Business Coaching and Sports Coaching

Comparisons are often made between business coaching and sports coaching as both share the common theme of trying to raise the performance of other people. In sports teams it will be the players out there on the field, providing them with coaching and training in an attempt to improve their skills to enable them to be more effective in their specific role.

Business coaching is no different, only instead of improving performance to be better at the sport than opposition teams, business coaching is intended to improve their skills with the aim of making the employee(s) better at their job. This can be defined in a number of ways, including making them faster and more efficient at completing tasks, giving them the tools to cope with and perform better under pressure, adjust more easily to actual or potential changes in the working environment or job role... In fact, the term business coaching and mentoring can encompass a variety of different topics, meanings and issues.

Courses such as the ILM Level 5 Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring will provide managers and indeed anyone with some level of responsibility for others in the workplace, whether one person or a large team, with a far greater understanding of how to maximise their performance and get much more productivity from them. It will also provide managers with a greater understanding of how to make changes and transitions at work happen much more smoothly and with less disruption to both output and motivation.

For those who actually want or have been told to receive coaching rather than providing it for others, the Business Learning Foundation also specialise in one-on-one coaching sessions where an experienced business coach sits down with a person to discuss the issues which they happen to be encountering at work, and assist in working with the individual for devising an action plan to address and overcome these hurdles. This one-to-one coaching is suitable right the way through from executives to individual members of the workforce, as anybody can encounter problems and issues regarding their particular job requirements and responsibilities.