Significant challenges of rolling out coaching in an organization

The traditional workplace culture has become outdated. Technological progress, employee expectations, and modern working ways during the pandemic have impacted how the workplace functions and how we expect it to function.

Companies that follow the conventional approach are at the point of losing their top talent to companies adapting to the future. Though the Great Resignation trend was not as visible in India as in the United States, the impact is still there. Companies are struggling to find and retain their best employees, putting themselves at risk of losing to competition and becoming outdated in the long run. An excellent way to future-proof themselves is by adopting a coaching culture. 

So, what is coaching?

Coaching in the workplace means offering employees, managers, leaders, and executives opportunities, skills, knowledge, and tools to become more efficient, productive, and content with what they’re doing. Workplace coaching adds value to every person in the company and the organization as a whole.

Workplace coaching aims to boost creativity and efficiency amongst teams and add a dynamic environment to ensure smooth functioning. Coaching helps everyone work at their full potential. It offers benefits like improved individual performance, identification and development of top talents, enhanced employee engagement, and recognition of the strengths of the workforce and company.

Why is coaching the need of the hour?

Traditional companies rely on pre-defined roles and organizational frameworks, rigid and siloed in the current world. Change is constant, and leaders must know what is best for the company. The traditional environment no longer appeals to today’s employees, especially the millennials. Now employees look for purpose, work-life balance, personal growth opportunities, and autonomy. These factors help in the overall development of the company. Embracing coaching will give a competitive advantage to companies to attract and retain top talent.

Coaching demonstrates that the company:

• Encourages a growth mindset
• Motivates employees to push their limits
• Respect other’s opinion, feedback, and point of view
• Aids forward-thinking mindset
• Encourage creativity and experiments
• Nurtures the talent and strength of every individual

Embedding coaching in a company will help with the following:

Easy goal setting

Setting and accomplishing objectives become easier. Offering employees the strength to set and achieve their goals will increase their sense of autonomy, contribution, and intent, leading to enhanced accountability and performance.

Acknowledging learning

Learning is marked as one of the most critical attributes of workplaces by Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report. The workforce feels empowered to work innovatively, experiment, and take steps outside their comfort zone.

Employees need to brainstorm and think outside the box without feeling judged. New ideas are motivated, shared, and implemented. Coaching helps boost a company’s performance in a quick-paced world by promoting creative thinking.

Leaders of today and the future can develop social and emotional intelligence abilities to boost their interaction and lead to better collaboration and stronger relations.

Coaching can help with these problems that a company may face:

Feeling stuck:

The business may reach a point where the employees may feel a lack of progress or work at the lowest efficiency. A lack of guidance and vision makes companies turn to coaching. A coach offers guidance and clarity about goals. They help in prioritizing goals and honest perspectives for the business to grow.

Lack of accountability:

Often people look out for accountability for their business progress. They look for someone who can keep them accountable. A coach ensures the coachees are doing their work. Coaching ensures keeping the workers accountable by suggesting tools and processes and providing feedback.

Lack of productivity:

Though everyone’s working, one can realize the company is not at its peak productivity. A coach will enhance everyone’s workability to boost productivity.

But of course, even with so many benefits, it is not always roses when it comes to rolling out coaching in a company. There are pricks, too, along the way. As a coach, you may experience several challenges at every step of the way. From core coaching problems to business-related issues, a coach experiences many problems when introducing coaching in a company. Take a look at some:

 

Challenges faced by organizations in rolling out coaching

Culture of the company

It can be hard to align a coaching culture to the pre-existing culture within the company. Suppose a company follows a pyramid methodology, meaning the workforce is consistently addressed by managers and leaders on how to perform their job and run a business. In that case, there may be better options than coaching. When leaders dictate their employees, the teams have little space for communication or skill development.

Coaching is challenging to roll out in such a situation. Hence, it is crucial to make changes slowly, and once everyone recognizes the significance of changing the work culture, things will flow smoothly.

Time and distance

Of course, rolling out coaching types that demand traveling and time can be difficult. Traveling to distant locations or many locations is not appreciated by all employees.

Hence, coaching demanding travel and too much time find it tough to get too many customers and clients. It is always suggested to choose digital coaching, which helps save time and expense of traveling, giving the flexibility to participate in sessions anywhere and anytime the coachees’ can. Digital coaching has also proven to contribute positively to the environment.

Further, the teams can enhance their scope for development by gaining awareness and working on their communication skills. When teams coach one another, it leads to constructive feedback and better exposure to the work environment, promoting a coaching culture.

Poor interpersonal skills and objectivity

If there’s a gap between successive coaching programs, there’s a chance that the coachee may forget the information or feedback provided by the coach may lead to the repetition of lessons or disputes between them.

