Coaching and mentoring

Yesterday morning I spent an energising couple of hours with 30 staff who are either qualified coaches or currently working towards their level 3 and 5 coaching qualifications. I did my coaching exams back in 2010 and coach a number of staff and managers internally and also a number of chief execs and directors externally in my own time.

Coaching, and indeed mentoring is an essential part of ongoing staff development and management practice. It is also a two way learning process, and I have found that I always learn as much from my clients as they might when working from me. I always work with a coach and separately a mentor to develop my thinking and performance in my role. As the challenges of the modern business world accelerate and get more difficult, I regard this as an essential development approach for us all to remain relevant, high performing and able to deal with the pressures we face.

We have a well framed corporate coaching programme led by Amanda Collyer in our Human Resources Organisation Development team. This programme seeks to train staff and managers as coaches and also matches those seeking coaching to trained coaches. I encourage you all to get involved with this programme. The most fundamental aspect of being a manager is the development of our staff and the selection and development of future leaders and managers. Coaching provides a great way to achieve this.

It would be good to hear your views.

Speak again soon.

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Carlton