What is a workplace coach?
Posted on April 25, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
This article discusses the characteristics and traits of workplace coaching and coaches.
Anyone who wants to be a competent coach, and is prepared to develop some basic skills, can be a competent coach. Right now you are probably asking yourself, what is required for a coach to be successful? How do we select and train those people we believe to have the potential to carry out the role? Clearly there is no magic formula for selecting coaches; it depends on the game you are playing. Some great coaches have been great players, but then many great players have failed as coaches. High technical ability may be an asset or it may be a liability. Many of you would argue that a good coach is above all a good communicator. A good communicator is one who can deliver a message clearly and simply, is a good, active, empathetic listener and behaves in a manner that is consistent with the message that is being delivered. A role model!
The line manager is a workplace coach who will survive on his or her capability to be consistent in words and action and people saying one thing but doing something different will guarantee negativity and ultimately failure. Many of us have seen these double standards and corruption in the community and workplace generally. We must ensure we do not have corrupt coaches or coaches with double standards will fail. A coach must have a mental toughness, the courage of his or her conviction and be credible. The simple message is: both words and action are critical to success. Workplace coaching is about developing trust between all members of the team and an understanding that regular day-to-day feedback will be provided in a way that is valid, reliable, consistent and fair. Trust will allow an acceptance that all team members can expect to be told, in a nonthreatening way, when they are performing excellently or when they are underperforming.
When we have worked with companies in identifying the features of an excellent coach, a broad canvas is painted. They say an excellent coach must be an active listener; be respected (not necessarily liked) by team members as a professional (have integrity and honesty, be patient and direct); be supportive but provide freedom to initiate; be a role model and a setter of standards, using a supportive approach to mistakes, yet using mistakes as a learning opportunity. These companies say a coach must also be an accurate observer of work activities. Not observation by spying, but timing his or her presence in the workplace to ensure team members know that the emphasis is more an interest in and enthusiasm for what is going on whilst being there to assist if necessary. ‘You cannot expect to know what is going on if you are not in the street every day’. This means being involved in the daily work of the workplace; being alongside, not over. Familiarity or friendship are not prerequisites to being an effective coach. In many ways coaches, like teachers, should have a sense of vocation. They are born, not made. However, with training and feedback, we can make them better teachers and coaches. To be successful, both the words and the action are critical.
I now turn to a process for developing coaches to be both competent and confident. People who are able to set the mood, tone and behavior for coaching in the workplace and then do it in a way which demonstrates their actions, are both consistent and sustainable. They demonstrate success for all team members and ultimately the organization. Workplace coaching activities We see coaching as continuous personal interaction and (where required) intervention in the team’s activities, to lift, sustain and improve the performance of the individual and the team. Intervention for the purposes of coaching may occur at any time, but particularly when a coach detects excellent performance or under performance.
Intervention may take the form of encouragement, recognition, praise, advice, demonstration, training or any other form of learning to improve competence or behavior. It can also focus on building confidence, which supports performance. We use the words ‘workplace coaching’ to describe a set of interrelated activities: clarifying expectations; providing feedback in the workplace as close to the event as possible (early intervention); making coaching part of the line manager’s style of dealing with members of his or her work team; making the workplace more comfortable and satisfactory for team members so that they can accept both positive and negative feedback in the spirit of coaching or we are here not only to achieve excellent results but to enjoy our work and interaction with other team members; targeting areas where performance or behavior need to be improved and then acting by developing plans to improve individual or team performance and/or to recognize excellent performance (this must include follow-up and assessment of outcomes and results). You need to make sure that the expectations and standards for performance are made clear and abided by across the entire work team. These expectations provide the criteria against which excellence or under performance can be judged.
For workplace coaching to move from the specification of performance to an interactive process in the workplace where the line manager provides day-to-day feedback, a clear set of principles needs to be established to guide all line managers. These will include performance and behavior. These principles, like expectations, must be agreed to and a commitment made to abide by them. A set of principles for one organization may not work so well for another. Organizations should develop their own set of principles with the involvement of senior managers and line managers.