So, even when the coaching program is running in a company, employees and leaders may find it challenging to cope with the program. To ease this issue, coaches should try to promote self-reflection. They should use different coaching techniques to enhance employees’ presence of mind and performance and work on the ideas that strike them.

Lack of long-term planning

When the coach suggests any change, the employee must understand its logic otherwise, it leads to frustrated and confused employees who don’t know how to proceed.

Hence the coach should share a coaching plan with a broader scope along with its successful implementation. They should track how the coachee is proceeding with the plan and make necessary changes along the way to help them gain success.

Lack of clear objective and expected outcome

The principal purpose of why a company hires coaching is to know the obstacles to progress and define the right actionable plan to execute it to reach its goals. The lack of objective will make a coaching session lack direction and have a defined agenda.

For instance, the sessions may go unnoticed if the coach is not observant. So, if the client is struggling with their daily time management, it is not sufficient to suggest some good time management techniques. Instead, the coach should be more specific and ask questions about the issue. Are they not prioritizing things, are they struggling with regular schedules, or is it because of the laziness of the team?

The communication gap between the coach and coachee

Coaching is not the same as counseling, where one party gives the advice and the others follow. It is more like a mutual collaboration between everyone in a company to accomplish transformative results.

Good communication is the root of a healthy relationship. Consistently asking questions that help understand the coachee’s personality and problems is necessary.

The initial communication should add a sense of safety and comfort in the client’s mind, and they will open up about their real requirements. It is vital to put the client in comfort and encourage them to open up. For best coaching results, it is imperative for the client to interact and share their requirements. Once the coach knows the coachees, they can help them better.

Zero accountability

While rolling out coaching, a coach should take time and effort to understand the issues the coachee’s faces. Developing a strategic action plan and a step-by-step procedure is crucial to accomplish desired results.

But in some cases, a coachee may be rigid in their place and postpone taking action. In such a situation, establishing a coaching culture can be challenging.

The problem of accountability for actions has a lot of significance in the coaching process. Often coaches make the mistake of not giving accountability to the client or themselves take complete accountability. Well, it is both ways. Instead of telling the coachee their responsibility, work together to help them know what accountability is.

Spoon feeding solutions

Unlike a counselor who gives advice, a coach’s job is to provide guidance to move from where they are and reach where they want to be.

But, it is not a coach’s duty to provide readymade answers to the coach for the issues they are facing. Instead, they should help clients arrive at their solutions via the coaching process—the coach functions as a channel to steer the client and help them find a way.

As a coach, providing direct answers to clients without projecting your perception or insight on the issue makes them co-dependent.

Coaching is not viewed as an organizational priority

Though top leaders of pioneer companies openly agree about the benefits of coaching and how it helped shape their careers and lives, companies are still reluctant to prioritize it. Most organizations that work on a top-down approach are hesitant to adopt it with open arms. Often coaching is witnessed as a short-term gain, and the long-term benefits, such as improved work culture, enhanced team spirit, employee behavior, and improved productivity, are ignored. This is what makes rolling out coaching in a company more challenging.

How can uExcelerate simplify the process of coaching by democratizing and systemizing coaching?

Many online platforms are available to help gain coaching for businesses, but it is essential to choose the right one. Often companies make the common mistake of picking the wrong coaching partner for their overall development, and then everything that follows is a mess.

This can backfire, as online coaching platforms give the best returns only when you make relevant selections. And remember, there is a limited number of quality coaching platforms available.

This is where uExcelerate comes into the picture. It offers an integrated solution to businesses to meet their requirement of individual coaching or coaching for the whole organization. Of course, no business is a piece of cake, and every business experiences its own roadblocks. But, uExcelerate aims to develop the existing talent and maximize performance.

It is a one-stop solution to pick the most suitable program compatible with a business and go on with it. Whether you’re looking for one-on-one or group sessions, the AI-based right-fit coach-coachee selection will help you know which program is the best for you and will benefit you. As a leader, if you intend to focus on your personal and professional development, you can work with the coach on your skills. uExcelerate makes rolling out coaching in an organization simple with its flexibility and online availability.

Companies can switch to digital coaching with uExcelerate and avoid inconveniences like time limitations and unavailability. You’re not limited by anything with a digital coach by your side. From helping you move ahead towards your goals to assessing your moves and giving constructive feedback, your compatible coach will work with you throughout the program and bring out the best in you, which will eventually enhance your productivity and performance.

Now that you’re aware of the potential challenges an organization faces when rolling out coaching, you can indeed prepare to handle them smartly by choosing uExcelerate. The online platform will give the ease that companies have been looking ahead to bring flexibility, scalability, and convenience to their employees, leaders, executives, and management. So, why not choose a flexible coaching program that integrates well with your organizational culture and helps it go miles in sync with the goals?