According to Time Magazine, coaching will be the norm in the business world in the coming years. For this reason, more and more managers or top managers of companies are looking to become coaches of their employees, rather than bosses, seeking to achieve greater productivity in them for the benefit of the organization.
Training personnel improves performance by 22% and when coaching is added, the improvement reaches up to 88%, according to data from the International Personal Management Association.
Coaching is about unleashing an individual's potential so that he or she can do his or her best: it is about helping to learn, rather than teaching. Good coaching is a bridge to help companies and their people move from doing "business as usual" to doing what they do best.
Becoming a coaching leader requires honing skills and having clear tools to achieve positive profitability for employees and the business as a whole.
Patricia Cauqui and Alfonso Medina, Academic Directors of the Executive Coaching Certification Program. Executive Coaching Certificationexplain seven key skills to achieve this goal:
Active because more than being an attitude of being quiet, it is being attentive. When we develop the ability to listen, we develop the ability to read and listen not only to verbal language, but also to your gestures, your breathing rhythm, your body posture.
Genuine because coaching is a technique and an art, and within the competence of listening it is emphasized to show a genuine interest in the other person, to know what are his talents, his qualities, his ways of learning.
In conversations, one aspect that makes them useful is flow. When we are able to generate a context in which we are in tune with our interlocutor, we are maximizing the probabilities that the conversation will be effective.
We must disconnect from everything when we want a good coaching session (cell phone, people around, etc.), and that the minutes we dedicate are of balance and quality.
We must allow ourselves to listen to the other person's words and then think about what is the question that, based on what he or she has just told us, makes sense for me to ask and change this person's perspective. The key is not to find answers to old questions, but to ask ourselves new questions. An important aspect with questions is that the shorter they are, the better they are.
Silence is one of the most powerful tools in a conversation, because it offers the other person the possibility to reflect, to become aware.
Silence speaks, it is heard. It is likely that this space allows people to reach their own conclusions and to find something they did not know.
We are constantly undergoing changes for which we as leaders do not necessarily have to have all the answers. Instead of manifesting answers and solutions, we must manifest the not knowing, the curiosity of how our interlocutor is seeing and feeling.
Confidence within uncertainty is one of the characteristics that any leader must have. With my help my collaborator will be able to resolve the uncertainty and turn it into a plan of action.
The purpose of the feeback is to provide a context in which learning is maximized and optimized. It has to be based on facts and on what we understand that we believe can be a prospect for improvement and expect from our interlocutor's behavior. It is key for the productivity of organizations.
An important aspect is to establish from the beginning the objectives that are desired for the meeting and to differentiate them from those that are desired for the future.
Coaching sessions should end with a commitment that will be carried out if action planning is done and it is determined who is responsible for those actions.
