Dispelling the myths — coaching isn’t just for the top cats and dogs in your organisation

And Bill Gates agrees — this popped up on my LinkedIn feed today:

“If every successful manager, even a top athlete, has a coach, why shouldn’t everyone have one?”

— Bill Gates

Are you accessing coaching for all levels to re-engage, support and develop the people in your organisation?

I wanted to share why ‘coaching’ in the last year has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ (it’s too expensive/we don’t have time) to absolutely essential in supporting individual and, ultimately, organisational resilience.

There have been a number of articles recently that show that employees feel disengaged, unsupported and stressed and, as such, are leaving their jobs.

Where coaching was a ‘nice to have’, through our work with our clients, we are experiencing that coaching, in a psychologically safe environment, focused on not just the task but the individual and their diverse needs, has become essential in the turbulent times of this last year.

The organisations we are partnering with are recognising how extensively coaching can – and should – be applied; and how valuable the returns are to both the individual, team and organisational performance.

I wanted to share some examples of what we are hearing as a need, and how coaching has helped:

“We need our technical specialists to understand the role they play in leading through others.”
One-to-one coaching at two points in their six-month technical leadership programme, together with upskilling them to use the skills of coaching with their teams has enabled technical leaders to focus on how they are feeling and how to empower others to make decisions, so they are not a single point of dependency.

“Our managers need help understanding how to engage and motivate their teams – teams who are now dispersed, going through personal difficulties, and are threatening to leave through lack of support.”
Like the technical leaders, providing the same coaching skills to managers as an advanced masterclass has led to empowered teams and re-engagement.

“Our graduates feel disconnected – and attrition is higher than it ever has been. We need to re-engage with them to focus on the impact they will make as they start in their first posts.”
Graduates have been able to really share what’s going on for them by attending short one-to-one coaching sessions, and setting up buddy pairs, while Action Learning Groups have helped them understand how to connect with their teams, some of who they may have never met face to face.

Coaching, now more than ever, is easier to access – readily available and quickly applied back to working reality. How engaged are people in your organisation? Are you giving them the time and space to feel heard? How could you use coaching, in all its forms to support people as they embrace hybrid working and the continued instability and uncertainty of a world still in the grip of a pandemic? It doesn’t need to be the privilege of being at the top of an organisation – it can benefit all levels.