How a coaching management style boosts business performance

The style of management, and the attitude and approach of individual managers, can greatly impact a business and its employees on multiple levels. Facing new challenges with new generations of workers on board, businesses have a great need for leaders who are adept when it comes to more progressive management styles. As leaders gain experience they develop uniqueness in their management styles, often unconsciously rooted in their innate attributes and strengths. Some are noticeably people-focused, while others can be resolutely results-oriented. Those leaders and managers with coaching skills are able to bridge the gap, inspiring their team members to deliver their personal best in the collaborative pursuit of the company’s goals.

The coaching management style aligns with the demands of the 4iR workplace for different skills-sets and organisational behaviours. The high value of having coaching skills embedded in the organisation is recognised. As the younger generations dominate today’s workforce, managers who can coach have a distinct advantage. Both the millennial and Gen Z cohorts place a strong emphasis on having managers who have the skills to actively support their career development and work success.

Nicky Wilson-Harris, a certified Integral® and ontological coach and coach educator at Sacap (South African College of Applied Psychology) says: “The coaching management style is a significant shift from the outdated command-and-control leadership mode. It enables managers to partner with their team members to find optimal solutions. It increases engagement, ignites possibilities and fosters accountability. It also empowers leaders to positively shape company culture and promote a diverse and inclusive workplace. This is especially relevant in building a strong employer brand to attract top talent, and then retain it.”

Sacap is a long-standing leader in coach education in South Africa. It’s internationally-accredited short course, Coaching Skills for Managers is a popular 12-week, part-time study specifically designed for business leaders, managers and working professionals.

Coach education includes gaining significant communication skills, where managers develop the art of inquiry and active listening skills. A manager who can coach knows how to facilitate empowering conversations, where their team members get to think for themselves and make meaningful contributions. In this dynamic, the team leader knows well that they should not be the one supplying all the answers, because more often than not, it’s the team members at the coal-face who have the best ideas of how to solve a problem. The manager-coach takes on the role of expertly guiding the team towards co-operative solutions with high-performance impacts.

For managers and business leaders, an education in coaching is personally transformative. As they learn how to help people to develop self-belief and self-motivation, clarity and commitment, responsibility and readiness to act, they master these characteristics in their own lives and gain an advanced and rewarding awareness of self and of others.

Registration for the fully-accredited, 12-week Sacap Coaching Skills for Managers course is open now, with the programme starting on 8 August 2022.