Reflect
This course is all about coaching, so it’s likely you want to become a coach yourself. But before you think of yourself in the role of coach, think about your experiences of being coached.
Have you ever been coached, either formally through an agreed coaching relationship or informally by a manager, friend or colleague? How was that experience? What did you gain from it? How could it have been improved?
Now think about these questions:
What makes a good coach?
What are the key pitfalls or challenges when trying to coach someone?
What is the impact of good coaching?
Are there times coaching is inappropriate, or could do harm?
Make some notes of your thoughts. If you are willing to, please share your thoughts in the Performance management workspace.
Coach or taskmaster?
As a manager, it’s your job to help your team perform to the best of their abilities. But there are different ways to approach that. Think back to the last time a team member approached you with a challenge or decision. Did you:
Tell them what to do so they could get on with it?
Have a conversation which helped them develop the skills to make these decisions independently in future?
If you did the latter, you’re already having coaching conversations. It’s a little like the saying ‘If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.’ Good management is about equipping your team with the skills and tools they need to perform in their role. Building problem-solving and critical-thinking skills empowers your team to adapt to changing circumstances and make good decisions independently, raising the performance of your team as a whole.
So what is coaching? The UK CIPD define coaching as ‘the use of one-to-one conversations to enhance an individual’s skills, knowledge or work performance’. Coaching is often linked to mentoring, and the two share many of the same skills. In this course we focus on coaching, which is more specifically about job performance and can be done by someone who doesn’t necessarily have the skills to do the role being coached. A mentor is likely to be a more senior expert in a related role or field, looking to share their skills and experience with a mentee. Of course, the mentor is likely to use their coaching skills during these conversations, and many of the skills covered in this course are applicable to both situations.
So, are you interested in having more effective coaching conversations, and how to enable this using your Totara platform? Then you’re in the right place. In this course you’ll explore and practice how to:
Identify appropriate opportunities for coaching
Have effective coaching conversations
Connect individuals with an appropriate coach
Support coaching through Totara
To complete the course and achieve your course badge, you’ll need to complete the mandatory activities which are marked with an asterisk*, although we encourage you to explore many more of the activities available in the course.
Effective coaching for managers
Aperçu des sections
- Généralités
Généralités
- Experience coaching
Coaching in action
The best way to understand coaching is to experience it - both the good and the bad! In this activity you will compare two fictional scenarios, and see the impact coaching can have. Pay attention, because you’ll be asked to comment on the scenarios along the way…
Duration: 10 mins
Coaching in Totara
So, who can be a coach? The short answer is anyone. Although managers are most likely to be having coaching conversations with their teams, you can also demonstrate leadership by identifying times where you aren’t the best person for the job. Other leaders in your business or an external coach may be more appropriate. For example, a female employee aiming for a more senior role in a male-dominated technology business may benefit more from a senior female coach who can share her unique perspective than coaching from an immediate male line manager. Of course, her manager should also continue to have coaching conversations with her, in addition to any formal coaching arrangement in place.
The next question is how do you identify those coaches? You will need a tool in place which enables managers and team members to identify an appropriate coach, such as a database of coaches and their skills. This could be anyone in your organisation who has received coaching training and has identified their key skills and areas of experience. You will also need to have structures in place that coaches can use, such as goals, competencies and agreed communication tools.
In the video below, you can see an example of this in action in Totara.
- This video is best viewed in full screen Duration: 5 mins
To complete the course and achieve your course badge, you’ll need to log in, or create a Community account.
