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How to select a coaching strategy for your organisation
Some of the key issues to consider:
Time/resource: Do your managers have the time required to coach their people? To create a meaningful shift in skill and approach in sales people can take 1-1.5 hrs per week per person. If not, do you need to reconsider your staffing ratio? Do you need to concentrate on a few people at a time? Do you need to consider some external resource?
Coaching Expertise: Do your managers have the coaching skills required to bring about the change you need, at the speed you need? If not, do they need training?
Fresh-thinking: Are you looking for a significant change of mind-set or culture in your team. Do you need to inject new ways of thinking or working? If so, it can be difficult for in-house managers to bring this about. They may even be part of the problem! External coaches can inject fresh thinking and a new perspective. On the other hand they may lack in-depth technical or market know-how which is also important.
Speed: How quickly do you want to bring about the change? If your own resources or skills are constrained, this may create unacceptable delays.
Status: There may be mutual challenges in junior people coaching senior people. You have to take status into account in matching coaches to 'clients'. On the other hand busy executives are often too busy to give coaching the quality time it deserves.
Ownership: How important is it for you that any changes are owned and reinforced long term by your own people? If you use external coaches there may be little know-how transfer - the coaching skills could walk out of the door at the end of their contract. Our advice would be for this to be a major factor in your decision-making.
Cost-v-benefit: It must be cheaper to use your own managers to do coaching mustn't it? However if it makes no difference, or simply reinforces old habits then this won't bring the benefits you are looking for. It is clear however that using external coaches on a wide scale for an extended period can be very costly.
So how do you weigh up all these factors?
Many organisations decide on a mixed strategy to try and get the best of all worlds
- they use external coaches at executive level
- they use external coaches to train their managers in coaching skills and support them as they learn to implement coaching in their teams
- they use their own managers to coach their staff
The Orbit team would be happy to help you choose the best strategy for your situation...
Contact the Orbit team to discuss how we could help you with Coaching.
What our clients say...
The coaching I have received has helped me immensely. It hasn't been about 'cosy chats' but has challenged in a number of areas, for example, by practicing difficult situations in a safe environment or really testing my response to different scenarios. Through this I have really been able to focus on areas needing development but it has also improved awareness of my key strengths. I now have what I see as a 'toolkit' of skills or techniques which I have tested and can call upon in different situations to maximise my influence and impact.
Senior Manager - Major Energy company