Business Coaching: The Route to High Performance

For many years companies have focused in their employees development. They have done en effort to upgrade the employee’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Indeed, companies generally organize several development workshops throughout the year so their employees can receive the best training. Three days, maybe a week in a glamorous hotel with exquisite food and incredible, speechless, expert speakers.

However, I have bad news for you. They can all be a waste of your time. For sure you will be entertained by a parade of speakers, and afterward you’ll be required to critique those speakers and rate how effective they were. But nobody is critiquing you. Nobody is following up to see what you learned or if you actually became more effective at your work due to this workshop. As a result, the people who may be learning the most are the speakers and not necessarily you.

This is when business coaching comes along. Coaching is the art to provide positive support, feedback and advice to an individual or group in order to improve their personal effectiveness in the business setting. In other words it’s a training or development process in which an individual gets support while learning to achieve a specific personal or professional result or goal.

The coaching process involves two main actors: the coach and the coachee. The coach is the leader, supervisor or partner that gives coaching and the coachee is the learner, the person who receives coaching. Generally the coach has greater experience and expertise than the coachee and offers advice and guidance, as the coachee goes through the learning process.

The structures, models and methodologies of coaching are many. However, the style I use and consider very effective is the “socratic method.” This method consists in daily conversations between the coach and the coachee in which meaning can be found by asking simple questions through discussion. The questions and answers between the coach and the coachee develop into dialogue to search for an answer. This method facilitates the learner to grow personally and professionally while delivering excellent business results.

The coaching sessions can take place live or online. Today there are many gret tools on the web that facilitate these conversations: Skype, Google Talk, IChat, Facetime, among others.

As Winston Churchill said: “to improve is to change and to be perfect is to change often.” Believe me, coaching is the tool to conquer that perfect change.