The Importance of Coaching within Raising Employee Performance - Research Paper Example

The importance of Coaching within Raising Employee Performance Introduction Coaching is very important for any organization. This is because it provides for professional development of individuals as well as transfer of knowledge from experts to others hence building their skills (Cox, Bachkirova, & Clutterbuck, 2014, pg.33). Coaching thus should be embraced by organizations who want to be professional in their ways of conducting business in order to improve on their output. Organizations that have engaged in coaching as a way of professional development find it of high benefits in career development of their employees and as such will recommend its application. When there individuals within an organization that need to enhance their skills for better operations, coaching thus is done on them to improve their delivery potential as well as make those individuals more productive to the organization (Charness, 2014,pg.87). Coaching therefore will target areas such as skills that need to be developed or strengthened; the lapses that exist in work; behavior and performance output of individuals. When these weak areas are recognized within an organization, the employees are taken through coaching by the managers or supervisors depending on the organizations policy (Charness, 2014, pg.35). A case study that reveals the benefits of coaching can be drawn from the UK rail industry where up to 13 coaches were tasked with the responsibility of increasing the skills of customer service for about 350 people in their organization (customer hosts). As a tool to improve employees output, coaching has had other numerous benefits to UK rail industry including: nurturing and improving an individual’s talent; setting expectations about the employee and making the organization managers accountable; engaging leaders in organization activities; professional satisfaction; boost of employee morale; and overall improvement of the organizational goals. This report therefore aims to discuss coaching explaining its purposes; benefits; and challenges. Additionally, the report will give a brief conclusion on the topic of study. Coaching Coaching can be defined as process that enables an individual to learn and develop skills from a direction and advice provided by a seasoned expert or professional (Crane, & Patrick, 2014, pg.89). Additionally, coaching can be understood as a process that involves directing, training as well as instructing an individual or a group of persons to develop certain skills necessary to achieve some goal. Directions can be given through motivational talks while trainings offered through seminars and workshops. Further we can define coaching as an action that unlocks an individual’s potential in order to maximize their performance. It is a collaborative and solutions focused systematic process that is result oriented and work performance enhancing in nature, facilitated by a professional (coach) to support achievement of certain results. This art involves facilitation of the performance of an individual through improving their skills, experience and understanding. Coaching therefore focuses on enabling one to make conscious decisions as well as get empowered to be leaders in their environment. The process involves a powerful corporation between the learner and the coach in order to enhance a human learning process that is lifelong and skills enhancing so that an individual’s productivity is greatly improved to a level they can be self reliant in terms of skills and decision making (Wageman, 2014, pg.67). Aim/purpose of coaching Coaching as a process of enhancing an individuals’ output within an organization has several purposes or aims. The aims range from the output in the organization to the individual’s development and coach’s satisfaction. They may include the following: First, coaching helps breach the gap between what an individual is and what they want to become. It helps bridge the gap between whom an individual is and who they want to become. As such coaching enables one become what they want to become through skills building, personal growth, among other goals through gearing ones potential to achieve them (Gabriel, Moran, C. M., & Gregory, 2013, pg.42). Therefore coaching can be used by the employer for the purpose of improving the skills of their employees, improving their attitude and behavior. the UK rail industry for instance using its 13 coaches improved the skills of customer service amongst their employees. This made them have a team that appreciated customer service and delivered competently. As such the UK rail industry made the customer care professionals what an ideal customers care service person needs to be. Secondly, improving the skills through coaching enables an employee to be well equipped with the necessary technical skills required on the job (ONeill, 2011). As such when an organization wants to have properly skilled personnel within their organization, they engage in coaching of their personnel to enable them acquire those skills that can enhance service delivery and an overall improvement of output. The organization thus will engage in the coaching process with the aim of building the capacity of their employees technically. As is normally the case, employees with high technological know-how are best for any company due to their delivery and ease of handling technical machines around the organization. This is therefore one of the aims why an organization would want to have coaching as a process within it. Third, coaching aims at making individuals set goals and move towards them (Cavanagh, & Lane, 2012, pg.66). When an organization wants to achieve its goals, they may engage in coaching to enable the employees be able to set their goals and work towards them in order to help meet the overall organization goals. This is because as employees are going through the coaching process they are able to set goals on what they ought to have achieved within a given period of time and as such make effort