exist, and of helping the coachee to find a way forward which will benefit their work…..” (Coaching for performance; Sir John Whitmore)
“The idea is to provide a vision of the future or something to aspire toward, as opposed to struggling to survive by avoiding problems.”
