Value of Coaching
What is the value of coaching?
Let clients who have received coaching from the West Midlands Coaching Pool tell you:
What is the most significant change/improvement you have made as a result of receiving coaching (so far)?
- “More comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.”
- “An improvement in my confidence regarding my ability to lead and manage my team, whilst empowering those within my team to identify and implement improvements. This has enabled the processing of increased workloads alongside improving performance”
- “I believe that my communication skills improved with coaching, which helped me to get the best out of the staff I support.”
- “My team have sustained delivery of a full and diverse work load whilst contributing a positive input to the overall design and planning of change. My leadership and coaching interventions with others has supported senior level thinking on service resign and the approach to management of change”
- “Changes put into place to raise team morale and production”.
- “I was able to get my team working together for an agreed goal. Where previously there had been arguments over the nature of work we should be doing we are now able to see the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches and use the most appropriate. The Directorate has benefited from my team being able to produce a wide range of analysis that has been crucial to decisions about budget savings”
- “A greater understanding of complex public sector organisations and how they function. This has enabled me to be more effective in my role supporting change across the organisation”.
Have you made any savings/efficiencies as a result of coaching?
- “I took on the lead for ASB for the city, which I am proud to say, has resulted in a reduction of over 30% in incidents. The other option was to call in consultants x 2 which would have had a financial impact. If we also take into consideration that I completed my day job and also brought other staff into the equation, the learning curve for not just me, but others as part of the project has benefitted the organisation immensely, including financially as we have received on the spot training.”
- “…given the role I was in, I would say it was in someway a benefit to the organisation as my role could be considered to be highly pressurising so having survived and come out smiling, I would say is a success; else that role could be difficult to fill”
- “I have changed jobs since my coaching and have made many changes to the working practices in my new area. This has saved time and empowered the staff completing the tasks as they are able to make simple decisions for themselves without having to refer everything to a supervisor”
- “Reduction in meeting time by 25%”
- “It is my belief that following my coaching, the staff I support have been able to develop their own skills and knowledge so that they can work with greater independence and less support from me.”
- “Reduction of my stress levels therefore reduce the likelihood of sickness”
- “I now have to spend less time managing staff making me more productive”.
- “I developed practice meetings as a consequence to coaching to assist the team with their learning and development. This has enabled staff retention. Coaching has enabled the team to manage change during a difficult period of staffing shortages and a re-organisation, which I truly believe enabled staff retention to ensure the service continued effectively.”
What have you stopped doing as a result of undertaking coaching?
- “My relationship with my direct reports is now more structured and as such I have been able to assert the need to perform according to an agreed timetable and so stopped accepting underperformance”.
- “I have reduced my operational involvement in the development of the team, undertaking a more strategic and arms length approach, whilst continuing to support the operational managers”.
- “I now look at information in a different light, looking at solutions in a more long term approach, strategically rather than in silo and through "knee jerk" response”
- “Many old habits have now been eradicated - many administrative duties have been delegated”
- “Having largish meetings with no clear sense of direction which turn into moaning forums and where no one is sure what they are tasked with”
- “Hiding behind the coffee table at networking events!”
- “I place less inappropriate and unhelpful pressure on myself. When a problem relating to a project I manage arises, I am more willing to think about how the skills of others can be used to help and to ask for this assistance”.
- “I now feel more confident in canvassing the views of the team rather than always trying to argue against a differing point of view or looking to avoid the conversation and therefore the conflict that would follow.”
Quotes are from a taken from survey carried out in November 2010.