Why Should Leaders Coach?

Competition between businesses nowadays is becoming tougher and tougher. Getting an edge is essential for a business to thrive in this competitive environment. Most organisations devote their time and energy in developing their products or strengthening their marketing initiatives to gain that competitive edge. However, most leaders forgo one important initiative that will propel their team to success: coaching. What is coaching, and why should leaders’ coach?

What is business coaching?

Coaching is an approach to management wherein leaders observe and analyse their team’s performance and identify their strengths and weaknesses. It is through this process that they identify opportunities for improvement in order to deliver great results. Through coaching, employees grow and develop their current skills, identify new skills that will help them become more efficient, and ultimately become self-sufficient.

Based on its definition, here are 5 advantages to coaching your employees:

1. Help you achieve your business goals:

Being a leader takes more than having the technical skills and knowledge to get the job done. An effective leader doesn’t only manage a project but also leads the team in achieving business goals. Leaders see that coaching is essential to developing talent and growing the team. Employees need to achieve their personal goals first before your business goals can be met.

2. Save your resources:

When business goals are not achieved, some managers immediately look to the product or infrastructure and invest in new tools and equipment to achieve goals. However, coaching provides an introspective approach. Instead of investing in more systems or software, leaders thoughtfully review their employees’ performance and help them to be more efficient in their roles. They also encourage their employees to carefully review their own performance and to try out other processes to improve their performance. Instead of shelling out money to buy systems, they don’t need, employees grow and develop their skills in order to achieve their goals, thus saving company resources.

3. High employee engagement:

When employees feel supported, whether or not they succeed or fail, it motivates them to further excel at what they do. If employees know that their leaders are genuinely interested in them and care for them, they will become more loyal to the company and the business. However, if employees feel as if they are not valued to the company, this will lead to low morale and low productivity. By allocating 15 to 30 minutes a week to catch up with your employees, they will feel that they are important to the team and that they are valued.

4. Happy customers:

Happy employees will result in happy customers. If your employees are happy, they will provide the best service possible to your customers. Through coaching, you can learn what makes your employees happy and what else can be done to keep them happy. As the saying goes, “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.” In addition, happy customers will tell others about their experience. Word of mouth is an effective marketing tool that costs you absolutely zero dollars.

5. Leaders never stop learning:

An effective leader never stops learning, ever curious about the business and the employees. When a leader coaches his employees, he goes into the trenches and finds out the true climate of the business in order to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. A leader is also humble enough to learn from his employees and shares their ideas to the rest of the team

The Bottomline

There are more reasons why each leader should start coaching. The bottom line: a regular program of coaching will help your employees develop their full potential, which in turn will result in achieving business goals, and help your company gain that competitive edge among the rest.