Training, mentoring, or coaching – what does my team need?
Are you looking to address performance issues in your organisation? Would you like to increase productivity, or change your working environment? Were you disappointed with the outcome of a training course that tried to change behaviour among your employees?
If so, you are not alone.
How can you do better?
Training, mentoring, and coaching all offer different approaches to addressing issues within your organisation. Identifying the approach that works for your employees will help you to provide an effective solution.
Let’s start with some definitions.
Training offers an efficient method for delivering specific knowledge. For example, your employees could be trained to use a new piece of software or understand the health and safety rules for your workplace. What it doesn’t offer is support for individual employees as they seek to change their behaviour. Training can also lack organisational and individual context.
Mentoring is the process of sharing experience from one person to another. One employee is directly involved in helping another to navigate a new role or find their place in the organisation. The person mentoring will have experience of those roles and expectations and will be able to offer guidance to the person being mentored.
Coaching is aimed at supporting an individual as they develop their own behaviour and solutions. The aim is to develop self-awareness, which will translate into a better awareness of others in the workplace.
A blended approach
Once you have identified the issues you want to work on, and understood what each approach offers, you can start to plan a programme of training, mentoring, and coaching for your employees.
Effective solutions are likely to use a combination of different techniques. Most teams and individuals will need different support at different times, and a blend of training, mentoring, and coaching could offer the most effective approach.
For example, where an organisation is looking to change behaviour, a combination of mentoring and coaching will often deliver the best results. In fact, each technique is usually more effective when used in conjunction with the other two.
A blended approach enables the individual or team to take on new knowledge, explore it in the context of your organisation and develop their own understanding and accountability for how that knowledge is applied.
Planning for success
How do you know whether your plans for training, mentoring, and coaching are likely to benefit your organisation? Ask yourself these three simple questions:
- Do you have a clear picture of the issues you are trying to address? Training, mentoring, or coaching without a clear goal in mind is likely to lead to frustration and disappointment. A successful organisation will identify the issues they need to work on and address those issues through a balance of approaches.
- Are you expecting an overnight transformation? Training, mentoring, and coaching are ongoing processes, and individual employees will require support as they adjust their working practices and expectations. Also ask yourself if you prepared to provide that support.
- Are you prepared to take external expert advice to help plan your programme of training, mentoring, and coaching? Meeting the needs of your employees and your organisation can be complex and time-consuming. An external expert will help you to analyse the issues you need to address, and provide guidance on planning appropriate, balanced solutions.
The next step
If you’d like to explore the best combination of training, mentoring, and coaching for your organisation, book a discovery call or drop me an email at pippa@strengthinpeople.com.
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