Coaching refers to the skillful questioning and exchange between one supposedly more experienced and another less experienced to bring out the best in people, assisting them achieve their work related objectives. It is concerned with helping employees to realize their potential and ensuring that they have the skills, t understanding, knowledge, and motivation to succeed. It is directly linked to change in that it is about helping employees shift their perspective, level of confidence, skill, motivation, or attitude. Coaching can be used in many areas of life; it includes life coaching, sports coaching, health coaching, financial coaching, and career coaching. This study will be concerned with how employees should be coached in manufacturing
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For them, coaching is: ‘unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them’ (Whitmore 2002). ‘The art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another’ (Downey 2003). The sentiments of these two definitions form the foundations of why senior management within manufacturing firms willingly spend time and money on maximizing the contribution and productivity of their employees. Parsloe takes the definition of coaching further by describing the qualities of a successful coach: Coaching is a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a successful coach requires a knowledge and understanding of process as well as the variety of styles, skills and techniques that are appropriate to the context in which the coaching takes place (Parsloe 1999). A common theme for all these definitions is their focus on the individual and how improving their skills and knowledge helps them to perform more efficiently. This aspect of ‘improving skills’ is key to coaching because the learning of a new skill has a specific goal and occurs over a certain time …show more content…
The end results of coaching benefits manufacturing firms because they improve the speed of decision-making improve productivity, morale; make team members less dependent on managers to solve problems, free up management time for higher-level activities, and increase job satisfaction among team members. Whilst all of these things are obviously desirable, coaching has associated costs that must be justified. As a manager you need to ensure that your coaching skills are effective and efficient so that the ‘benefits you bring to your team maximize their productivity. Your role is to demonstrate to your superiors that the benefits attained from coaching your team members significantly outweigh the costs in terms of the time and effort you need to put in. The complexity of such a task will depend on how many people you have working for you and their coaching needs. Newton & Bristoll, (2013), went further to explain that the most important thing to understand about management coaching is that it is a collaborative process. This means that the coach and the person being coached (referred to as the ‘coachee’ or the ‘client’) are working on creating changes together. The coach does not explicitly provide direction from a position of superiority. A good coach assumes that the coachee knows more about their own situation than they do, placing the coachee in a better position to develop the insights and ideas needed to create the desired changes.
For them, coaching is: ‘unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them’ (Whitmore 2002). ‘The art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another’ (Downey 2003). The sentiments of these two definitions form the foundations of why senior management within manufacturing firms willingly spend time and money on maximizing the contribution and productivity of their employees. Parsloe takes the definition of coaching further by describing the qualities of a successful coach: Coaching is a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a successful coach requires a knowledge and understanding of process as well as the variety of styles, skills and techniques that are appropriate to the context in which the coaching takes place (Parsloe 1999). A common theme for all these definitions is their focus on the individual and how improving their skills and knowledge helps them to perform more efficiently. This aspect of ‘improving skills’ is key to coaching because the learning of a new skill has a specific goal and occurs over a certain time …show more content…
The end results of coaching benefits manufacturing firms because they improve the speed of decision-making improve productivity, morale; make team members less dependent on managers to solve problems, free up management time for higher-level activities, and increase job satisfaction among team members. Whilst all of these things are obviously desirable, coaching has associated costs that must be justified. As a manager you need to ensure that your coaching skills are effective and efficient so that the ‘benefits you bring to your team maximize their productivity. Your role is to demonstrate to your superiors that the benefits attained from coaching your team members significantly outweigh the costs in terms of the time and effort you need to put in. The complexity of such a task will depend on how many people you have working for you and their coaching needs. Newton & Bristoll, (2013), went further to explain that the most important thing to understand about management coaching is that it is a collaborative process. This means that the coach and the person being coached (referred to as the ‘coachee’ or the ‘client’) are working on creating changes together. The coach does not explicitly provide direction from a position of superiority. A good coach assumes that the coachee knows more about their own situation than they do, placing the coachee in a better position to develop the insights and ideas needed to create the desired changes.