Selasa, 22 Agustus 2017

5 Reasons Why Coaching and Mentoring Is So Effective For Developing People

The Insights Series from The Chartered Association of Certified Accountants identified coaching and mentoring as one of the most effective development methods. So what is it about coaching and mentoring that makes it such a powerful development method? Here are my 5 top reasons.

1. Ongoing

Many traditional approaches to development are one chance events. If you prosper fantastic if not your opportunity is gone. While this type of development activity is excellent for acquiring skills or knowledge, it can be less effective when it comes to working on personal attributes or softer skills.

2. Personalised

Many development activities aim to cover a number of areas in a short time frame. While this is excellent for getting breadth, it can mean that only a small proportion of the time is spent on the areas that matter to you. When working with a coach or mentor you focus on the specific areas that will give you greatest leverage or benefit from your development time. You get to develop your own personalised programme.

3. Focussed

Coaching and mentoring is highly targeted and because it is ongoing you move forward quicker because it is focussed. You don't waste time and effort on areas that you don't need to.

4. Supportive

People who take on the role of coach or mentor are highly supportive. They can be counted on to be behind you encouraging and supporting you as you take action. Knowing that you have the support of someone who believes 100% in you is an amazingly powerful motivator.

5. Accountability

Study after study highlights that having accountability is one of the most important ingredients in achieving results. One study suggested that you have a 95% chance of achieving an objective when you have accountability in place.

When you have to self account for what you have or have not achieved, you do more than you would have done otherwise. Your coach or mentor holds you to account for those actions that you have committed to taking in order to get results and move forward.


Selasa, 08 Agustus 2017

Ten Tips on How To Gain Outstanding Performance From Your Team Through Coaching and Mentoring

Are you witnessing outstanding performances by your employees? If not, are you providing some form of feedback to your employees as to their level of performance and your satisfaction with their performance? Are you doing any coaching or mentoring with your employees?

For purposes of this article, I will presume that many of you are not providing feedback, coaching and/or mentoring of any kind or are doing so at a level that is not producing positive results. It is very important to know that you need to institute some form of an ongoing program to monitor, mentor and coach your staff on a regular basis if you want to have outstanding performance from them. The age-old argument that owners, managers and supervisors do not have time to mentor and coach and give feedback is dysfunctional and not acceptable. I strongly believe that the problems that occur from not coaching and mentoring will consume much more time than the time to coach and mentor. Furthermore, by not coaching and mentoring, there is a very strong probability that there will be more work for those who did not take the time to coach and mentor.

So, how do you go about this coaching and mentoring? Here are ten (10) tips from your strategic thinking business coach that should help you answer that question.

1. Gather information about your team members and learn about skill deficiencies, any confusion on assigned tasks, interests and aspirations, etc.

2. Listen to and hear what your team members say to you and pay attention to their body language also.

3. Communicate frequently to detect morale or other problems that cause stress in the workplace and diminish productivity and create negative attitudes.

4. Train your team members as individuals and as a team, after assessing the training needs.

5. Provide ongoing feedback on performance with praise, suggestions for improvement and corrective suggestions.

6. Create an environment for free and open exchange of ideas with your team.

7. View mistakes as learning opportunities and value the lessons learned.

8. Recognize improvement and accomplishments. Celebrate success!

9. Support team member's initiatives to pursue additional training and other self-development opportunities.

10. Hire an outside professional coach to assist you in the development and implementation of your ongoing program.

Striving for outstanding performance in your company or organization is essential to your success. If you want to learn more about gaining outstanding performance through mentoring and coaching in your company or organization and how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor.