Coaching & Mentoring
Coaching and mentoring are an important part of establishing a learning culture and any consultancy or project management role.
Firstly, what is the difference between coaching and mentoring? A mentor shares their knowledge, skills and/or experience, to help another to develop and grow. Within a coaching relationship, coach and coachee work together to unlock the coachees full potential and achieve their goals.
The benefits of coaching and mentoring
Combined, coaching and mentoring can:
Improve personal and professional growth,
Provide space to share skills, knowledge, and experience,
Improve the likelihood of achieving goals,
Provide a safe reflective space for thinking through complex problems,
Enhance practice, leadership, and problems solving skills, and
Develop transferable skills to bring out the best in people and address complex problems.
A coaching style is just as important to frontline practitioners and families as they are to operational and senior leaders.
Our learning over time
Culture eats training for breakfast. Many organisations invest in training programmes only to find that learning has not been applied or sustained over time. This is because organisational culture – the established behaviours, norms, and processes - will override any learning that has taken place.
Style is contagious. Where leaders adopt a directive leadership style (also called commanding or coercive), it influences organisational culture and trickles down to service users. When leaders are directive, the workforce is more likely to adopt a directive style with children and families. Research tells us that families will struggle to achieve meaningful and sustainable change simply because they have been told to do so. A directive approach to change can lead to ‘false compliance’, ambivalence and resistance, which can impact on the safety and wellbeing of children. A coaching style supports people to grow and develop, and to set and achieve goals. This leads to more meaningful and sustainable change.
Coaching & mentoring leaders
Being coached is a good way for leaders to learn coaching skills and begin to coach their workforce. Where there is an ambition to build a learning culture, establishing coaching behaviours at all levels of the organisation is important.
Leaders often report that they have received little supervision or leadership training, and few report any training on leading organisational change. Many leaders say that they learned on the job or lead as they were led. Coaching and mentoring is important for leaders to develop the skills and knowledge to be successful in their complex roles, and so they have a safe space to explore the challenges of leadership. Once the core principles are learned, practice is the most important thing.
Contact me to discuss your coaching and mentoring needs.
Coaching the workforce
At an organisational level it is important to supplement training with coaching and bring coaching into the formal and informal supervision space to:
establish an organisational culture that nurtures growth and facilitates positive change,
enable the workforce to continue to reflect upon and apply their learning,
build engagement and focus on improvement,
develop new behaviours, norms, and processes, and
provide continuous support and development to the workforce.
Coaching is identified as a core component of good leadership and enable leaders to step away from directive styles and build capability. While coaching is initially more time consuming than a directive style, it is an investment that pays dividends over time through improved performance, impact, worker and service user satisfaction, and retention of skilled workers.