Wednesday Sep 07, 2022

Why traditional coaching at work doesn’t work and How to fix it with Meredith Bell

This episode of Learn with Bessern is about the flaws of traditional coaching at work and what actions can be taken to fix it. This episode is going to be interesting for leaders wanting to create a coaching culture in their organizations.

Many companies have started programs to individualize the development of people and traditional coaching has become the tool of choice to make it happen. And the reason is that companies have realized that developing people cannot be done simply with training. The current need for agility transformation requires a model to develop people rather than the simple transfer of knowledge that you have in simple training.

But Traditional Coaching is failing to deliver the impact required by organizations

About our guest Meredith Bell

Meredith is one of the most respected leadership development advisor - She is a reference in the coaching world and has written a couple of impressive books. Meredith is also the president and co founder of Performance Support System - a company focused on communication and leadership development.

One of her books 'Connect with your Team' has been recommended by no other than Ken Blanchard (Author and Reference in Leadership Development).

How to reach Meredith: https://growstrongleaders.com/

Her 2 books are on Amazon:

Connect with Your Team - Mastering the Top 10 Communication Skills
Peer Coaching Made Simple - How to Do the 6 Things That Matter Most When Helping Someone Improve a Skill

Excerpt of our discussion:

Some of the misconceptions on how corporates deploy coaching:

There are a couple that really stood out to Meredith and one is not realizing that everyone in an organization needs coaching. Most of the time, it's reserved for executives or higher level folks, because, of course they have a great impact within the organization. And that's that's the traditional perception is these are the folks who kind of qualified to have a coach, when in reality in time we are attempting to improve a skill or improve the way we do things.

Coaching will accelerate that process dramatically. And so it's logical that everyone can benefit from having enough but the thing is, the other misconception is often they think we've got to bring in an external person, you know, to with the right credentials like qualifications to perform that function. When in reality there are internal resources that can be tapped into, such as people coaching each other or managers learning how to be coaches, to their employees. However many times corporations are not deploying in a wider scale to the different levels of organization because it's costly. One spectacular way to enhance coaching is by speeding up the process.

Trends that companies can follow while coaching:

One of the the trends is looking at how can we provide just in time coaching for people around the specific things that they need so it's a shorter engagement and and maybe even shorter bursts of time because everyone is feeling so overwhelmed so much to give these days. Just in time, real time, kind of coaching opportunities is what the world needs today.

One of the best investments I think an organization can make is in teaching managers, how to be effective coaches as a part of their role in working with the people on their teams.

How employees feel opening up to a manager about a challenge?

When managers evaluate the performance of an employee, employees are often overwhelmed and they think twice before opening up and becoming more vulnerable.

According to Meredith it takes time to create what I would call a coaching culture where people feel comfortable opening up about a problem they're having or a challenge they're facing, to seek guidance from that person who's also in the role to evaluate them. And I think there are a couple of different things at work here. Number one is we do have this perception that to be an effective coach, you need to be certified. Well, if you're going to be a paid professional coach, definitely. But if you're looking at taking on a role of coaching someone is simply a part of the way you interact with them at work. There are really a few basics that can be learned and they're things that we all do naturally with people we care about in our other parts of our lives.

The second important task is learning to ask questions. One of the challenges that I think managers face, especially when they are newly in their positions is they think they have to provide all the answers. That's part of their job is to be the answer person. So if somebody comes to them, they're, you know, they they feel like they need to have the answer instead of asking questions that help the other person, think about it for themselves and often come up with their own solution.

One of the best ways for a manager to become a good coach is to first be coached.

🎙️ This episode on coaching in organizations is hosted by Ivan Palomino.

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