Don’t Try and Do Everything Yourself
As a manager of an organisation, it is often extremely tempting to try and perform the majority of tasks yourself. You feel that you are the only one that can be trusted with important duties, and that it will probably be less time-consuming anyway if you intend to check through every last detail of any work delegated to subordinates. Although this may operate acceptably for a while, in the long-run it is highly likely that this method of working will significantly increase stress levels and take up so much time that it can start to have an impact upon your life outside of work, not to mention negatively affecting your general health and wellbeing.
Not only is it important to delegate tasks to employees, but it is also necessary to take this approach when the need for business coaching has been identified. Many managers choose to perform this function themselves, acquiring a business coaching qualification and using the knowledge learned to facilitate coaching sessions with their staff members. However, it will take up a lot of time to plan, prepare and run these coaching sessions, which is time a manager is unlikely to have in abundance, and is why bringing in the expertise of an external coaching company will save time, and is just one of many benefits that an external business coaching provider will offer. Also, not all managers will feel comfortable or in a position to provide business coaching to their employees, and prefer to bring in an external coach who will be impartial to the organisation.
Often it will require an initial disruption and time dedication to be spent upon setting up the coaching provision, including determining which employees can be released from the workplace at which points in time, and liaising with the external business coach as to what the broad aims are and reasons for instigating the coaching. But the time spent at this stage will be well worth it if at the end of the sessions (or even between sessions), the situation and issues improve to such an extent that it provides significant additional benefits to the business, many of which will be directly related to profit levels such as increased productivity or greater customer service thanks to an improvement in teamworking and communication between different departments within the company.
Executive Coaching
Don't forget about yourself in all of this either. Not only can business coaching resolve issues for employees and help them overcome barriers to their potential, but the same principles are applied in executive coaching and provide managers, directors and senior executives with a dedicated forum in which to discuss challenges and issues with an experienced business coach who has worked with others at the boardroom level and has encountered the same or similar issues to the ones which you are experiencing, and will also have seen how they are successfully resolved. As such, an executive business coach will be able to offer the wisdom of their knowledge and experience which can prove to be especially valuable. Many executives find these coaching sessions so beneficial that they choose to have them running at intervals indefinitely, finding it both comforting and useful to have someone to talk to who has seen it all before in terms of the business situations they are currently experiencing.
