How Coaching Can Improve a Company’s Productivity

In today’s crazy-busy business world, our leadership and organizational culture are so very important, and will only become increasingly more important. 

Surveys reveal that about 75% of workers do not feel fully engaged, nor do they feel appreciated and valued. This is sad and hurts our companies and results over time. As leaders, whether we are senior executives and or talent development and human resource professionals, we are responsible to and for our people – their success and wellbeing! 

The challenge is that we are so busy, practically every single one of us, e.g., so many meetings, way too many emails, and the demands to do more and more. We are getting home late, bringing work with us, and on the computer on evenings and weekends. 

Almost everyone has more work than we can do in a workday. 

It is estimated that half the people in North America are under stress – unhealthy and undue stress. Some of the causes are personal, be that abusive personal relationships, the health of aging parents, children with the increasing number of ACDC, ADD, autism, and other similar challenges, tuitions, heavy debt and other financial problems, as just some examples.

And a huge source of stress can be our work and our work environment. Stress comes from an unreasonable amount of work, unrealistic goals and expectations, an unproductive working relationship with one’s manager, poor communication, incivility and rude behavior, a lack of teamwork, internal competition, problems not being addressed, frequent complaints, poor morale, not feeling valued nor heard, and numerous other conditions.

Problems may well result from inaction by our most senior executives – and then, of course, very few work report directly to our top executives and, thus, the problems could be our mid-level managers. 

Most people don’t leave their company, they leave their boss. And it must be realized that half of the workforce do not feel they have a good boss. This is not a strategy for success!

Here is how coaching can help, i.e., contracting with leadership and executive coaches.

Coaches have had rigorous training on how to help people help themselves become more self-aware about their attitudes, behaviors, and how they show up and are received by others. 

We want our people to positively influence others, be they clients, potential clients, teammates and other colleagues, as well as people in our communities.

Coaches do not direct. We believe that each person is resourceful, that we have the instincts within us.

Our role is to help a person reach deeper to create awareness and what she or he could become, i.e., their attitude, words and actions, so she or he may succeed and, very importantly, help others succeed. 

Coaches help people with purposeful questioning, deep listening, sometimes challenging, helping the person go deeper into their mind to find the best answer, attitude, and course of action.

When there are assessments, be they 360s or culture assessments, we learn our co-workers’ perceptions of what we are doing well and areas of potential improvement. Quite often, the identified area(s) of potential improvement is not a surprise(s). Usually we hear “Yes, I expected I would hear that.” In fact, they are often 20, 30, and 40-year habits. Identifying them only is not likely to lead to change. It is not easy to change ingrained habits. 

Coaches help people change, even our long-standing habits.

Having someone work with a coach is a wise investment. It is a benefit to someone to have a coach they may be with in total confidence, helping them identify who they want to become, changes and adjustments they may wish to make, and how they would like to be received by others……and what that would mean to them and how they would feel about themselves.

A coach will help a person develop her or his own personal development plan with action steps, timetables, measurements, and often an accountability partner.

And a coach may well suggest pertinent reading, be they relevant books, articles, and TED talks between coaching sessions so the person may continue to learn and develop.

Everyone in a company wants to do good work, to be successful. Unfortunately, some lose their enthusiasm, which can happen for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons can be the culture within the company. It can become toxic, e.g., even just not thanking people for their good work and dedication, not asking people what they need, and for ideas, not being open and sharing information, and allowing problems and difficult people to continue without being addressed. 

Managers not being promptly responsive to requests by email, phone and texts is a huge problem, as then people do not feel they matter. 

Today, a great many CEOs and senior executives have a leadership/executive coach and are advocates for how much it helps them. Things don’t get put off. They address their development goals and become even better leaders. They realize how much their leadership matters, the difference it makes in the morale, spirit and culture of their company – and the results the company achieves!

Good leadership saves time, reduces stress and improves organizational culture. Each of these goals is critically important with today’s crazy-busyness, the out of control increase in stress, and generally low morale.  

Leadership is so important. Selectively using coaches to help us be more self-aware of our effectiveness will increase our positive influence within our company and is a sensible, wise investment, which should pay off many times over. There is no magic pill to becoming a great leader. It is a journey and takes our work, our striving for continuous improvement. Having a coach, someone we trust, as a partner is a significant help.

In order for a coaching relationship to be most effective, the person being coached must have full confidence that she or he may speak candidly, with the trust that the conversation is absolutely confidential – forever! Without that trust, the desired outcomes of the coaching relationship may not be achieved.

As helping a person grow often involves a 360 leadership assessment, which is founded on co-workers, including, at least, several of the person’s direct reports, other colleagues and the one to whom the person reports up to, giving their honest perceptions of leadership strengths and areas of potential improvement. It is anonymous so that these perceptions are shared with complete thoughtfulness and honesty. 

Coaching relationships are successful when there is honesty and trust. and the coach helps heighten awareness, reflection, exploration, learning, and a commitment to strive for better than before.

Coaching helps improve the spirit of our people and morale…..and happy employees do better work!