Many people are familiar with executive coaching, and some already receive guidance and feedback from an executive coach to help further their careers. But mention training, and many people are at a loss for words. Why do I need training? I’ve been doing my job for 20 years! How is it different from coaching? Who needs what and when?
Competition within and between organisations, shrinking talent pools and disruptive behavioural problems have all paved the way for executive coaching. Savvy organisations understand that the development of high-potentials and the continuous development of current executives’ leadership skills are critical to company-wide success.
Companies have long used executive coaches to build and leverage the strengths of leaders at all levels, helping them navigate obstacles and avoid failure. On the organisational level, executive coaches help companies avoid costly management turnover, develop their most talented people and ensure that leaders perform at their maximum potential.
Coaching assumes that the person knows the answers - what happens if they don’t?
While executive coaching is typically seen as an ongoing relationship with no set time frame or definitive ending point, it’s not uncommon for the relationship to begin when an organisation seeks the aid of an executive coach for a leader who needs remedial intervention. For example, the leader may have poor communication skills and unintentionally undermine direct reports, leading to morale loss and retention issues.
However, if they lack communication skills or exhibit undesirable behaviours, such as berating or blaming others, and have high levels of stress, they don’t need coaching; they need training.
Coaching is not Training
While training and coaching both promote learning, they do so in different ways: Training is the act of imparting knowledge to another where that person lacks the necessary skills in order to succeed. Coaching is the act of improving and enhancing knowledge that is already intact. Training is about teaching specific skills or knowledge – Coaching is about facilitating someone else’s thinking and helping them learn on the job.
Training is for those people who don’t have the skills or the answers
Coaching is a dialogue that leads to awareness and action. When an employee has the skills and ability to complete the task at hand but, for some reason, is struggling with confidence, focus, motivation, or drive to be at their best, coaching can help, though it assumes one thing: the person knows the answer; they just need help finding it.
Training is for those people who don’t have the skills or the answers. A coach can conduct the training, and coaching can follow the training, but coaching will not address the initial behavioural challenges if the person lacks the skills in the first place.
are you coaching when you should be training?
If an employee needs to develop specific skills and abilities, coaching is not the answer.
You don’t teach someone how to make others feel valued or when their thinking might be getting in the way of their relationships with their team or their decision making by asking them curious questions in an unattached manner!
You teach someone a new skill by giving them the proper instructions for that particular task. If you tried to coach them, you would end up with a very slow, very small and ineffective change.
To that end, when determining whether coaching is the right tool to use in a certain situation, first ask yourself this question:
- Is this about Aptitude? Is there a lack of skills or ability getting in the way of the employee’s success?
- If the answer is “yes,” then your answer to whether or not this is a coaching situation is “no.”
- If, in fact, the answer to the first question is “no” or “not really,” next ask yourself:
- Is this about Attitude – their confidence, commitment, enthusiasm, focus, frustration?
- If the answer is “yes,” you have a situation primed for coaching. You will want to create a dialogue that helps the employee become aware of what they are doing and then help them develop an alternative action that will lead to better results, in short, coach them.
Leading others, communicating effectively, emotional reasoning, empathy and self-awareness are skill-based; if your employees, including your leaders, don’t have those skills, then coaching won’t cut it; they need training.
