Businesses are under increasing pressure to balance profitability with a motivated, high-performing team that has the benefit of a healthy work/life balance. Productivity is critical to business success, but it’s not always the easiest thing to implement. Business coaching can address myriad concerns, and it’s one of the most effective solutions to empowering your workforce and building an engaged team of employees.
What Is Employee Empowerment?
Empowerment is a vital factor in any organization, allowing companies to grow and employees to thrive while giving people the space to be autonomous in their roles. Employees gain confidence this way, and they’re more willing to go the extra mile when the situation calls for it. If you give people the tools to succeed and trust them to make the right decisions, they’ll do just that.
Empowerment can look like a variety of things in the workplace, such as organizing feedback sessions during which staff can provide their thoughts and opinions on the company, implementing changes based on that feedback, and ensuring employees have the resources and training they need to work productively.
It’s developing a culture that allows staff to make autonomous decisions without judgment or constant monitoring from senior members of the team and providing opportunities for them to take on more responsibility and develop their skills. Put simply, an empowered workforce is a huge advantage for any company, and it’s something coaching can help bring out of your staff.
How Coaching Helps Empower Your Team
Unlocking Top Talent in Your Team
Many people are promoted to more senior roles based on their technical expertise, accrued over time in the industry or with the company. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best people to lead a team or oversee projects. The skill sets required for being a successful leader are often entirely different from an individual’s core role, which can lead to troubles with communication or team dynamics.
Promotions are obviously necessary and a great way to reward individuals for their hard work and contribution to the business, but with business coaching, they can move into different roles with confidence. Coaching maximizes employees’ potential, unlocking skills they may not have realized they have and providing them with the tools they need to manage different responsibilities.
Fostering Cultural Change
The culture of a business determines how productive a team is and how willing and capable they are to problem-solve and get creative. “If your management and executive team are not aligned in their goals, and if your company culture is underdeveloped and unsupportive of change, this can create enormous friction,” explains Howard Shore, business coach and Founder and CEO of Activate Group. You want to foster a culture of creativity that doesn’t shy away from change and that embraces trying new things.
Coaching plays a significant role in supporting all members of the team, regardless of personality styles and position in the company, and coaches act as a sounding board for getting the most out of each employee so that individuals feel comfortable trying new things and suggesting ideas that haven’t been tried before. This type of innovation can help the business grow, but it’s also an advantage on a personal level, empowering staff to speak up when they feel inspired.
Developing Better Communication
Business coaching encourages better communication within teams and throughout all levels of the organization, which has a knock-on effect for productivity and morale. Whether it’s voicing new ideas and making decisions or having frank, honest discussions about problems in the workplace, no business can survive without clear communication. Coaching is an incredibly valuable process, but a coach will be able to identify areas where the team can improve and take positive action so issues in how your team communicates don’t escalate.
When staff feel confident in their ability to communicate effectively, it empowers them to speak up when they need to and creates a happier, healthier work environment for staff. It’s also a skill that can encourage better employee-client relationships, improving the reputation of the business as a whole.
Encouraging Self-Awareness
Your workforce needs to have emotional intelligence and self-awareness to work well in the team. In fact, these skills can actually reduce work-related stress and absences, affecting a business’s bottom line, so it’s something companies need to instill in their team. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence are skills that enable people to recognize and understand their emotions and those of their colleagues, which helps everyone make decisions, problem-solve, and communicate effectively. Without these skills, time at work can be incredibly stressful and difficult.
More than simply offering advice, coaches help employees recognize their emotions and limitations so they can adapt rather than fall back on old habits, turning what would ordinarily be seen as a failure into an opportunity to learn. It also enables staff to rediscover their purpose and goals, which is vital for staying motivated.
Improved Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is people’s belief that they can accomplish the task they’ve been given. It’s our estimate of whether we’ll be able to perform, and it’s something that can impact not only confidence and productivity but also stress levels. A team that has a strong sense of self-efficacy is an empowered team, and that’s something coaches can help encourage in employees.
When coached, staff tend to be more aware of their strengths and weaknesses, which makes them more capable of gauging how they’ll perform on certain challenges and tasks. It prevents them from feeling imposter syndrome and encourages them to take on challenges they might have shied away from before.
Coaching draws out the very best from your team, from undiscovered skills to the confidence to communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. A successful business coach will help you develop a motivated team and foster a healthy work culture where people are able to think strategically, feel empowered to contribute, and apply new ways of thinking to their work processes.
Chester Avey is a Guest Contributor at HR Daily Advisor.