Why Smart Companies Hire Performance Coaches to Turn Managers into Leaders

One of the most important challenges facing HR professionals is developing their organizations’ managers into tomorrow’s leaders. Within the next 20 years, 76 million baby boomers in the United States alone will retire from the workforce. This loss of talent is of great concern to most companies. The use of coaches for management development is increasing rapidly among companies. Given that HR professionals can draw on a variety of activities to prepare future leaders why are more and more companies turning to performance coaches to turn managers into leaders? It’s important to look at the differences between consultants, trainers, counselors, and coaches and how each of them works.

Coaches vs. Consultants, trainers, and counselors

Consultants are paid to analyze current problems in an organization and give advice on how to improve the bottom line, they focus their attention on diagnosing and treating what went wrong in a person’s past, including offering psychological guidance and support.

Trainers transmit a body of knowledge to their students.

Coaches focus primarily on an individual’s present and future performance in an organizational context.  There are four primary reasons companies are engaging performance coaches to support their high-potential employees

• Greater levels of output—and retention— from high-potential employees.
• More engaged and happier employees who work for the coached leader.
• Increased use of “emotional intelligence” throughout an organization, resulting in more productive teams and higher market performance.
• Improved communications among all levels of the organization, which leads to higher morale, stronger employee commitment, and increased long-term organizational success.

Greater output and retention of high-potential employees

Studies show that companies that invest in the development of high-potential employees not only improve success in the short term, but also significantly increase the retention rate of these individuals in the long term.

Assigning performance coaches to high potential employees, therefore, not only boosts their personal success, but also proves that you care about them and their future.

More engaged employees on all levels

“51% of “disengaged” employees said they would get rid of their leader if they could. What turns a disengaged employee into an engaged employee? The employees who doubt that their direct supervisors care about them as individuals are far more likely to be disengaged and want to fire their bosses. Employees want three things:

To be listened to, known, and understood, to be trusted to use their talents, knowledge, and skills on challenging assignments and to be coached by their bosses or outside experts to become more successful.

In short, these are the leadership traits that performance coaches strive to improve among their clients.

• To increase their empathy quotient.
• To become better listeners and communicators,
• To improve management skills in terms of delegating responsibility, trusting their staff with appropriate projects, and mentoring and training their employees for future success.
• Increased use of emotional intelligence

25% of all companies have implemented emotional-intelligence initiatives. Those companies that had such programs were the top performers in their categories.

Higher-performing organizations are more likely to have initiatives than those that are at the bottom of the performance ladder.

An individual’s capacity to recognize, understand, value, and apply emotions is even more critical than technical skills and experience to the organization’s overall success.

Emotional-intelligence development occurs within a relationship, when a supervisor, mentor, teacher, coach, or even a friend or family member is present throughout the process to support and encourage.

Assessment

The first phase includes assembly, analysis, and appraisal of the data and provides clients a perspective, a current measure of themselves and their situation.

Assembly of Data: includes: direct interview of the client, selected objective testing, and coworker feedback through confidential one-on-one interviews and/or online surveys.

Analysis: The information collected in the first phase is separated into discreet parts for purposes of individual study and then examined together to see what patterns, inconsistencies, or unanswered questions emerge.

Appraisal: Once the review is completed, the client is walked through the written interview report, the coworker feedback, and each of the tests.

Awareness

During the awareness phase, the client becomes fully conscious of his or her own talents, knowledge, and skills. As the clients further study their data, they are encouraged to decide what to accept as true about themselves, their strengths to develop, and the adjustments to be made.

Action

Once the plan is fairly well defined, we engage the support of an on-site supervisor or colleague, someone who knows and cares about the success of the individual. Sharing the plan and getting commitment from this inside support person helps during the coaching engagement and provides on-site support once the coach is out of the picture.

Accountability

Emotional intelligence can be learned. Through this coaching process. The common elements of successful emotional intelligence development include self-awareness; learning new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting; practice; feedback; more practice; and more feedback.

Improved communications

The vast majority of successful leaders pointed to their ability to mobilize their troops, sustain the energy within their organizations and communicate their objectives clearly and creatively. Communications coaching, therefore, is a vital part of improving performance of current executives and managers who are being groomed to assume leadership positions. The most effective communication in an organization still occurs in face-to-face interactions, including group and team meetings, presentations and demonstrations, and one-on-one discussions.

What are the organizational risks to hiring performance coaches?

the occasional loss of a manager in whom you have invested is offset many times over by the positive impact coaching has had on those who remain in your organization—and have benefited from the individual’s improved performance prior to his or her departure. Once HR executives have narrowed the field of candidates, the individual who will be coached must make the final selection.