Few excerpts of my article published in Business Manager HR Magazine June 2021 issue:

Does Coaching really work in organisations` and help transform the business?

In a strategic coaching partnership, coaches work with leaders both on an individual basis and as an executive team to align individual actions, leadership decision making and messaging overall organizational strategy. The coach can assess the team leading the change, identify what is working and what isn’t, and work with that team to improve their ability to lead more effectively and better drive change in the organization. Organizations going through massive transformations sometimes face the biggest barriers from the senior leadership. The leaders may buy into the change, but they don’t always know how to change their own behaviour to effectively lead the change for the organization.

Once when I was coaching a dozen teams within the same organization on improving productivity and innovation through effective collaboration, I found out that in some teams the issue was with the leadership itself. The leaders of some teams hadn’t yet earned the credibility and hence were unable to inspire and motivate their teams to align with the new vision of the organization. Here as a coach I was able to work with the leaders and their direct reports separately and help them with their respective individual & team goals to see the bigger picture. This helped overcome the perceived barriers to change and make significant progress towards the outcomes expected by the Organisation. Around 24% of teams (in this particular organization) however, made little or no progress primarily because of failed leadership styles and lack of staff engagement. It is a fact that some leaders are un-coachable whilst others need a lot more time to come around and make behaviour shifts.

What are the coaching skills a coach should have?

Coaches have to be empathetic, great at building rapport, and genuinely interested in helping people develop. Having strong communication skills is very important since they may need to give difficult feedback to the coachee and that requires tact and diplomacy.

Personally for me, it matters that the Coach is mentally and emotionally strong, has high degree of self-awareness and strong work ethics. Coaches have to have the ability to develop trust and intimacy as we say in coaching parlance with their coachee. It is on the basis of all these that you can have a strong coaching relationship and there will be mutual respect between the two parties.

Is coaching required to be redefined in changed business environment? If so, what factors should be taken into consideration?

An environment that fosters independence, collaboration, agility and productivity has become the new norm. The intermittent technological disruptions has given way to the digital revolutions. This is a perfect storm. And as if this was not enough the world witnessed the deadliest of all crises– the ongoing pandemic! Almost all industries have seen business disruptions in the worst possible way. CEO’s around the world are talking about putting compassion and humanitarian concerns of their people before anything else. Whilst internally employee experience, employee engagement, employee wellbeing, mental health etc. are being given precedence for the very first time, the leadership paradigm again is getting revisited because remote working, WFH requires a very different mode of managing and leading – how to be setting expectations, tracking progress, organizing, prioritizing , communicating, connecting with the team members virtually, listening to their issues and providing flexibility to employees when the latter have personal issues, or are busy with household chores, home schooling their children, taking care of the aged etc.

All this requires a leap of faith and trust on part of the managers and leaders because the employee is working remotely and to be able to drive results it is important that they are able to get the team to work collaboratively. Focus is now on outcomes achieved rather than merely hours worked. Employees on their part feel they are putting more hours even though its WFH, they feel morestressed and are experiencing burnout. There is a lot of confusion still as over 70% of organizations (one study published recently) have yet to redesign new Performance Management Systems.

Increasingly the focus has to be on helping people deal with anxiety, uncertainty, ambiguity and stress arising because of remote working and helping organisations inengaging employees virtually, virtual meetings, webinars, conference (zoom) calls and helping communicate why digitalization efforts are being accelerated in most large organizations.

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