Career
One way to develop a winning team is to surround yourself with extraordinary people. Another is to surround yourself with ordinary people who, through your leadership and coaching, achieve extraordinary results through enhancing their life skills.
A coach helps people with skills to see beyond their problems and limitations and to focus on solutions and opportunities which are sometimes found by venturing into the unknown. As a coach you must be able to inspire extraordinary performance from ordinary people. Coaching is seeing new possibilities and providing the support and guidance to help people achieve new heights at work and in life.
Your role as a coach begins by placing the right people in the right jobs. It is important that people either have the skills and attitude required to do the job when you hire them or you have a development process in place that will ensure the development of those skills. Review progress regularly, explain and demonstrate new requirements or skills.
Coaching has 3 basic functions:
The first function of a coach is getting to know every person as an individual. If you are to coach them to higher levels of performance, you need to know what their skills are, what their level of knowledge is, what their goals are, and what you can do to help them reach their goals. Ask questions, listen, get to know what people value and feel.
The second function of a coach is developing people and challenging them towards higher levels of achievement. Create a detailed development plan for and with each individual with whom you are directly working. Set short and long term goals, develop action plans and target dates along the way. Focus on critical action steps that are essential for personal and organizational goal achievement.
The third function of a coach is creating an environment for motivation. A motivating environment helps people become excited about setting and reaching goals. Figure out what inspires people and use this knowledge to create an atmosphere that stimulates high levels of productivity and effective decision making. Get to know what issues are important to each individual.
Your goal as a coach is to make the most of your most valuable resource, your people; and to maximize the skills, abilities and knowledge of each person in your team. Inspiring people to higher levels of performance has a lot to do with spirit, creating excitement, commitment and desire. It is all about coaching ordinary people towards extraordinary achievements.