Coaching

An image that captures well the value of coaching, is a “Pair of Glasses”. Effective coaching brings an increased “awareness and clarity” to an individual or group about:

• the areas an individual or group needs to address in order to achieve their goals.
• the options the individual or group has to move forward in those areas.
• the objectives that are a priority, and the actions
  steps needed to meet those objectives.

An excerpt from an article by Denise Wright titled “Global Trends in Coaching”, highlights the value of coaching to an organisation.
Although it is important, coaching is also one of those things that is substantially harder than they look. A recent study in Australia found “coaching staff” among the top five management challenges, just behind “keeping cool under pressure”. I have had heard hundreds of people say over the years, “I really thought I would be a natural at this, but there’s far more to it than I thought.” At the core of this is that
people think coaching is about solving problems, giving advice or
telling people how to think. The reality is that coaching, in its pure form, is simply a way of facilitating positive change faster than it might happen on its own. Given that people only change when they see things for themselves, it means that coaching is simply a structured approach to helping people think more clearly for themselves. That is actually both harder and easier than it sounds. Harder because we all love to give advice; easier because if you have a good model, you don’t have to have all the answers! Putting all that aside, coaching
is a clearly valuable tool. A study by the International Professional Management Association found that training plus coaching was up to four times more effective than training alone. (APRIL/MAY 2006) “Human Capital” p81