to achieve them. This is important for any organization that seeks to grow and improve its output. As such one of the aims of coaching can be to make the employees develop this goals and work towards achieving them and in the long run or in the end of it help in achieving the organization goals as a ripple effect. Another aim or purpose of coaching is to deepen an individual’s strength and enable them overcome certain weaknesses they may possess or learn to work with those weaknesses in the best of ways (Rensburg, & Hewitt, 2013, pg.15). Since during coaching, an individual’s strength are identified and build on, an organization management may engage in coaching process to their employees with the purpose of having their strengths that are necessary for building the organization strengthened and their weaknesses that work against the organization’s development eliminated or reduced. This move may make the employees have good organization skills and improve their work ethics as well as overall productivity. Further, coaching can be aimed at developing self awareness and the confidence of an employee (Rensburg, & Hewitt, 2013, pg.45). This is instrumental for any organization especially when they want to improve the interpersonal skills of their employees. An organization aiming to improve the employee’s interpersonal and intrapersonal skills of their employees would aim at it through coaching. This is because; through coaching an individual’s self awareness can be gained or understood in a better manner. An individual who understands well himself will know how to relate to people. Further an individual who has personal confidence is good for the organization since they can comfortably contribute on issues and ideas necessary for the growth of the organization. Individuals who lack self confidence on the other hand may also have a low self esteem making them poor negotiators and nonparticipating people in the organization. In order to eliminate this bad practice, an organization may engage in coaching as a process with the aim of building the self awareness of its employees and boosting their personal confidence. An organization or institution can also engage in coaching of their employees with the aim of positively changing their employees and making them get committed to that positive change (Cavanagh, & Lane, 2012, pg.31). This enables employees develop as fulfilled persons. Therefore when the organization employees are having bad attitudes that hurt the organization’s performance, the management can with the aim of changing this attitude engage coaching as a practice that would see this bad attitude amongst its employees changed. Coaching thus will enable the employees acquire positive attitudes that will boost their morale and give them impetus to trudge on with the organization’s objectives. Decision making in an organization is an interpersonal skill very necessary for all employees to have (Cavanagh, & Lane, 2012, pg.9). Thus when an organization realizes that the employees have poor decision making skills or are not good decision makers, they may engage coaching as a process to build these skills on their employees to enable them be people with strong decision making skills. This can be one of the purposes of coaching in an organization. Coaching can also be aimed at building employees previous achievements to enable them work even harder to achieve better (Gabriel, Moran, & Gregory, 2013, pg.34). This can be an aim of an organization when engaging coaching as a process. This is because when strength, skill, action by an employee contributed to the growth of an organization however little, a manager may identify that particular skill or talent in an employee and then engage a coach to help build on the employees’ skill; so as t achieve more next time as they celebrate the little the employee did. Thus with the aim of building an employees of a achievement an organization can engage coaching Finally, organization can engage coaching with the aim of identifying and controlling the emotional difficulties that could exist in their employees limiting their performance (Crane, & Patrick, 2014, pg.26). This occurs when an employee that is valued by the organization has problems with managing their emotions and as such affects the organizations business. The management may decide to coach the given employee on management of emotions to ensure that skill is built on them so that they can Benefits of coaching Coaching has numerous benefits to individuals and organization managers in terms of their performance. Coaching will improve the overall performance of individuals in the professional environment as well those of managers. Below is a discussion of the benefits focusing on individual and Managers with a link on the UK rail industry. a) Individuals: To an individual, coaching is important for personal professional development (Narayanasamy, & Penney, 2014, pg.31). This is because coaching increases their self esteem and self confidence. Coaching can help and individual understand their weaknesses and work on them to make them better. This process will make them strong people who have elevated their strength as well as built on their weakness and as such their self esteem will be boosted. An individual or employee with a boosted self esteem will have personal confidence. This will make one be able to contribute ideas in conversations. Be assertive in negotiations and overally be good negotiators and participants in decision making roundtable talks. As such the employees of the UK rail industry who had low confidence or low self-esteem especially when it comes to handling issues related to customer service had been impacted upon positively improving service delivery (Hannah, 2004). Secondly, coaching promotes an individual’s career growth (Narayanasamy, & Penney, 2014, pg.14). Through the skills learned from the coach or mentors in the organization, one who is being coached gets to improve several aspects of their skills. This ranges from interpersonal, intrapersonal and technical skills necessary for