Coaching: Mentoring: Training: Consulting: Facilitating
Broxburn Drive
Steering in the right direction
The Benefits of Coaching and Mentoring
We believe everyone passes through life with a suitcase.
In this suitcase are your skills, experience, knowledge, qualifications and your innate gifts and talents; we make our way through life using and selling the contents of our suitcase.
But through daily usage the suitcase becomes untidy; we cannot find the things that we know are in there somewhere. It seems too full of things we don’t use anymore; and no matter how long we rummage through it we cannot find the thing we must use in the next 60 seconds. Because if we can not we will look foolish, get it wrong or the worst of all crimes, not keep a promise made.
Eventually it comes to us all that it would be a good idea to audit the contents of the suitcase; preferably for the journey about to be made; rather than the one traveled already. If the journey is into new and uncharted territory, history has shown there are a lot of benefits in hiring a guide to show you the safest and shortest route; preferably someone who has made the journey before. They are also the best people to help you check out your suitcase.
New learning, and the development of skills, can be acquired by individuals in a multitude of different ways; through structured courses and workshops, informal or formal on the job learning, self teaching, etc etc, or by one to one bespoke support.
We all have different needs and wants, different communication styles, different expectations. We all generally feel a little exposed or vulnerable when talking about things we know we should be better at. Mass learning with groups of people doesn’t work all the time for all the people.
If people are to be the best they can be, experience has shown that time spent with another individual, someone they trust and respect, often creates the most comfortable and cost effective solution for the coachee and their organisation.
The benefits for the individual seem be:-
- Greater self awareness and the skills to interact with people not like them.
- Greater self belief, coupled with appropriate behaviors and attitudes.
- Improved confidence in dealing with challenge, or loud and vexatious people.
- A hunger for new skills and knowledge acquisition
- Improved problem solving techniques.
- A heavier suitcase capable of dealing with weighty challenges.
As a consequence the organisation benefits because:-
- Improved personal performance improves organisational performance.
- Tangible evidence of commitment to bespoke personal development.
- Improved cross functional interaction and efficiency. People do business with people.
- Greater efficiency through less fractious relationships and sulking.
- Improved skill levels for the organisation as more suitcases are opened all day.
- Improved staff retention and a creation of “a great place to work” culture
Document 2.2