If you work for a particularly large organisation you may find yourself at internal courses along the lines of “Coaching for Performance”, “Influencing Skills” and “Influencing Change”. A lot of people who have been on these courses feed back that, it has made them go back into the workplace with a different prospective on things. These courses are not everyone’s cup of tea but for people who either recognise gaps in their current approach or skillset or others may have pointed this out to them we would recommend they take a look at some of the different courses or coach’s out there and give it a try. You may not be lucky enough to work for a company that has a lot of these courses available, particularly if you are an SME. In that case we would recommend you look at what executive coaching UK wide options are available. Just browse the internet and there are many services out there that will address some of the help you may be looking for. Some services executive coaches offer:
Business Performance Review – Coaches can also help look at your business from an independent angle and give advice on your strategy, how you manage business performance and people development. If you are failing on specific KPIs then these coaches will look at this through a different lens. This isn’t specifically about the technical detail of the failure but more around the warning signs, governance around it, what more you could have done to prevent it, recovery and governance etc. Sounds simple but its these simple things that are not always thought of. It’s really easy for people to put on the superman cape and fix burning issues but if they don’t reflect on how they got there in the first place then there is danger the exact same issue could re-occur.
Influencing Change – Your company may be going through a significant change in approach – this could be via current employee working conditions, how they work, where they work, what they do and sometimes with these difficult changes comes a lot of resistance. It’s important that these changes are managed carefully so that you do not disengage and demotivate your employees. The preparation with the coach may prove useful in the respect that they prepare you for some of the difficult conversations that your teams. Sometimes with these activities you may do an element of 1-2-1 or group role play. These activities can be either fun or uncomfortable however they will certainly make you think of some of the challenges you may come across and difficult questions or behaviours you may expect from you team. Remember that if someone has been operating in a specific way for 20 years in a company – trying to change this may not be easy.
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