Can you imagine a company in 21st century not using the coaching method for achieving results? There are thousands of coaching programs issued by different companies, aiming to “help” people perform better and achieve higher results, without “stealing” enormous amount of their line managers or senior leaders.
When an employee moves from the path of the expert to the leadership growth pat, he/she receives as part of the development plan the opportunity to get “coached for success”.
Senior leaders moving from one to another position in their career path’s have personal and professional coaches assigned, to help them move the way from their current role the new one.
In the schools, students are coached how to achieve better results in learning and to sell their knowledge to the companies in exchange to a practical experience (or the so-called career coaching).
Coaching has grown from a personal help plan to a multimillion industry where people with or no experience help others to be more productive and achieve higher and higher goals.
There is no doubt that coaching helps people to grow, but as a manager I’ve met recently asked: “What is the real magic that coaching gives to the people to help them achieve higher results?”
There is a simple model containing 5 easy steps to help you understand the meaning of coaching and how to execute it for success. This model is simply called the 5P’s model. It contains the following 5 steps:
1. Preparation
This step includes decision making. You as the coach, together with the other participant in the process have to agree on several things by answering following questions:
What will be discussed during the session?
What information you will have to gather to ensure that there is a progress in the process?
Where must you gather this information from?
Who will gather the information (you, or the other person)?
How many evidences you will need to prove completion?
Together with the answers of these questions you and the other person (the coached person) in the process will have to prepare to review previous discussions plans and level of completion with lessons learned.
2. Presence
The hard thing in this step is that you will have to ensure you have dedicated enough time for the coached person. You must show the coached person that you give undivided attention to him/her and that this time from your week agenda is dedicated only to this process.
That attentiveness will help you as a coach to quickly raise trust and speed in the process.
3. Practice
This step is more connected with something called “practice for success”.
“Practice for success” is the actual action plan how the coached person will put in practice knowledge and experience gained through the interaction with you. Here you must agree on precise steps for practicing the knowledge, expectable results and how these results will be measured.
Bonus tip: You can use a company methodology to evaluate results or think of a different one that will be used only from you and the coached person.
4. Play-Back
The helping hand for a coached person comes from something simple called FEEDBACK. If you want to progress with the person and run through the challenges you must provide meaningful feedback. To do that you need to structure schedule for feedback and agree with the coached person on following:
What will be the form of the feedback delivered?
How often will you track progress?
What are the milestones (goals) for each step in the process that will show you progress?
5. Perform
The aim of coaching is to see how the coached person applies new skills, achieves results and grows as a person and professional. As a coach, your success in the process is measured by the number of activities the coached person applies to the performance of the team and the company. In other words, you as a coach have to answer the question: “How the coached person impacts performance and results after the coaching period?”
IN CONCLUSION:
When done properly coaching is an effective way to help people grow and develop. It requires coaches and leaders to provide people with regular contacts, explore their performance and progress and help them plan for further development.
The Human place 