Coaching for Company Leaders

By Julie Weber https://lensa.com

Promoting a coaching culture in the workplace is essential for those who are at the top. It can enhance leadership skills, create an opportunity for innovative ideas, provide vision for the company, create less of a toxic environment in the workplace, and can be used as an incentive or reward for top managers and executives. The adage “oh it’s lonely at the top” is truer than we realize. People at the top often feel alone and without true friends or confidants. Their social-emotional welfare is just as important as their employees’ wellbeing.

We spoke about coaching as an effective method for helping employees to become more efficient, more focused, and more solution-oriented in their work. The social-emotional well-being of both employees and leaders is equally important and we see increased interest as well as a trend in this direction globally.  With self-awareness comes many realizations concerning one’s emotional and mental state and the company can utilize this aspect in creating a workplace that is emotionally safe regarding fulfilling basic requirements such as the sense of belonging and self-actualization.

Benefits in the Workplace

To sum up the benefits and advantages of workplace coaching, let’s look at the following points:

• Coaching enhances the productivity, effectiveness, and well-being of employees, managers, and executives – simply put, the whole organization. It keeps people engaged and motivated, working towards common goals while sharing the same vision for the future.
• Coaching provides a platform for open, honest, solution-focused communication with an eye on the future. It helps teams and individuals to reflect on their abilities, potential, the tasks at hand, and optimal solutions.
• Coaching supports continuous learning and goal setting as well as making sure that those goals get realized, tasks are completed, and responsibility.
• Coaching encourages new, innovative thinking, explores previously undiscovered areas, skills, talents, and gives vision and direction to the organization.
• Coaching allows teams to become more transparent, and productive, communicate more and more effectively, and there is a greater trust and camaraderie formed between the team members.
• Coaching has found to enhance self-efficacy in people, which is an individual’s belief in being able to accomplish the task at hand and perform well. This belief not only impacts performance and decreases stress levels by increasing one’s confidence.
• Coaching enables people to be more aware of their strengths and weaknesses, which leads to a better understanding of how they see themselves, and the challenges they can take on.
• Coaching conveys the message that the company cares for its employees, and it wants them to grow not only professionally and personally as well, living to their full potential. Employees feel valued, appreciated and listened to, which strengthens their commitment to the company.

Coaching positively and substantially transforms both the workplace and the workforce. It allows employees to see themselves, their jobs, and their company more positively. This creates greater job satisfaction and commitment, engagement and hope in a positive future. The strengthened belief in self makes employees ready for new tasks and challenges and equips them with a can-do and want-to-do attitude. Good employees become better, great ones become outstanding.

A company that considers investing in coaching as a way of fulfilling the demand for talent, as well as profitability for the organization will have added many benefits.  These benefits can include cultivating a healthy work culture and engaged employees. Companies that employ the services of external coaches, and have their managers and team leaders trained as internal coaches reaps all these benefits and more. According to Forbes (2022), based on a 2015 survey from the ICF and the Human Capital Institute, “51% of respondents from organizations that invested in coaching reported higher revenue than that of other similar organizations”.

There is no magic formula for increased revenue except for investing in the very people who make things happen at a company. They will have a vested interest in doing well not just for monetary gain and for feeling empowered and belonging to and satisfied with working in an environment that fosters both personal and professional growth in a transformed work culture. This yields the best return and is in the best interest of all.

To learn more about coach training and coaching certification, check out the Center for Coaching Certification.