Written by Paul Glatzhofer, VP of Talent Solutions
This article on coaching and development first appeared in October 2019 and was updated to reflect new information on coaching and development for resilience in April 2021.
After years of providing coaching and development resources for companies all over the world to help develop skills and traits like self-awareness, resilience, and confidence, we know that as we move forward in 2021, coaching has never been more necessary than now and into the future.
Today, we know just how important these traits are and how crucial it is to have leaders who understand how to coach and develop employees who model these characteristics.
When I first started coaching, I focused mostly on helping individuals understand the results of some instrument. Whether it was a personality tool, 360 degree feedback, performance review, or leadership assessment, I was focused on helping those that I coached understand their strengths and developmental areas, and then eventually assist them in goal setting.
Deeper Dive into Coaching and Development Tools:
- Personality tool: An objective assessment that accurately measures an individual’s personality characteristics and individual motivations to predict on-the-job behaviours and potential. The assessment data can be utilised throughout the employee lifecycle, including selection, development, promotion, team building, and succession planning.
- 360-degree feedback: A 360 is a report showing the results of a survey. An individual is asked to fill out a self-rating questionnaire pertaining to various aspects of their work performance such as communication, problem-solving, relationship building, time management, etc. Then that individual’s manager, peers, staff members, and internal customers also fill out the same survey. The result would be feedback from every angle (a 360-degree view) that could be interpreted in different ways to gain an understanding of how the individual is perceived at work by the people within a sphere of influence.
- Performance review: Performance reviews allow managers to connect with their employees, provide feedback for a more detailed conversation, and critically and positively discuss their performance.
- Leadership assessment: Designed to assess the personality traits of great leaders—such as a sense of urgency, openness to new ideas, and a desire to take risks. Evaluating leadership capabilities is every bit as important as analysing sales territories and crafting salary structures—arguably more so.
These goals were almost always focused on developing a skill that would help them to be more effective going forward. This isn’t a terrible approach – the individuals I coached had some degree of success, except for one or two who were forced into a coaching relationship in which they had no interest (we have all been there). However, through my experiences I quickly began to see trends with those who seemed to benefit most from the coaching.
More specifically, I noticed that when coaching centred on increasing self-awareness, resilience, and confidence, there appeared to be bigger gains in performance at a more rapid pace. Of course, the focus was always slightly different, based on the individual and their unique needs, but this trend was unmistakable.
Deeper Dive into Coaching for:
- Self-awareness: Leaders who demonstrate high self-awareness are able to understand where they struggle, how they can compensate, and what they learn along the way. Self-awareness is a key component of emotional intelligence. Being self-aware not only signals the ability to recognise and understand emotions in yourself but to extrapolate from this awareness to manage behaviour and relationships.
- Resilience Caliper scientists define Resiliency/Ego-strength as the ability to handle setbacks, criticism, and rejection. Those who score high in this trait bounce back quickly from rejection and do not let failures control their self-confidence. This is one of the must-have ingredients of mental toughness and a crucial component for success.
- Confidence: Confidence is crucial for leaders in any setting. Feeling confident in the plans laid out before the team gives a leader more buy-in. The best coaches know each of the individuals they are working with and help them connect with themselves, giving them the confidence to lead with their unique styles.
It should come as no surprise that increasing self-awareness is essential. Not only is self-awareness the first step to behaviour change, but most would argue that the entire coaching engagement is a means to increase the self-awareness of the individual. My own experience certainly reinforced this theory. Previously, though, I had not placed very much emphasis on resilience or confidence in my engagements. I assumed that if the coaching was successful those things would just happen naturally – and in some situations, they may. However, I found that placing an emphasis on them during each and every coaching conversation was essential in driving success.
One example of this came up recently. I was engaged in a coaching conversation with a leader who was having issues with their boss and some decisions that were made (and not made). These issues were getting to the point that the leader was thinking about leaving the organisation. If the leader didn’t leave, they would endure a miserable existence for the foreseeable future. Considering that 72% of job seekers are driven by career advancement opportunities and cite it as the primary reason to change jobs, our goal was to get to the bottom of the issue before this company lost an important leader!
As is typical in coaching conversations my agenda was thrown out immediately and we worked on the problem at hand. Without getting into too many details, it was my opinion that the leader I was coaching simply needed a confidence boost which would allow them to have the conversation with their boss about what they needed. It was important for them to be confident, concise, and specific about next steps.
It is amazing what a little confidence can do to help you overcome what appears to be an insurmountable roadblock. As can sometimes be the case with situations like this, the roadblock was much smaller than originally anticipated. The boss got a clear message and acted on it.
There are other takeaways from this simple story. Communication and not making assumptions are contenders. However, even with a communication plan, it can go wrong quickly without the confidence and calm demeanour needed during difficult conversations. Next time you plan for a coaching call, think about integrating some activities and conversations that focus on increasing self-awareness, resilience, and confidence. The speed of the outcome might surprise you!
