One-on-One Coaching

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Why do organisations engage an external coach to help their managers and employees?

From our 20+ years of coaching Australian managers and employees, here is a list of the most common reasons we are asked to step in and help deliver one-on-one coaching:

A manager or senior employee is currently under-performing and before the organisation performance managers the individual they want to try coaching (by someone externally) a last resort.
A manager or senior employee is being prepared for an upcoming promotion, yet at the moment, there are several things I need to improve their work performance.
A manager or senior employee needs to embark on internal training, coaching or mentoring and would benefit from having some help in putting it all together and knowing exactly how to go ahead with the training or the coaching.
A manager or senior employee has been asked to speak at an upcoming conference and need some professional coaching and one-on-one help to prepare the presentation and slides and to give them the greatest chance of having a highly successful presentation.

Why Use an External Coach?

The main reason organisations use us to coach their people is that we don’t come to the coaching relationship with any preconceived ideas or “baggage”. The role of a coach is to simply work with the manager or employee on the areas that need improving and to keep him/her accountable to make the changes or improvements the organisation expects.

What Does Coaching Look Like?

To help save our clients’ time and money, we typically conduct our coaching either on the telephone private zoom video call. Over many years, we’ve found that there are always meeting rooms available for the manager or employee to go to with a laptop, tablet or phone to undertake the coaching.

The first coaching session last for around 50 minutes when we get to know the manager or employee, find out where the gaps are between where they are now and where they need to be, and then together, agree on a strategy to move forward.

Coaching involves lots of listening, challenging, encouraging, and of course, training. At the end of each coaching session, the manager or employee agrees to set a goal for the following week and to work on making any changes or improvements to his or her behaviour or performance. Then, during our follow-up coaching session, the first part of the coaching call is to check-in and review how things have been, what changes and breakthroughs have been made.

Does Coaching Work Better than Training?

When you attend training, you sit in a room with other people and learn together. Your ability to ask specific questions or to have the trainer personalised the training for you individually is quite limited.

On the other hand, when you work with a coach, the entire session is spent working with you, listening, offering support and specific feedback, and helping you to make the changes you need to make.

How Many Coaching Sessions Are Usually Needed?

Honestly, it usually depends on how big the problem or issue is.

Generally, we aim for three coaching sessions. However, if the topics that are being discussed are big ones, or there is no need for a significant turnaround improvement, there may be a need for up to five sessions. But, generally three.

Can you Deliver Face-to-Face Coaching Rather than Zoom Coaching?

Yes. Although as you can appreciate, there is a lot more time involved in our coaches travelling to your offices and back. Therefore, the investment in coaching will be more than coaching via videoconferencing. If the problems you want to be addressed by your manager or employee are significant, or you feel that your manager or key employee would respond better to face-to-face coaching, then we can do that.

Is Coaching "Performance Management"?

No. However, often an organisation will provide a manager or employee with the opportunity to work with a coach to try to help turn around his or her performance. Many organisations want to allow their key people to improve their performance before going down the performance management path.

Should the Manager or Employee Have a Say About Being Coached?

Absolutely! We recommend that before your organisation goes ahead with coaching a particular manager-employee, where she gets to speak to our coach (at no charge) and have an introductory conversation. It’s essential your manager or employee feels safe and supported by the person who will potentially coach him or her.

It’s also vital that your manager or employee willingly accepts the value of working with a coach over the coming weeks to improve their performance. This way, your investment in coaching has the highest chance of success.

Please, please, please!

If you have a manager or a senior employee who is currently underperforming, then don’t wait until you give them a “final written warning” before you offer them coaching. At the very outset that one of your key managers or employees is struggling, or has been struggling for a while, that’s when you should be thinking about using the services on an external coach; prior to providing a verbal or written warning.

Providing coaching before it gets to performance management generally provides the best chance of helping the manager or employee turn things around. Please, please, please, don’t wait until they are about to head out the door permanently to use the services of a coach.

We have someone who needs coaching; what do we do next?

Please call our offices on 1300-881-891 and speak to our training manager, Paul Puckridge. Your conversation will be held in the strictest confidence. After a brief conversation together, Paul will be able to suggest if coaching is something that would be helpful for your team member, and what that might look like if you wanted to move forward.