We agree, and our experience suggests that developing the leader’s coaching skills is a really powerful first step to take and a sensible place to start any ongoing programme of leadership development.
This is because the real beneficiaries from this approach are your staff.
Developing just one leader as a coach has a knock on beneficial effect on the people whom they lead and contributes to their development too.
Leaders that can coach ease the burden on HR or L&D at a time when resources are stretched and positions the responsibility for people development within the line management relationship.
But, more than this, coaching is a modern, up to date approach to achieving results through others that has fast become a core skill for anyone who must engage with people whether that’s through a formal leadership responsibility or in a less formal, more influential way.
In short, we help you drive performance in the current climate by helping you develop a coaching style of leadership.
Typically coaching steers away from being content lead and instead allows the coachee to set the agenda and pursue those challenges they find most urgent and important.
Although we would want to be similarly flexible and coachee led, as this is a skills training programme, we would also suggest that we have in mind a series of lessons or themes to ensure there is a logical learning journey that passes through six stages:
- Commitment to learn (identify pay-off and benefits)
- Assessment of current performance (against coaching competences)
- Knowledge acquisition (concepts, theories, tools)
- Planning for application
- Implementation at work
- Review and conclusion (embedding learning)
For example:
Please note this is only a suggestion. We would suggest reviewing this as part of the first coaching session where we would discuss and agree the overall programme aims and objectives
Once these objectives are agreed, we track metrics routinely and objectively so that coach, coachee and sponsoring organisation can track progress and make changes.
Working one to one has many advantages over traditional classroom course but perhaps the biggest is it avoids the so-called forgetting curve.
There are no role plays or case studies, participants will apply the concepts they learn to their own business and in real time. Successive sessions can then pick up on achievements and issues to ensure new skills and knowledge are truly embedded.