Career Coaching as an Inherent Strategy for Performance Improvement for all in an Organization

Shweta Khare

18 years ago

Although career coaching and corporate or executive coaching is catching up a lot faster in the US today and seems to be a trend for this century, it is still not there. The reasons I can guess are because it is not being accepted by most of the large and small organizations as a part of an overall and continuing strategy for talent management enhancing leadership skills within a company.

My advice to the employers is that don’t consider coaching as the last resort, it has to be integrated into the HR system if you want to see positive results, either in improved employee performance or the company growth as a whole.

TALENT MANAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
These are the two aspects where an overall employee coaching can be used effectively. Why is the performance down, why is the enthusiasm down to present new ideas or to work on the present ones? Are the employees just doing their job on “as told” basis? Is there new input and a stream of ideas coming in from different teams? These are some of the questions that the employers have to revisit more than once in a year and the HR and the management can play a crucial role in identifying the gaps and areas of incompetence. So the first and foremost step is identifying the problem – addressing the issues through close involvement of career coaches and management comes next.

Though your own performance management must be your priority and responsibility, it is essential for the management or the HR in a company to provide you with the tools or access to coaching to help improve and enhance your interest in the present job and career.

Why is it that the company is ready to allocate a large fund for the post-layoff job search and recruiters fees but not ready to make an ongoing investment in their people by helping them excel at their careers while they are part of the organization? If career coaching is an integral part of the functioning of a company perhaps the company would benefit a lot more and improve their revenues with more employee involvement and enthusiasm towards developing and improving the product lifecycle so as to avoid the eventuality of a layoff after all!

BUILDING LEADERSHIP SKILLS
With the management workforce expanding, the upper management be it in the marketing, sales or software development areas, need not be natural leaders or have instant abilities to lead well, coaching can help them turn to one.
There are some special coaching field or experts who focus on leadership development or helping improve their communication skills.

The promotions these days may be because a person is great in one aspect, say software development but completely not up-to-the-mark in the communication field. They could be uncomfortable in communicating with the customers or delivering presentations. This is one of the area where coaching can help the individual be effective and influential in what they do.

To improve performance you have to go through a specific approach with your manager, your coach or a mentor. Have you ever seen a top performer at any sports without a coach? So it is in the corporate world, of course you can do well but if you want that special edge and be a real great performer- coaching is inherent to build a great leader or get to the best of your ability.
Your performance management must be on an ongoing process; in order to scale new heights your strategies and performance have to increase one step further that where you are today. So, when we all see the benefits of investing in your employees, why is the management not keeping up and prioritizing on their people’s interest, advancement and growth?

Shweta was a guest at the Voice America Business broadcast show titled: Coaching: The Missing Ingredient in Successful Performance Management. Listen to this podcast here .