In coaching and mentoring, the facilitation of learning and the development of the learner in order to improve their performance are principals that lie at the heart of both disciplines. Both processes aim to enable individuals to achieve their full potential. What organisation doesn’t want to achieve that?
And so, in the light of this thinking, in December 2018, several senior leaders from CMAT started out on their journey to become accredited Level 5 coaches and mentors through the Institute of Leadership and Management.
Those of us who successfully completed the qualification – it was the 3 written assignments that broke the few – have now been coaching colleagues within CMAT as well as delegates on Leadership East’s NPQ programmes for the last 2 years.
The coaching approach is very much about enabling an individual to find their own solutions to problems or challenges, develop their own skills and change their own behaviour and attitudes. Coaching is an on-going process that will enable others to use their own resources to achieve their personal goals. In order to benefit from coaching, an individual needs to have the desire and capability to change or, in a work situation, to perform better.
Feedback from those who have received coaching is generally very positive. For the individual, coaching is a rare opportunity, once the busy world of work is entered, to pause, take stock and make good decisions about their professional future. It can increase motivation and build greater self-confidence as the individual develops more self-understanding and personal insight.
From CMAT’s point of view, just offering coaching can increase motivation and improve staff retention because people feel cared for and valued. From my own experience of being a coach, almost the first response from people is a sense of real appreciation that their line managers have offered them the opportunity to be coached. They have not been suspicious of the process, simply pleased that they were thought of. Evaluating the impact of coaching is notoriously difficult. Successful coaching that leads to sustainable change and improvement in an individual’s performance can lead to sustainable change and improvement in the performance of the organisation. But how can responsibility for an individual’s success within any organisation be apportioned? How can the coach ‘prove’ that their contribution made the vital difference? Quite frankly, you can’t. But encouraging self-reflection, raising self-awareness and enabling those who feel they have benefitted from coaching to use some coaching techniques in their own management style can’t be a bad thing. After all, one of CMAT’s key values is ‘valuing people’ and investing in people through developing a coaching culture in all areas of the organisation is one way that it is trying to do that