Is there time and money for coaching in an already busy work environment?
I guess the question is more like, what’s the risk if there isn’t sufficient time or money?
Let’s ponder this:
- Today’s organisations are getting busier and busier. They are expecting more with less.
- There is a greater emphasis on leadership, and greater awareness on the impact that good (and bad) leadership can have on revenue, profit, customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
- But, there is less time and money being devoted to leadership development training and more traditional forms of chalk and talk development.
- A traditional face to face leadership development programme might be three to five days out of the office, with little actual time for reflection on the programme.
- We know that adult learning comes from the space to reflect and make sense of one’s experiences, but there is little time, money and space in today’s workplaces available for this reflective space.
So, we know that there is more need for greater skills, but less time available and money spent on providing those skills.
Enter coaching as a cost effective and time effective solution to provide space and time to reflect and grow.
Coaching can be as simple as a one hour session every fortnight or month for a fixed number of sessions (usually, initially 6). So, six hours (less than one working day) — over a period of six months, which can lead to growth, development, learning; even, in some cases, transformation.
In terms of return on investment, this is great value for time and money. And in terms of ongoing sustainable learning, the chance to actually transform the learning experience of the coaching counterpart rather than just talk at them.
Now, of course, there is a caveat to this, in that the quality of the coaching is critical to this equation. You can spend a lot of money on a very ordinary coach and be no further forward. But equally, there are some spectacular coaches who provide extraordinary value and return on investment. This is definitely a case of doing one’s homework.
Finally, if there isn’t space or time for coaching.. If there is less money being spent on development in the more traditional formats — then where is the development coming from? Where is the space, the opportunity to try new approaches, to practice, to grow, to develop? Where are our future leaders going to get a chance to do all this in today’s work environment?
So, if not coaching, then what?
So this week’s takeaways:
- What opportunities are your leaders getting to learn, grow, practice approaches and develop?
- What reflective space are you providing?
- If your organisation is not providing training in the traditional form, or development in the 70, 20, 10 form; how are your current leaders and your leaders of the future learning and growing?
Until next week, happy leading.
