coaching

Advanced Guide: Coaching an Individual in the Workplace

Business

Coaching is a technique that is applied in work settings with the aim of teaching employees and accounting interns how to be more productive. It may involve exposing employees to a new set of skills or simply helping them make the best of their own skills. Organisations that invest in employee coaching have been found to excel because of the good performance it generates amongst the employees. If done properly, coaching can improve communication between the employees and the employer, increase productivity, and you might just see a renewed commitment to the workplace – just to mention a few of the perks. If you are doing an international internship – upskilling like this can also lead to greater opportunities. For coaching to be effective there are a few factors that should be considered, and this guide provides some of the things that should be done when coaching an individual in the workplace.

Create Self-awareness

The first thing that you should do as a coach is to ensure that the individual being coached has a deeper understanding of his or her self. This may involve things like knowing his or her strengths and weaknesses. In most cases, it involves exposing weaknesses that the individual may not be aware of. The lack of awareness may impact negatively on the employee repeatedly without them making changes due to the simple fact they don’t realize they have a weakness. By pointing out the weakness the individual can start working on the necessary changes that will bring out the best results.

Goal Setting 

Setting goals is also very important because through this you will be able to assess if the coach is making progress. Depending on the current state of the employee you can come up with weekly or monthly goals that must be met. Goals can only be set after you have carefully assessed the person being coached. For example, if you notice that the individual being coached has trouble controlling emotions, you can set a goal that deals with the enhancement of emotional intelligence. After a certain period, you can carry out another assessment to see if you met the goal.

Work on Individual Skills

Each person has some skill set by default but the problem is some people don’t know how to maximize these skills. A coach can assist such employees by showing them new ways in which they can use their skills to the betterment of the workplace. This can be done through identifying new avenues which may require the configuration of skills that an individual may have. When the skills are put to good use the individual will be more competent resulting in increased productivity.

Problem Solving

One of the main reasons why coaching is done is so that employees in a workplace can learn how to solve underlying work problems on their own. With that said, it is important to remember that the only way this can be achieved is by allowing the person being coached to come up with his or her own solution for a problem. As a coach your responsibility is not to solve the problem for your students. The whole idea is to let them do it on their own such that they will be able to solve problems even when you are not there.

Create an Interactive Coaching Plan

Coaching is all about interacting with the individual or the group of people being coached. Therefore, for it to produce a positive outcome and a change that is noticeable it must be engaging. By engaging the people being trained you will be exposing them to first-hand experience to the concept that you are trying to drive home. When those being coached are given a chance to participate they are more likely to remember some of the things that they learnt during a given session.