Five Business Benefits of Internal Coaching
How can internal coaches support the strategic needs of a performance culture?
1. Keep sales focused
How do you maintain or increase your sales in a market that is always evolving?
Internal coaching offers business leaders the opportunity to develop the necessary skills and capabilities that are needed to thrive in new or changing market conditions.
Coaching enables your senior leaders to adapt their sales approach and respond to new procurement practices, technologies or industry regulations. Often, this means adopting ways of thinking that are different to those that were effective in the past, like the ability to create multi-disciplinary teams.
The success of coaching on performance can be measured by the number of sales meetings arranged, opportunities created or contracts secured.
2. Improve talent acquisition
The offer of one-to-one coaching can be an attractive proposition for managers that might be thinking about joining your company. Not only does this show a strong commitment to their personal future but demonstrates the importance you put on leadership development too.
Furthermore, internal coaching helps to get new executives on-board quickly and smoothly. Internal coaches play a key role in assisting new appointments to navigate the culture of your organisation and help them to anticipate any key issues or leadership needs.
Coaches can also offer valuable advice on what is being expected from a new executive in their first year.
3. Promote more women
In the ‘war for talent’, more organisations are looking at the number of women they promote to senior or board-level positions. Increasing your company’s gender diversity can certainly help retain key leadership talent – but it can also generate richer ideas and drive company performance by developing more varied styles of leadership.
An internal coaching programme for female middle managers can be highly effective at assisting women to overcome barriers to promotion and break through the glass ceiling.
For example, some studies have shown that women tend to be more reticent than their male colleagues to promote themselves or seek recognition for achievements. By working with an internal coach, women can reappraise their skills and strengths leading to a greater awareness of their own potential.
4. Motivate high achievers
If you don’t want to lose your most valued and talented leaders to your competitors, it is essential that you keep them engaged.
High achievers thrive on fresh challenges and internal coaching can help keep them motivated and focused on the next big business problem. The most important question you can ask your rising stars as they develop their careers is ‘what’s next?’
Internal coaching can prepare your most promising leaders for further promotion, support ex-pats as they take up new opportunities abroad or present your subject matters experts with new and stimulating intellectual challenges. All of these will have a positive and measurable impact on your talent retention.
5. Retirement coaching
Many senior executives are now retiring at an earlier age and a valuable benefit from your internal coaching can come from retirement coaching. Offering to help your senior partners and executives to plan for the future after years of loyal service is both good for them and good for your business.
In practice, ‘retirement’ means making a career move into a new type of role, like accepting a non-executive board position or becoming an independent consultant. Retirement coaching supports the executive through this transition – and, if executed well, creates significant goodwill.
This can result in an influential senior-level executive becoming a strong advocate for your firm, leading to valuable introductions to future clients, business opportunities and referrals.
Download this article as a pdf >
About Cote Consultants
Cote Consultants is a coaching, leadership and performance improvement firm based in central London. We work with any organisation that wants to drive sustainable growth in performance and capital through the personal and professional development of its most promising leaders and teams.
Stay informed
For insight into how to make your coaching more effective,
subscribe to our free monthly e-mail articles
Posted in: Executive coaching, Internal coaching