Importance of coaching for human resource professionals

“There are managers who coach and managers who don’t. Leaders in the latter category are not necessarily bad managers, but they are neglecting an effective tool to develop talent.” – Joseph R. Weintraub and James M. Hunt.
•DID you know that 80 per cent of people who receive coaching have reported an increased self-confidence, and over 70 per cent benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills?
• Did you also know that working relationships between employees and their immediate supervisors improved by 71 per cent, just because of coaching?

Coaching has the capacity to move you from where you are to where you desire to be. Coaching transforms your life, first by transforming your mind. It is a process that is designed to assist individuals in making changes to improve their development both personally and professionally. In the professional sense, working with a coach can give employees the edge needed to improve their work skills, discover their strengths, and achieve organizational goals through peak performance.

In today’s competitive business world, many organizations are losing talents and struggling to retain employees. This and many others need to be considered for the growth of every organization. Companies are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of management is no longer effective in today’s environment, which requires rapid response, leveraged creativity, resilience, and individual effort and performance in order to remain competitive. Retention is critical, and coaching supports employee career/professional development and satisfaction, which keeps valued employees.

Coaching provides an invaluable space for personal and professional development. For example: managers are frequently presented with employees struggling with low confidence. The traditional approach would be to send them to an assertiveness course and hope this addresses the issue. In the short-term, the employee learns new strategies for communicating which may improve confidence. Unfortunately, in isolation, these courses rarely produce a sustained increase in confidence. The unique attribute of Coaching is that it focuses on helping another person learn in a way that allows him or her grow. Coaching won’t tell you what to do but would provoke thoughts, while holding the individual accountable for his or her goals. This is what makes coaching more effective.

Human Resource (HR) Managers should assist business owners in seeding their organization by embracing internal coaching. This will create a fundamental shift in their employees’ approach to work, increase their self-confidence and make them more present in the workplace. This would automatically result in employees being more resilient and assertive.

The benefits of Coaching for HR Professionals vary, some include:
1. Establish and act towards achieving goals: As a coach, you will be guiding your employees towards defining their career goals in a realistic way and identify specific behaviors or steps for meeting them. What this means is that, your employees can set these goals and actively work towards achieving them.
2. Challenge thought process: One of the features of Coaching is being open-minded. Because you are in this position as a coach, you will find yourself asking open ended questions that would push alternative solutions to problems and encourage your employees to take calculated business risks.
3. Performance management: As a Coach, you will be focusing not just on individual performance rather, team performance. Creativity and innovation will foster among teams who are coached and not individuals alone.
4. Deeper level of learning: Coaching is not just about improving individual skills in the workplace; it takes learning to a much deeper level. Through coaching, an individual can learn more about themselves, improve on personal challenges that could affect daily tasks and become self-motivated. Imagine this transformation replicated across the entire organization? Outstanding success that could drive revenue.
5. Improve retention: Employees are more loyal and motivated when their bosses take time to help them improve their skills.

Coaching oriented HR professionals are increasingly becoming the new agents of growth and change within organizations globally. They are using their skills of rapport building, listening, mirroring, exploratory questioning to lead Executives towards better strategic decisions, assist Managers in becoming more aware of and responsive to their teams, and employees towards self-directed actions that result in more fulfilling and productive careers.

The Olusola Lanre Coaching Academy (OLCA), the premiere Life Coaching Academy in Nigeria, is positioned to certify HR Practitioners as Life Coaches, equipping them with the necessary skills to be Change Agents, by transforming their employees and positioning their respective organizations for peak performance through its LIFE COACHING CERTIFICATION PROGRAM. It takes place from the 26th of February to the 4th of March 2019. For more information, call us on 08077077000 or send a mail to info@olcang.com. Let’s get you equipped and certified to transform the minds of employees and organizations as a whole, at the OLCA Life Coaching Certification Program.