Understanding 3 Key Pillars That Make A Coaching Engagement Succeed
Coaching has never been more necessary than now and into the future.
Moving forward, change will be the norm and individual resilience and performance will be crucial to team and organizational success. Today’s workplace is a dynamic environment, characterized by turnover and volatile market forces. Many organizations, researchers and leaders have identified coaching as a critical leadership and management competency. In addition, employees are asking more and more for coaching.
The benefits of coaching are many; 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self- confidence, and over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. True coaching improves employee and organizational resilience and effectiveness in change.
As a coach who has conducted multiple coaching sessions for more than a decade, I have often thought about the factors that contribute to the success of coaching. I analysed my various experiences and narrowed down the factors that determine a successful coaching session. The primary way to judge whether a session has been successful or not is to determine if the coaching objectives and goals were achieved for which the coach was engaged.
1. The Coach:
The most critical role to play for ensuring the success of coaching lies with the coach. The coach has to ensure that trust and faith has been established between the coachee and coach throughout the process. The coach needs to display genuineness, a non-judgmental approach and passion for one’s work while maintaining confidentiality to ensure coaching success.
To ensure the process is value driven, it is essential for the coach to leads by curiosity and follows through client’s perspective or goal rather than making one’s goal as coachee’s goal. To overcome challenges in the journey, Coach must remain motivated and should actively be involved in coachee’s developmental journey. In midst of these, the most crucial factors, which cannot be compromised or missed out by the coach, is the use of various & right coaching techniques.
2. The Sponsor:
The second most important contributor to coaching success lies the sponsor and/ or the organization’s management team who has sponsored the coaching intervention. It becomes pivotal for this internal team to demonstrate their commitment throughout, or during various coaching stages. For example, sharing expectations from coaching, pre or ongoing feedback and observations regarding the coachee, reviewing coaching status at various points, highlighting concerns, etc. can aid in the success of coaching and help coachee evolve better throughout the process. This will help in increasing and sustaining the motivation of both the coachee and the coach as they will remain focused on the final outcome of the coaching intervention.
3. The Coachee:
The most significant role that drives the success of the coaching is none other than the coachee. It is essential that the coachee remains open minded and draws acceptance towards the coaching intervention. He/she should be open to reflecting or receiving feedback, exploring the avenues of coaching based on the need for coaching. Not only is the coachee required to be responsible for his actions or inactions, but he/she should show commitment by being proactive, taking initiatives to explore and try different approaches to achieving goal, adhering to schedules, working on identified actions, etc.
The coaching industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world as the estimated market size is expected to reach $20 billion USD by 2022. In today’s new world of work, coaching is regarded as a valuable addition that all employees can find beneficial to sustain in this VUCA world.
In order to ensure that an intervention is successful, all three stakeholders’ involvement in the process as well as a clear definition of the outcome is ideal. A coach must remember to motivate the coachee and keep his/her goal as a priority. An organization or a sponsor should stay involved throughout the coaching process to ensure enthusiasm between the coach and coachee and finally, the coachee should be open to coaching and committed to work on a coaching action plan. When these things fall in place, coaching leads to a fruitful outcome.
In summary, notwithstanding the need for a professionally run coaching program commencing with the building of a trust relationship, a participant’s willingness and desire for self-improvement, a thoughtful process and a conducive environment are all key factors that contribute to its ultimate success.
