Being a Coach as well as a Manager……
One of the crucial management challenges businesses must address is effective people development.  Employees are undoubtedly an organisation’s greatest resource yet their potential is rarely capitalised on. 

Companies expend much energy on:

• Improving their products or services
• Updating their technology
• Developing customer service
• Reducing operating costs with a view to making themselves more successful.

Yet, they are overlooking the most important element – their people. – a resource which:

• Makes, markets and sells the products
• Uses the technology
• Provides service and sells to the customers
• Makes the cost reducing decisions

Ask any managers this question - ‘Do you believe your company is as good as the people who work for it’? -  almost all will say yes emphatically.

Coaching brings companies and individual managers success.  No professional manager would disagree, so ask yourself this question – ‘Is coaching a top priority for you and your company’?  To find out, ask two simple questions:

• to your team – “When have I helped you become more effective in your job”?
• to your boss - “When did you last provide me with support to make me better at my job”?

The responses to these questions will guide you to your Starting Point.  Coaching as a management skill simply put is “helping people be the best the can be”.

Using this premise, coaching in management is the same as coaching in sport.  The ultimate aim is to:

• Beat the competition
• Build the future – the people you coach today are the company’s future

So, stop and think!  By coaching your team, you will also develop and so will the future of you organisation, a must for anyone in management.

Brett Lyons