Why every organization needs workplace coaching
Workplace coaching is a process that equips individuals with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to fully develop and enhance themselves to be effective and efficient in their commitments to themselves, their company, and their work. It is a form of “intentional partnership” focused on individual growth and development, aiming to help individuals become the “best version of themselves” and showcase their skills and talents.
It is a process that creates a safe space, creating moments conducive to effective coaching to bring out an individual’s talents and strengths, and increasing changes in thought and behavior.

Many organizations, researchers, and leaders define coaching as “critical leadership” and a “management competency.” In addition, employees now want a coach not a boss. In fact, true coaching enhances the flexibility and effectiveness of employees and organizations in creating change and transformation.
We define workplace coaching as a set of skills, processes, and knowledge that individuals use to engage themselves in creating the greatest impact, while understanding and experiencing constant change, always empowering themselves and their organizations.
Workplace coaching is not a redefinition of managerial skills, it is what managers and team leaders must have to increase results. Management deals with oversight, evaluation, and achieving goals. Coaching deals with the growth, development, and success of employees, achieving this by removing obstacles with the aim of showcasing and increasing individual creativity.
While coaching also uses some of the same communication processes, workplace coaching is not counseling or therapy. Coaching is about creativity, performance, and action towards the future, while therapy deals with resolving and improving past issues and looks primarily to the past.
Although workplace coaching will use the manager’s experiences, and in some special cases offer opinions or suggestions, coaching is also not mentoring or consulting. Coaching utilizes all of an individual’s knowledge and experience to enable them to undergo the coaching process and create and develop their best performance, communication, and solutions.
Finally, coaching is not teaching or instructing. Workplace coaching supports the team members to learn using their own style and encourages them to develop their skills and knowledge towards a common team goal.
Why Workplace Coaching, and Why Now?
Coaching enhances creativity, successful performance, and flexibility, providing organizations with a competitive advantage and an effective way to navigate and operate in a constantly changing environment. Successful organizations such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, MCI, and others have realized that managers need to be able to coach their employees and each other. They have included coaching in their management/leadership development programs
In these organizations, coaching is defined as “critical leadership” and a “management competency.” These organizations know that the traditional management style of “supervising and controlling” is no longer effective in today’s environment and situation; a situation that requires quick response and reaction, effective and powerful creativity, flexibility, effort, and individual performance to maintain and sustain competition.
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Employees who are coached to do a job are more committed to the results and achieving organizational goals and spend more energy and time than those who are managed to do the job.
Successful organizations have also realized that continuous training of the workforce is essential to maintain and sustain competition. However, this training without coaching quickly loses its effectiveness and often fails to achieve the necessary sustainable behavioral changes. While training is an “event,” coaching is a process; a process that is the next valuable stage for training to ensure that the new knowledge transferred actually becomes a learned behavior.
Coaching has never been more necessary than now and in the future.
Individual flexibility, agility and performance will be seen as essential for team and organizational success. Coaching leverages individual power and abilities to maximize performance.

Additionally, coaching enables direct on-the-job training as well as timely training that is appropriate to specific situations. By enabling behavioral changes, coaching allows projects and individuals to move forward and progress quickly and with less effort. Today, business change is often non-linear and requires rapid change to completely new models. Coaching supports individuals in making these rapid changes that are necessary to meet changing business demands.
Today, employees are experiencing new employment contracts and career self-reliance is an important employee competency, in which employees use their skills and engagement to grow, develop, and seize opportunities. Managers and leaders need to coach their employees to achieve career self-reliance and engage in continuous career development.
In today’s market, creating added value is the key to business success.
Successful coaching adds value to employees, and in turn their productivity improves producing added value for the organization. Employees want to be fulfilled, productive, and creative, and coaching provides the environment and conditions for this to happen. Strength based coaching also supports diversity by recognizing the unique characteristics of each employee.
Research and experience show that when employees are coached with a positive attitude, they perform better than when they are constantly evaluated. Researchers have also observed that people with a more positive attitude are more likely to experience success in their jobs and careers. Coaching leads to an increase in employees’ positive attitude as a key component of progress, and this positive attitude is further strengthened through positive self-support.
Finally, coaching skills create and enhance team performance and teamwork, motivate production and sales, improve management and leadership, and increase awareness of the existence of diversity and its use. Human resources professionals have realized that in order to perform optimally in the future, companies need to hire employees who are suitable for their organization rather than filling and completing job descriptions. This compatibility and suitability of employees with the organization is assessed and developed through coaching. Managers also coach their employees to become more self-reliant and develop their careers more effectively.

Who is coached in the workplace?
Today, successful managers and leaders are expanding their coaching skills to support and enhance the performance and individual development of their employees. Also, managers who possess coaching skills use coaching as a fundamental way to support and guide each other in challenging situations and thus coach each other. Finally, managers may be able to increase their ability to lead and manage by coaching their superiors in a 360-degree feedback situation.
Coaching not only provides a basis for feedback but also provides a process for supporting behavioral change. The best workplace coaches are those who understand and develop their own coaching style and approach, rather than following a common method that is the same regardless of individual differences; people who know how to “flex” their style to coach others and can effectively use the coaching process and concepts through understanding and developing skills.
How do leaders develop effective coaching skills and competencies?
Managers and leaders develop their coaching competency in the following ways:
- Increasing their awareness of coaching and its benefits, as well as accepting the concept and process of coaching
- Learning coaching concepts and tools
- Recognizing their own coaching style and skill level and learning how to recognize others’ preferences for being coached
- Practicing coaching using their best coaching tools and strengths, as well as continuously developing their coaching competency through feedback and ongoing coach training
Although some managers may initially be more interested in and accustomed to coaching than others, we find that managers, leaders, and clients with whom we do coaching all enjoy it and, if supported with a model in finding and applying their unique strengths in coaching, will become influential coaches. In conclusion, coaching creates a win-win-win situation for the team leader/manager, team members and the organisation.
Source: integral.org

Taymour Miri is an ICF master coach and a Gallup certified strengths coach and more recently one of the first 136 coaches world wide to be awarded an Advanced Certificate in Team Coaching. He has 30 years’ experience in leadership roles and 20 years of experince in coaching. Taymour has trained over 1,500 coaches across five continents and is the founder of International Coaching Education (ICE).