Sadly, most articles about performance coaching are based on tackling poor performance and whilst this is understandable, performance coaching is equally valid for taking all performance to the next level. This is the basis of Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, which analyses and explains the benefits of turning good or adequate performance into great performance.
Performance coaching is an incredibly powerful way of improving both individual and team performance and it can be provided by line managers, internal mentors or external coaches. Having said that, many organisations do not have the capacity or capability to make this provision from within their own resources, so they hire qualified and experienced external coaches.
Individual staffs have individual performance needs and coaching meets these precisely. A good coach will establish what the organisation wants by way of great performance and the extent to which individuals need to develop to meet these requirements. He/she will then work with individuals to increase their knowledge and skills and reinforce these over time. This has the considerable advantage of ensuring that new learning is applied in the workplace and that individual staff are held accountable, in subsequent coaching sessions, for improvements in their performance.
Through performance improvements an individual can hope to achieve new goals and prospects set by the company for their own personal benefit. Not only this, a high standard of confidence will be rewarded for their efforts and a greater sense of companionship within the team will be an extra boost for those lacking the motivation to achieve said company objectives.
Building confidence is an important part of getting stuck in and developing your own personal skills over time as a person while a strong sense of companionship will prove beneficial in the long-run when it comes to set tasks that involve working alongside another colleague to achieve a certain objective. It will also help employees to question any unanswered queries within the team to help right any evidential communication errors.
Coaching is a very precise and highly effective way of improving performance, or as we call it at Aurora TDS: turning All Performance into Great Performance. The way it works is that each member of staff is signed up for programmes of 5 one hour coaching sessions over 10 weeks. Coaching is provided at times that are convenient to each person and at the end of each session actions are agreed to be implemented in the workplace before the next session. Review of progress is the first item on the agenda of the next session and improvements in performance are identified and recorded. This type of coaching is highly engaging, totally focused on the needs of individuals and highly motivating. After 5 sessions, organisations can decide whether they would like their staff to continue with their coaching programmes.
Coaching by Aurora TDS professional coaches guarantees to improve performance. The only question for your organisation is: Can you afford not to enable your staff to deliver great performance in their jobs?
