Coaching for Performance Improvement: Developing Your Performance as a Leader
In our previous blogpost we talked about how coaching can improve an organisation’s performance through personal development. Now, let us go deeper into the coaching realm by learning how it can improve your performance and bring out the leader in you.
What’s so important about performance?
Performance is defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. It is one of the major contributors and indicators to a person’s or an organisation’s success and failure.
In contemporary business settings, the pressure to improve performance is on the leadership. To meet the demands, leaders tend to pass on the pressure to their subordinates which leads to stress and high employee turnover.
Being in a position of leadership, you might have tried a number of ways to drive your team to excellence. You might have tried motivating them through giving some words of encouragement or through giving them rewards or incentives. Alternatively you might have done the reverse like chiding them for their poor performance or by setting up strict deadlines and guidelines. But the question is: are these methods enough – or even effective- to motivate employees to give their very best?
As leaders we are accountable and responsible for our team’s overall performance. Their performance is reflective of how effective we are in our leadership role. We may be too busy trying to get the performance we want from our team andneglect looking at our own performance.
Having yourself coached will help improve your performance as a leader from the inside-out, not the other way around.
Here are 3 ways in which coaching will help you improve your performance as a leader.
Develop key leadership skills. All good leaders require a number of ‘soft skills’ to help them effectively interact with their employees or their team members. Several studies have found out that the top 5 skills that make an exceptional leader are the following: communication, creativity, motivation, feedback and positivity. Having yourself coached will help you develop these essential skills and help you use them in different situations and with different people.
Identify Stumbling blocks. Stumbling blocks are circumstances, events, or obstacles that hinder you from performing well. This may be a lack of skill or a lack of emotional intelligence. Oftentimes it is hard to spot what your stumbling blocks are and you may need another person to point them out to you. Knowing what your stumbling blocks are will help you overcome them and become the best version of yourself.
In a coaching session, your coach will help you identify what these stumbling blocks are and help you develop strategies to overcome them.
Setting and Achieving Life-changing Goals.
What are your goals as a leader? What is it that you really want to achieve for yourself, for the people you lead, and for your organisation? As a leader you need set the right goals and develop a plan on how to achieve them.
A coach will help you set the right goals and map out the quickest and most efficient route to get you to your goal. People find that they achieve their goals faster and easier when having a professional coach to guide them, than when they try to do it alone.
Indeed, great things happen when change happens from top to bottom. As a leader it is your role to pass down what you have learned and inspire your employees along the way.
So what are you waiting for? Go and have yourself coached and reap great results!
If you want to learn more about coaching and how to become a professional coach, contact the Australian Institute of Professional Coaches 1 300 309 306 or email [email protected] We look forward to speaking with you soon.