progress in a professional environment. As such an individual who has undergone coaching will have the coach instill these skills upon them so that they become more resourceful at work. The more skills an individual has the more attractive they become to the potential employers. Further such individuals are better placed to handle more responsibility at work due to their high technical aptitude and skills. This has enabled growth of individuals from lower cadres up the professional ladder. As such UK rail industry has been saved the tedious task of outsourcing to fill gaps left by an employee in the management level (Hannah, 2004, pg.24). Therefore, coaching can be seen as fundamental for the growth of a person’s career. The promotion culture has served to even further motivate the employees. Thirdly, coaching enhances a person’s skills (Yu, 2013, pg.56). Depending on the reason why the coaching activity is being conducted, skills are acquired by the cache that enhances their professional ability. For example a person who is being coached to use certain machines within an organization to enhance the performances of the organization gets to have a high technical knowhow. This builds on the individual’s skills and enables them handle such equipment with ease and as such is very valuable for his organization. Further organizations will want to employ people with more technical skills or skills in something else beyond the required minimum. This means a person who undergoes coaching gets to have a high technical aptitude that makes them even more skilled and as such very marketable. This has reflected on the overall performance in terms of efficiency of work which can be tracked from reduced complains from the customers of the UK rail industry unlike was the case before (Hannah, 2004, pg.33). Coaching will additionally help an individual to identify their weak areas and turn them into success (Lees, 2011). As an individual goes through the coaching process they are able to identify their weak areas with the guidance of their coach. The weak areas may include interpersonal skills, technical skills, among others that an individual may have. As such taking an individual through coaching makes them identify their weak areas within their profession. Further their coaches can help them overcome these weak elements of their personality or rather their weak areas by training them how to build on them as well as strengthen their strengths. The training that targets an individual’s weak area to turn them in to successes is one amazing experience that anyone would want. Further, coaching enables an individual develop better relationship with their supervisors (Atkinson, 2012, pg.22). This is twofold in the sense that, first, an individual who is going through the coaching process is able to share their weakness with their supervisors and as such their supervisors will work with them understanding their weakness and help them improve. Secondly, the caching process helps the individual build a good working relationship with their supervisors due how they share information about themselves during the training process. This interaction improves the relationship they have and as such can relate well to improve their productivity. This has been the strength of the UK rail industry giving it competitive advantage over others because then ideas can freely flow from top down and down up (Hannah, 2004). Problem analysis skills are also another that can be gained by an individual who undergoes coaching (Atkinson, 2012, pg.32). This is because coaching enables one to learn different skills in different areas. Coaching makes an individual acquire good interpersonal skills which are very necessary for problem solving. Further, negotiation and decision making skills learned from coaching improves one’s ability to be a good problem solver. Therefore as individuals go through coaching they become better in problem solving as well as problem mitigation. This is what UK rail industry now boasts of in terms of improved efficiency and customer satisfaction. This has earned the company customer loyalty (Hannah, 2004, pg.43). Further, coaching reduces the feelings that an individual may have of low self-esteem or low self-worth (Narayanasamy, & Penney, 2014). These feelings can be so damaging to an individual especially in a professional environment. Individuals with low self worth of those that have low self esteem cannot express themselves strongly or contribute ideas to help in situations not just at work but also in other spheres. Therefore, coaching will help clear this fear and feelings of self worth through enabling the individual recognize there weakness and build on them improving their confidence and self worth. Hannah, (2004) notes that the UK rail industry employee output has tremendously seen improvement over time since the inception of this coaching principle. Coaching also makes an individual be able to think about their best roles in their careers focusing on what they can do best based in their talent, attitude and love for what they do Narayanasamy, & Penney, 2014,pg.93). This is important because it can help an individual make best of decisions regarding work and career. b) Managers The managers too can benefit from coaching in several ways in as outlined below: First, coaching enables managers have higher employee retention in their organizations. This could be all they need given the valuable experience that their employees have ahead with the organization activities (Hagen, 2012, pg.54). Hannah, (2004) outlines that, the UK rail industry has realized a reduced rate of employee turnover reducing the managers’ headaches of constant recruitment and training of new staff. Therefore coaching will help save them this nightmare by ensuring employee retention. Managers get to have create chances of attaining their goals when their employees are coached. This is because their ability to deliver on the organization goals is enhanced. As such the managers can achieve their goals with less problems and that is the good news every manager