People learn the things they want to learn. They tend to sieve out and ignore the things that do not interest them or which they consider to be unimportant.
When a teacher speaks in a classroom some of the pupils will be riveted to every word, others will be staring out of the window, bored. The same thing happens in business training sessions, some of the attendees are interested and others are not.
Those who are not interested are wasting their time being at the training. They will learn nothing. This is the problem with training – one size does not fit all. One subject does not interest all the audience.
Coaching is More Efficient
One to one coaching focuses on the needs of the individual. These needs may not always be obvious at the start of a coaching programme. Business executives tend to be expert at camouflaging areas that they consider to be weaknesses. As a result they can often miss opportunities to learn and develop their skills.
Coaching should start by developing a trusting and open relationship so that the coachee feels free to divulge “inner secrets” and talk openly about their anxieties and the things that make them lose confidence.
To gain this level of trust the coach needs to be a highly experienced, well trained and confident individual. The coach needs to be a skilled questioner, capable of gently probing the coachee to reveal the real issues that are preventing him from developing his potential. It is a definite advantage if the coach has himself been senior manager and experienced many of the issues that managers face.
Why Coaching Prescribed Coaching Programmes are Not a Good Idea
When you go to see your doctor you do not walk in and allow him to tell you what you need to do and what medication to take.
No, first he asks you “what’s the problem? Why have you come to see me?” He then makes suggestions as to how you might manage the issue and you discuss these suggestions.
Coaching is the same, diagnosis is an essential part of the treatment. First the coach must understand the real issues have brought the coachee to see him. They must be sure that the symptoms are diagnosed correctly and then the issue must be worked on.
For instance, it is common for my coachees to tell me that they lack confidence. When I probe it nearly always transpires that they only really lose confidence in certain situations or with certain people. When I probe the situations it then transpires that the coachee lacks knowledge of how to manage that type of situation or they lack knowledge of the subject. This is where the management experience of the coach is so important. The coach must be able to help the coachee to improve his knowledge and work out ways to manage the situations that cause him to lose confidence.
It is the same when confidence collapses in front of certain types of people. The coach must have the experience and training to be able to help the coachee to manage their emotions in such situations. This is why really good personal development coaches are so rare in the business sector.
How Coaching Saves Money
If a manager suffering from a lack of confidence is sent on a training course about how to increase their confidence it is possible that they will be bored and lose concentration because the course does not quickly get into the specifics of the situations in which he loses confidence. He may be perfectly confident in most situations and only interested in a small part of the course.
Coaching would get to the part that interests him much more quickly and enable him to manage the type of situations that trouble him in ways that are easy and appropriate for him to use.
Each person on the planet is unique. It is this uniqueness that coaching is so well equipped to cater to.
My view of coaching is that it should not follow a prescribed path, rather it should start with the individual coachee and make them the centre of the programme, the coachee is the subject, not the programme.
