News: Performance Management
'Collective leadership skills' revamped by coaching
18 September 2008
Career coaching is increasingly used as part of firms' staff development and training, it has been claimed.
Jason Holder, the assistant director of property services at a Staffordshire-based housing association, tells the Guardian his experience of coaching "changed his whole attitude" to his job, reinforcing his passion and refocusing his mind.
"When you're working in housing, you have to have the passion and the desire to provide a good service and I think I had forgotten why I was in housing, what I was trying to achieve," he muses.
According to the Homezone Housing representative, coaching provides an effective means of overcoming challenges related to people management, complicated funding issues and policy shifts.
He remarks that his organisation's recent use of the training method resulted in "bringing people together from across the organisation to work on collective leadership skills".
Managing interpersonal relationships between staff is cited as a further advantage of coaching, as it can guide a leader back to his or her own basic management skills and how they can be updated.
This year's Learning and Development Survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development revealed that 49 per cent of employers think line managers will take on more responsibility for coaching in the coming years.
