Just as sports coaches are integral to attaining the best possible performance from athletes, organisational performance coaching is providing employers with an extra dimension of competitive commercial advantage.
Sporting coaches recognise that attitudinal performance is a key determining factor for success.
Understandably, business leaders are now beginning to embrace this concept by hiring specialist coaches to enhance organisational performance.
West and Milan (2001) identify several factors contributing to the demand:
- The increase in corporate stress:
Organisations and individuals are paying more attention to the detrimental effects of stress.
Not only is a personal performance coach an effective sounding board in times of chaos and complexity, but a coach is also an excellent facilitator of growth opportunities.
- The need for continuous organisational and individual learning:
Traditional, classroom-based learning is now generally regarded as being an ineffective response to modern-day social and technical change.
Performance coaching aims to promote organisational renewal because it is tailored to the learning needs of the individual – a pre-requisite for the true learning organisation.
- The need to create truly transformational leadership:
Australia lacks transformational leaders. Whilst traditional management training has concentrated on the management of process, task, activity and budgets, the performance coach can focus on higher order leadership activity - leading and developing people.
- The increased emphasis on human capital and retention:
Numerous research reports are proving the link between fostering talent development and an increase in bottom line performance.
Performance coaching encourages employees to achieve to their fullest potential - subsequently benefiting the organisation through a more engaged workforce.
Whilst only a recent trend, specialist in-house performance coaches are already providing numerous benefits for employees of larger organisations as well as small to medium enterprises.