Coaching streamlined with the ICF Core Competencies on enhancing leadership in the business world can result in a totally different perspective on how we operate modern businesses. No matter how different we choose to display ‘management’ within the working environment, new surveys and HRM statistics prove that it is indeed all about ways to increase productivity through the channels of self-awareness and consequent performance maximisation.
I have been a professional executive coach since 2008. My valuable experience in this demanding niche has demonstrated more than once that each time we try to distinguish employees from their individual identity, we face the same “chicken or egg” dilemma.
So, what should a conscious and coaching-sensitive HR manager add to his schedule to level up both the employees’ and administration’s learning and performance process? How can he ensure they reach their full potential by encouraging them to spend equal time on work and private fulfilment outside work?
We should acknowledge the self-evident principle that each HR head needs to impose strategies that are exclusively aligned with the great picture of how the organisation conceives its vision for optimum efficiency. Considering this, I have outlined four points that HR executives need to pay real attention to:
1. Feeling of security and trust is everything
Intimacy and trust are the basic principles between a coach and a coachee. They form the fruitful common ground on which they will both evolve and invest their relationship. It is no wonder that we need to feel honesty and warm feelings to open up; there is no difference in the business world. One cannot expect employees to be there for one unless one is there for them too — by paying bills and fulfilling payroll duties on time to build reliability and trustworthiness. Creating this safe environment is fundamental to people smiling when they come to work and exhibit a willingness to go that extra mile for the company’s shake.
2. Hiring self-managed and self-efficient employees
This has everything to do with selective hiring permitting only employees that bring value to the company to come aboard. Companies nowadays need more high performances than ever. Therefore, picking the highest achievers and goalers out there makes a tremendous impact businesswise. Executive coaching focuses on this parameter as a significant element of a person’s upscaled personality. High achievers are usually people who have demonstrated their social skills and working adequacy many times before applying these to the new job. If one cares to inspect this exciting background thoroughly, one will get to see that one can’t have the one without the other. Only a person who dares to set the highest goals is a person that has tested his limitations before and has managed to exceed them.
3. Investing in training results in continuous individual and company growth
Doesn’t your company have a budget for training programs? Get one as soon as you can! Training, conferences, seminars, even online courses by renowned institutes are considered to be among the best HR practices. It is the most effective way to have employees that stay at the top of their profession and remain intensely competitive against rivals. Learning is firmly attached to innovation and sustainability. In business parlance, it ensures one always obtains a competitive advantage. Online courses are now a living reality, and one can practically learn anything and expand from anywhere.
4. Life coaching inside a company? Yes, please!
Executive coaching may be a great thing now, but it was not always so. I literally cannot count how many HR managers I have heard degrading executive life coaching’s importance in employees and administration, out of ignorance and desire for a fast profit. Stubborn and narrow-minded, their refusal stemmed from their desire to exhibit great results with minimal cost. They should have known better than try to work their way to the top by eliminating the most critical development and growth aspect — the human factor.
Either as an employee or a member of the company’s administrative board, one’s fears and
troubles follow one at work. They don’t even hesitate to take one’s mind out of the most crucial meeting!
Hiring a life coach to work remotely with one’s top-of-the-cream executives is a significant step towards keeping them focused on what they do and why they are in this company. Empathy resolves significant in-depth challenges that may result in tremendous challenges for the company later. Executive coaching saves the day by imposing all the tools to restore people’s faith in the company’s vision to re-picture themselves in the same frame.
Human resources isn’t just for recruiting or payroll. It is about communicating the most effective practice to enhance working performance. And this cannot be done without treating employees and employers as equal individuals that bring their unique value to the team. Reflecting on this, the department’s primary attribute is to find the right resources to make just choices in terms of respect, growth and emotional reward. And there is no better way to achieve this than making executive coaching an unnegotiable stable part of this flowing process.
According to the Building a Coaching Culture with Millennial Leaders, a 2018 study from the International Coaching Federation and the Human Capital Institute (HCI), most organisations understand the value of coaching but few have realiased the full effect a strong coaching culture has on increasing employee engagement and sustaining high organisational performance. Among those who have received coaching, a strong majority (80 per cent) report positive impacts resulting from the coaching engagement. Among the areas where they report improvement are their work performance, communication skills, productivity, well-being, and business-management strategies
Professional coaching services can be found using ICF’s directory of credentialed coaches spread in India and all over the world
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the world’s largest organisation leading the global advancement of the coaching profession and fostering coaching’s role as an integral part of a thriving society. Founded in 1995, its 35,000-plus members located in more than 140 countries and territories work towards the common goals of enhancing awareness of coaching and upholding the integrity of the profession through lifelong learning and maintaining the highest ethical standards. Through the work of its six unique family organisations, ICF empowers professional coaches, coaching clients, organisations, communities and the world through coaching. Visit coachingfederation.org for more information.
In India, ICF is represented by six vibrant chapters, all led by volunteers — ICF Bengaluru, ICF Chennai, ICF Delhi, ICF Mumbai, ICF Pune and ICF Hyderabad.
The author, Jill Douka is an ICF Master Certified Coach living in Greece and a founding member of the ICF Greece Chapter. Besides being an International bestselling author and TEDxspeaker, Douka is an awarded business mentor by the European Union Director of Global Academy of Coaching and a member of Forbes Coaches Council, Experts Industry Association, I For U Greek Mentoring Network and Harvard Business Review Advisory Council.