would want to hear. This has made UK rail industry managers have an easy time achieving their goals (Hannah, 2004, pg.21). Communication within the organization will be enhanced making easy for managers to conduct their day to day managerial roles (West-Burnham, 2013, pg.47). This is because every system will work accordingly due to proper communication reducing the problems that may stagnate certain procedures or activities within the organization. The managers who could be the coaches in this process may also achieve job satisfaction. This comes as a result of engaging in trainings and mentoring that sees one experience other people grow as a result of their efforts (Hagen, 2012, pg.88). That in itself is very rewarding and thus makes an individual find job satisfaction. The coaching managers additionally develops there skills as they train others and as such develops professionally (Hagen, 2012, pg.55). This is very rewarding in the manner that as one coaches another they better their skills. A case that can be well described by the proverbial hand washing th other and both getting clean in the process. This is very beneficial to the managers who take part I the coaching activity. Finally, coaching enables the managers (coaches) have an enhanced strategic thinking and problem analysis skills (Hagen, 2012, pg.84). This is a good quality to have as a manager and therefore coaching can enable one acquire this. Challenges of coaching / Barriers of effective coaching Coaching as a way improving employee performance is also confronted with challenges. These challenges include: Lack of commitment from the client or trainee (McCollum, Hemmeter, & Hsieh, 2011, pg.23). This can be a challenge that coaches can experience when taking their clients through the process of coaching. This could be due to laziness or lack of a drive or motivation towards the training. Secondly, procrastination. This is one common problem among many people where they tend to postpone training sessions or coaching session over and over again. This challenge makes it hard for the coach to achieve their results from their clientele. This is because without consistency it becomes very difficult for one to understand what they have been trained to do in the fastest possible way. As such it derails the pace with which coaching should take place and therefore posing a challenge to the process. Poor communication skills can be yet another challenge because then it affects understanding between the coach and the client (DaRosa, Skeff, Friedland, Coburn, Cox, Pollart, & Smith, 2011, pg.63). This is even worse when the coach cannot give proper instructions to the client. As such coaches who have poor communication skills end up experiencing many problems handling their trainees. Further, communication can cause the challenge when the trainee too cannot express themselves in an understandable manner. This is because the coach may not be able to understand what their problems or weakness as well as communicating best ways for which they can learn to aid the process. Thirdly, lack of direction especially from the client (DaRosa, Skeff, Friedland, Coburn, Cox, Pollart, & Smith, 2011, pg.41). Sometimes coaches come across clients who have no idea what they want, where they would want to be and how they intend to be assisted. This is so much of a challenge to the coaches when handling such because then one does not understand how to begin helping them. As such it is always better for an individual who wants to be coached to know what it is they want. That is having direction. Forth challenge is lack of pro-action (DaRosa, Skeff, Friedland, Coburn, Cox, Pollart, & Smith, 2011, pg.56). This is one challenge that mostly affect people without self drive or self motivation. An individual should be proactive and do their part to help get to where they want. Some individual simply expects their trainers to do everything for them without necessarily taking any action towards improving themselves. This can be a daunting task to the coach who may also get demoralized with the clients attitude. As such coaches should always stress it to the individuals that it begins with them. F they want to change anything about them, or learn anything, and then they should be in the front line. It is not the coach who is learning but rather the trainee. Finally, some coaches may not be adequately trained I the field they want to train a person (DaRosa, Skeff, Friedland, Coburn, Cox, Pollart, & Smith, 2011, pg.34). As such they fumble about issues and as a result leave the trainee an impacted upon. This is very dangerous to the trainee because then they never are going to benefit from such a training. Therefore there is need for any trainee to make sure that the coaches handling them on certain issues know well what they are training on. Similarly organization should ensure that the coaches that they give the responsibility t handle their employees are properly trained. Conclusion Coaching is thus very important for raising employee performance. This report has established that coaching as a process that is done to improve an individual’s delivery potential as well as make those individuals more productive to the organization through targeting areas such as skills that need to be developed or strengthened; the lapses that exist in work; behavior and performance output of individuals has the following aims: To improve an individual’s self esteem, self worth, skills, interpersonal skills, technical skills, reduce their weakness; improve their attitudes; among others. Additionally, the paper established that the benefits of coaching include: An increased job satisfaction; improved self esteem; improved self worth; enhancement of individual skills; promotion of career growth; higher employee retention chances; enhanced problem analysis as well as solution. 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Improving intermediate skills through workplace coaching: A case study within the UK rail industry. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 2(1), 17-45. Read More