Little Known Ways to Leverage Coaching and Mentoring for Your Business Success (Part 2)

Last week, in part# 1, we discussed the differences and similarities between coaching and mentoring in light of both personal and business growth.  Now, in part#2, we will talk about "how" and "why" these two management approaches can be a cost-effective way to train employees, support personnel, boost morale, and increase productivity.

Did you know that a company is only as good as its employees?  This is why high-performing businesses and organizations put heavy emphasis on personal attributes in the selection and training of staff.

While formal, company-wide training courses can bring about a sweeping transfer of knowledge, attitudes, experience, skills, behaviors, aspirations, or leadership required to carry out challenging tasks, they fall short of bringing out employees’ full potential.

If you are serious about providing the right environment that foster growth, not just for your employees but also for your small business, then you better start looking into coaching and mentoring schemes.

Without purposeful and focused guidance that energizes, facilitates and inspires your team, it’s unlikely you’ll ever see peak performance from your employees.

Business Mentoring and coaching programs are a highly effective way to help personnel through open exchange of ideas; increase in self-esteem; efficacy; self direction; and accomplishments.  They are a proven and cost-effective way of bringing out the full potential of your employees.

Application and benefits of mentoring and coaching

Business coaching and a mentoring program can be used whenever there is a decline in performance and/or motivation levels. There are many ways you can take advantage of either mentoring or coaching.  You need to look at these from as many different angles as possible.

Whatever your goals are, remember to keep feedback as objective, factual, and specific as possible.

Performance enhancement

Many clients will seek either coaching or mentoring for performance enhancement.  However, this is a one-sided view since a business can certainly have a lot to gain by utilizing mentoring and coaching to rectify performance issues.  Coaching and mentoring have been demonstrated to be highly successful in intervening with this type of problems.

Knowing when and how to mentor

• Before embarking on a mentoring or coaching program, provide guidance and allow staff to pinpoint which performance goals they want to accomplish.
• Break up huge tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks and gradually acquaint staff with new skills.
• Include coaching and mentoring sessions in your progress reports throughout the duration of the project.
• Immediately address issues that could hinder the project’s successful completion.
• Make it part of your goal to acknowledge and recognize staff achievements.
• Give more emphasis to challenging, long-term projects and zoom in on potential jobs rather than small-scale ones.
• Increase staff involvement by encouraging them to pinpoint a problem and letting them formulate their own solution.
• Encourage staff to address problems squarely, yet, at the same time be sympathetic to their difficulties.
• Place heavy emphasis on the formulation of multiple options instead of allowing the team to get weighed down with multiple problems.
• A coach or mentor must lead.  Take the initiative by offering your own creative ideas, and then invite the group to evaluate them.
• Encourage staff to cultivate deeper insights into various perspectives to instill harmony and minimize misunderstandings.
• Make everyone’s needs and aspirations part of performance targets.
• This relationship is based on trust. Be prepared to give voice to issues that really concern the employees.

How to determine whether the program has been successful

All in all, you will find unmistakable indicators that tell you the coaching/mentoring program has been a success.  They include a friendly atmosphere where knowledge is freely shared, closer ties between people, improved team work and the development of a strong company culture since they also live what they learned.