There are many benefits to being a part of the coaching process.
The personal benefits of coaching are wide-ranging and can positively impact an individual’s career if they are engaging with their coach. This process can help develop individuals across a wide range of needs and can even benefit them on a personal level.
I have seen how coaching boosts confidence, improves work performance, and builds effective communication skills.
Here are 6 benefits that coaching can bring to individuals in your college.
1. Establish and act toward achieving goals Coaching gives the individual an opportunity to define their career goals in a realistic way. With the assistance of a coach, they can set these goals and then actively work towards them. This will increase the likelihood that the goals will be achieved. It is common for goals to be centred around two aspects of an individual’s career. The first is building skill sets, and the second is the individual’s professional behaviour.
2. Increased level of engagement Coaching engages participants with its unique one-on-one feedback and lots of encouragement. When an individual becomes engaged with their workplace, they can contribute more effectively to the team and the college. This engagement also helps to increase retention rates and productivity, benefiting their careers as well as their college.
3. Safe Place to Gain Perspective Having a coach gives the individual a safe space to go and talk through sensitive issues. The coach is a third-party participant, and their ability to remain uninvolved but give guidance allows the coachee to gain perspective without feeling intimidated by hierarchy in the college. This is only made possible if there is a secure way for the coach and coachee to communicate. Using the safe place for encouragement and development is important. It allows for a more in-depth learning and higher levels of comfort with the skill. Once the individual is comfortable with their skills, they can begin to use them in their careers and see the advantages they are gaining from their coaching relationship.
4. Deeper Level of Learning Coaching isn’t just about improving an individual’s skills in the workplace; it takes learning to an even deeper level. Through coaching, an individual can learn more about themselves, find out how they are perceived by others, and improve on areas of their personalities that they are not satisfied with. Furthermore, coaching takes learning to a level beyond remembering and understanding. The individual can take the skills presented by their coach and apply them in new situations within their safe learning space. Application in various situations will solidify the skillset in the individual.
5. Build Personal Awareness A coach helps guide their coachee to ideas for ways to improve themselves, but more importantly they can help them become aware of their blind spots. These blind sports are areas of the individual’s work or personality that they may not see, but that need improvement. Once the individual is aware of these areas, they can work with the coach to begin improving them. Through building personal awareness, the individual can turn their unknown weaknesses into marketable strengths. This personal awareness is an important confidence booster for individuals in talent development programmes and can help in future roles.
6. Support for Improving Specific Skills Having support for improving skills can be extremely beneficial. Simply knowing that someone is there specifically to help goal achievement is an important part of progress within the coaching process. As skill building is often the focus of coaching relationships, there should be specific emphasis on which skills to build so the coaching is efficient and directed. These skills can include communication, delegation, conflict management, team building, and persuasion, and they can be managed with coaching software. Guided support will make the coaching relationship successful in its objectives.