Business coaching

There is some debate about the usefulness of business coaching. Some companies believe that their employees are experienced, sometimes even more so than the managers, and that this would be a waste of time. Others feel that a manager who has to supervise a team of 12 people, each doing a different technical job, can’t coach on trades he doesn’t know. In short, coaching has sometimes reached its limits. Yet it’s the most competitive companies that make the most use of coaching. In the same way, the more a sportsman competes at the highest level, the more he needs not just one coach, but several. Who’d think a field hockey team could win the Stanley Cup without a coach?

Managers, too, are generally very open to the launch of a coaching policy. They are even enthusiastic about the initial training. However, when we re-evaluate three months after launch, there aren’t many managers still applying systematic coaching. More generally, it can be estimated that no more than 20% of companies successfully implement a systematic and effective coaching policy.

Is business coaching necessary?

Let’s hear what the managers have to say:

I’ve started, but not finished, because these days I’m too busy.

It’s taking much longer than expected.
My employees don’t have the time.
It’s repetitive.
I don’t know what to tell my employee.
My coaching tools are too general.
My VP doesn’t coach me, so why should I?
I’m already working at 120%, I’m exhausted, where will I find the energy to coach?
Does management want to burn us?
I spend my time putting out fires and fixing my employee’s mistakes; I don’t have time for coaching.
And finally, the unstoppable argument, “with us, it’s different, it’s not possible.”

What to do?

In fact, they’re usually right when they say they’ve already got too much work. It’s also true that coaching requires a lot of time and energy. 1 hour per employee per month, that’s 20 h/month; if you have a team of 20 employees, where do you put them when you’re already exceeding your working hours?

But even if they say it’s not possible at home, why is it possible elsewhere? Why do the top performers do it?

Here are the solutions found by the best performers:

Be convinced that business coaching pays off and justifies the investment of time and money: who delivers the results? It’s the team. The manager can then choose whether to invest his time in what produces results or in something else.
- He can always give himself a thousand good excuses to do something else. However, at the end of the year, it’s the results that his management will be looking at. If he doesn’t take care of his team, it’s doubtful that his results will be good. In successful companies, we usually say “there are those with the good results and those with the good excuses, we keep only the former.”
Prioritize coaching and postpone other tasks, many of which are error corrections that should never have happened if the coaching had been done properly. It’s a proactive approach that requires willingness and acceptance of the stress caused by abandoning tasks that used to make us feel secure.
Delegate to assistants the clerical tasks for which a manager is not paid: a manager is paid to deliver results, and it’s his or her team that produces them, so there’s no excuse for not making them a priority!

If your team is capable of self-motivation, self-improvement and self-training, then you don’t need to help them, but the chances of finding such a team are rare.

One thing’s for sure: there are rules for coaching that delivers results and improves organizational performance.

Remember, there are two types of managers: those with the right results and those with the right excuses. Be one of the former!

Jean-Pierre Mercier