Why Coaching Your Direct Reports is Crucial for your Organisation’s Success?
To compete, keep up and win in a running competition, a runner should be in perfect shape. To be in perfect shape means having all the parts of your body doing their function properly.
The same principle applies to organisations nowadays: for an organisation to keep up and meet the demands of this fast-paced, ever-growing marketplace, an organisation must in great shape. This means having every part functioning well.
One of the parts that play a crucial role to an organisation’s success is its employees. Many organisations start out well – they have an inspiring vision and good intentions however, they fail or are struggling to keep up with the competition because of disengaged employees. Disengaged employees tend be inefficient and unproductive leading to a poor organisational performance.
How about you? How is your organisation faring in the race? Do you feel like your employees are not giving their best for your organisation? Do you feel like they are not owning your vision but are just working for their monthly paycheck? If so, then having the leaders of your organisation adopt to a coaching leadership style would be a great solution.
What is a coaching leadership style?
Leaders who adopt this style coach their direct reports to set them up for success.
They listen to them, provide feedback in a non-judgmental way, and support new learnings. They don’t accept unproductive behaviours like blaming others, denying that there is a problem, or trying to justify inaction. Coaching leaders inspire and motivate their staff, guide and direct them when necessary, and make sure they have all the information, resources and support that they need to be successful..
Benefits of a coaching leadership style to your organisation
Becoming a coach to your direct reports has immense benefits to you as a leader and to your team – individually and collectively. A study conducted by the Institute of Employment Studies show that employees who are coached are more engaged than their uncoached counter parts. Another study conducted by the International Coach Federation (2015) discovered that organisations with a strong coaching culture have higher employee engagement (60% of employees rated as highly engaged compared with 48% of all other organizations) as well as higher revenue growth (63% report being above their industry peer group in 2014 revenue compared to 45% of all other organisations). Benefits to your organisation include:
Growth
Understanding and appreciating the talents and capabilities of employees is one of the attributes coaching leaders posses. They are able to assess their direct reports and know what area of their character and skill can/ needs to be developed and improved on. By doing this, leaders will be able to develop their employees character-wise and skill-wise thus making them produce excellent results.
Improved Loyalty
Coaching leaders are good listeners and excellent communicators. Coaching leaders create an area of open communication which makes employees feel more comfortable to express their concerns thus enabling their concerns to be immediately addressed.
Paying attention to these concerns will make your employees feel that they and their opinions are valued by the organisation thus improving their loyalty.
More motivated people
Sometimes employees need some motivation to improve on their performance. This motivation can be given by a coaching leader. By cultivating a safe environment of open communication, coaching leaders can see when motivation and what kind of motivation is needed by their direct reports so they will improve on their performance.
Indeed, organisations that value the benefits of coaching also value their workforce and provide the necessary support for managers and leaders to coach.
Would you like to see your direct reports be more engaged? Consider having yourself, your managers and your leaders trained as professional coaches, and reap the benefits!
If you want to incorporate coaching into your organisation and become a professional coach yourself, you can contact the Australian Institute of Professional Coaches 1 300 309 306 or email us at [email protected] . We look forward to speaking with you soon.
