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What is Business Coaching?

One of the "hot" areas of personal, professional, and business development is coaching. The coaching is all about helping others to identify and define their specific goals, and then organize themselves to attain these goals. Coaching deals with building an individual's personal skills, from setting the goals, to communication to management style to decision making and problem solving. Coaches draw upon a client's inner knowledge, resources and creativity to help him or her be more effective.

Increasing Role of Coaching at Work

In the new economy driven by knowledge-based enterprises, new emphasis on people development and employee empowerment is driven by several powerful forces⁴:

1. Delayering - a trend toward reducing the number of management levels in organizations' hierarchies. Growing importance of cross-functional teams. Jobs and roles are no longer prescribed and static, so no longer can bosses just go on telling subordinates exactly what to do. Successful companies are now those in which people communicate freely, cross-pollinate their ideas, and learn new skills and habits from each other, and in which managers are also coaches.

2. Changes in the labor market - people are more mobile, and the most successful companies are focusing more on bringing out their employees' potential in order to retain their best performers.

3. Rapidly changing business conditions, markets and technologies - company can no longer rely on providing employees with regular off-the-job training courses. Training now had to be continuous, on-the job, and just-in-time - i.e. by coaching.

Coaching versus Micromanaging

Micromanagement won't work when teamwork and continuous innovation is a priority. Although micromanagement can build discipline, it keeps employees locked within a limited range of action. When micromanagers relax their grip and switch to a coaching approach, the organizations reporting to them often flourish because the staff has the opportunity to utilize and demonstrate its full potential³. Instead of to do what they have to do to please their boss, team members are encouraged to see how hard and smart they can work to help achieve organizational mission.

Beware however of moving too far toward coaching. Finding the right balance between management, leadership, and coaching styles is the true sign of an inspired and effective manager.

Coaching in the Team Context

A well-defined strategy and working approach is integral to effective teamwork. It is also essential for a positive coaching environment. Constructive characteristics of coaching in team context include⁴:

• Shortly after the team has been formed, the leader holds a meeting to agree ground rules and 'team charter' - e.g. team objectives, individual objectives, working hours and likely crunch hours.

• The whole team participates in discussing and drafting the workplan

• Team members discuss personal needs for skill development early and openly

• Ground rules for nondefensive communication are set so that team members feel comfortable providing and receiving ongoing feedback

• The team reviews, regularly or after major milestones, how it is working

Executive Leadership Coaching

Coaching executive leaders involves doing each of the following four steps with professional competence and consistency:

1. Learning specifically what will it take to help your clients to be winners in their own right

2. Developing yourself to be who you need to be to assist your clients in achieving theirs goals

3. Assisting your clients to identify and define their specific goals and organize themselves to achieve these goals

4. Communicating what you do in such a way that it builds the confidence and trust so that your clients allow you to work with them on behalf of their own success.

NLP Skills: Applications for Coaching

Having NLP skills, such as listening to your clients and assisting them in tuning in to their own expectations for themselves, would put you at an advantage in performing coaching role for your clients. It is only when what they are going for is completely resonant with who they are, that they can expect to gather up all their potential and direct it at the outcome, says Joseph Riggio¹, a licensed NLP trainer.

Business e-Coaching

To build sustainable competitive advantage for the new knowledge-driven economy and compete successfully in the rapidly changing marketplace, companies need  continuous coaching and learning support to be provided to all their key employees in a continuous and timely way. Responding to these needs, the first-ever online Business e-Coach was developed and launched by 1000ventures.com in 2001...More