Businesses used to focus on improving performance at all levels of the organisation. They’ve more recently re-discovered Pareto’s Law – when they improve performance of their top performers and leadership, the entire organisation reaps the rewards. Business coaching can be a one-time intervention, but you see greater benefits when you engage in coaching over the long-term.
7 benefits of business coaching
But what exactly are the benefits for businesses when they invest in coaching, and making executives and managers better coaches themselves?
Business coaching benefit 1: Managers become leaders
They often say that managers manage based on prior results while leaders look ahead and lay the roadmap for the future. Leaders set the tone for the business, and their example becomes the model for everyone else. When a manager works with a business coach, they improve on areas ranging from goal setting to communication. At the same time, it shows that the manager is willing to improve, creating a culture that values education. And if a manager simply becomes less of a micromanager, you’re less likely to see high turnover from people trying to flee a bad boss.
Business coaching benefit 2: It improves productivity
A star performer may resent advice on how they could do better. After all, aren’t they already out-doing everyone else? A business coach can approach them in a manner they’ll accept, helping them determine strengths and weaknesses, before developing a plan to improve. They’ll remove their personal roadblocks and stop making the mistakes that were holding them back. Whether it is sales numbers or cases closed, your star performers will perform even better. In many cases, investing in them will help them feel like leadership cares about them. That in turn helps you keep them.
Business coaching benefit 3: There are fewer mistakes and mishaps
Some of the most common issues business coaches work on is clear communication and effective feedback. Coaches teach managers how to clearly communicate objectives so that people don’t waste time doing what they weren’t supposed to do.
Constructive feedback will improve the performance of team members. Managers won’t wait for an annual performance review to tell someone that their performance was sub-par. When corrections like this are delayed, it seems sudden. It also means the person has been underperforming for weeks or months, undermining their productivity. When managers know how to give constructive feedback with emotional engagement and without the drama, the message will be received, and the performance will change.
Business coaching benefit 4: It drives results
Business coaching isn’t therapy. It actually draws many parallels to sports coaching, and both are aimed at improving performance. Coaching is or should be focused on results. It may be solving a particular problem, or it may be teaching good problem-solving skills. It seeks to assess the person being coached, identifying strengths and weaknesses, before addressing the areas where improvement is both needed and value-added.
Business coaching benefit 5: It creates the culture employees increasingly expect
Business leaders are under increasing scrutiny from society and regulators. They’re also being held to higher standards of accountability and transparency by everyone, including subordinates.
Business coaching helps managers become effective communicators so that they are seen as honest. It teaches them how to discuss challenging subjects with peers before matters get out of hand. They’re better able to receive corrective feedback themselves and work out problems before they turn into burning issues.
That is seen as improving accountability, when someone can tell a manager their estimates are wrong or why a business plan is problematic. And the business coach can be the sounding board and confidant a business leader needs, reducing the risk that they propose something that is shot down by team members. At the same time, the fact that the boss is seen being coached shows that they are addressing their own weaknesses and seeking to do better.
Business coaching benefit 6: It cultivates the next generation of leaders
Business coaching is a great way to prepare people on the track for promotion for leadership roles. They may be experts in their particular niche or in the business’s operations, but that doesn’t mean they have the full complement of soft skills needed to manage others.
An ILM Level 5 coaching course can teach them these soft skills or address the few areas where someone most needs improvement. A side benefit is the increased retention of this key talent. When they’re sent to ILM Level 5 coaching, they know the company is investing in them and sees them having a future with the firm. ILM Level 5 coaching courses should be part of any executive development program.
Those who go through the program will appreciate the ILM Level 5 coaching certificate or ILM Level 5 certificate in coaching and mentoring from the BCF Group, since they are such widely recognised credentials. ILM is, after all, the largest management body in the UK.
ILM Level 5 qualifications in coaching and mentoring prepare managers to mentor people as well, such as when someone is being groomed to take on an expanded role or be promoted.
Business coaching benefit 7: It enables organisational shifts
One benefit of business coaching is that it moves managers into leadership, from reactive to proactive. This can help businesses move from constantly putting out fires to planning a sustainable, long-term strategy for future growth.
A side benefit of business coaching is that managers are better able to communicate their vision to subordinates while training them to take on more control of their day to day work. Managers don’t have to micromanage because they’ve empowered their employees. And the leadership can dedicate time to plan a vision of the future, mapping out that change to be made on a planned schedule. That’s certainly better than reacting to declining profits and headlines about the competition with a fearful cry to chop and change, not really sure the new strategy will be an improvement and increasing the odds it will fail because you just jumped into it.
Another benefit of business coaching is that it helps people determine their purpose, vision and values so they can make decisions based on those criteria instead of running to get approval for every action. And when people are more confident in their decisions, that confidence rubs off on everyone else. They aren’t afraid of the changes you’re proposing, because you aren’t afraid.
Conclusion
Business coaching is an incredibly useful tool in enhancing the productivity, performance, cohesiveness and culture of any organisation. And it is one of the few strategies available for successfully reinventing a business, no matter which way it needs to go.
