“I can see that my manager is trying really hard but it’s not working. The team is unmotivated and always complaining about what everyone else is doing. My manager does nothing to fix it. Working here is no fun so I am looking for a new job.”  

Sound familiar? Coaching could provide answers.

If you have unmotivated staff, conflict, negative politics, high turnover or find the mood among your team frustrating then coaching could build your capacity to better understand yourself and others, and give insight into how to put you and your team back on track.

Coaching has been around for well over a decade and has now proved its potential to raise staff motivation, performance and retention at all levels. Companies that woke up late to its power are scrambling to add it to staff development plans for fear of losing ground to competitors in the contest to attract and keep the best people.

In the early years, coaching was reserved for C-suite managers. However, now that many senior executives have experienced coaching’s transformative powers they are asking why it isn’t being applied to all managers and staff.

Good coaching is expensive
It takes many years of training and experience to become a good coach and know what really works. Many coaches are senior mangers themselves and once they have a proven track record they charge high prices and have little space for new clients.

Lowering the cost and reaching more people
More and more, companies are using internationally certified external coach training programmes to train in-house managers to coach. Coaching-enabled managers then go on to coach others and spread their know-how and practices through their workplace. This reduces the overall cost and leaves trained in-house coaches to continue the good work once they have completed their training.

The growth of in-house coaching well underway
The last decade has seen a big shift towards in-house coaching. Now 33% of companies are building internal coaching skills¹

In-house coaching has clear benefits

• Lower cost
• Less integration – it can be complicated and time consuming to integrate external coaches into an organisation.
• Direct impact on retention – staff develop through training and see value in staying around. In addition, the work environment improves and makes life fun for those who were close to the exit.
• It works – two case studies below show how teams can be transformed

Case Studies

EQUIPPING HR LEADERS TO COACH

A large bank wanted its HR leaders to inspire divisional leaders to add coaching to their management practices. Over a three-year period, senior HR executives were invited to attend a six-month ACC coaching programme with the Centre for Coaching to learn and embody coaching skills. The programme included learning the theory of coaching, being coached as well as applying coaching to embed the skills learned.

The objective of the programme was to balance the external and internal resources being applied to coaching, and resulted in significant cost savings for the organisation. Of the 100 who attended this blended programme, 60 are now in key leadership roles and provide coaching to high-performing resources in the organisation.

BUILDING FUTURE LEADERS

A South African division of a global oil and gas business wanted to build leaders for the future. The organisation, in partnership with the Centre for Coaching, realised that it needed these future leaders to learn to engage with themselves and their teams and clients in new ways by building their competency to have both powerful and courageous conversations, including coaching, and giving compelling feedback.

A process was established to teach them how to coach, to work in coaching-circles (groups of peers who coach one another), and to work with external coaches to enable the transfer of coaching skills. The programme is now in its fourth year and won the Chevron Global external training programme award in 2013 ahead of all programmes delivered externally to Chevron employees worldwide.

Getting started
There are many organisations offering coaching. Every manager or organisation needs to find the organisation and personalities with the best fit for their team. The best way to do this is to talk to a number of them before deciding. The Centre for Coaching² was established in 2002 and more recently opened a branch in Switzerland. If you have any questions or would like more insights into how to choose a suitable coaching organisation feel free to contact them. Their next six-month course³ in Switzerland starts on 24 September 2105, near Geneva (details below).

By Daniel Ahlers
Disclosure: The author is one of the founders of Centre for Coaching Switzerland

¹ 2014 Building a Coaching Culture Final Report (International Coach Federation). The ICF is the leading global organisation dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high standards, providing independent certification and building a worldwide network of trained coaching professionals.

 

²Centre for Coaching (Switzerland):
Established in 2002, the Centre for Coaching, an internationally accredited Centre for executive coach training and leadership development, is situated at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), and is present in South Africa, Australia and now also in Switzerland. Its courses form part of the GSB Executive Education suite of offerings and are thus informed by both academic rigour and coaching practice. The Centre for Coaching links into over 25 years of cutting edge coaching course development and experience offered through its alliance with New Ventures West in San Francisco.

³Next Associate Coaching Course
The next six-month Associate Coaching Course will be starting on 24 September 2015, at the Château de Bossey, near Geneva – an intensive six-month programme designed for participants to emerge as coach practitioners.

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