Why Coaching?
What is coaching, and how does it help career development?
Coaching is a growing industry, as more people are realising the benefits of coaching for career development. For people working in AI roles, who are usually highly motivated and keen to improve, coaching can be a great way to develop your leadership skills.
What is Coaching?
There’s no universally accepted definition of coaching. In her book, Julie Starr gives one definition:
“Put simply, coaching is a conversation, or series of conversations, that one person has with another. The person who is the coach intends to produce a conversation that will benefit the other person (the coachee) in a way that relates to the coachee’s learning and progress. Coaching conversation might happen in many different ways and in many different environments”. — Julie Starr, The Coaching Manual
Through conversation, a coach can help another person move their thinking along in a way that helps them get closer to their goals. A coaching conversation is usually a dedicated space to explore challenges, in sharp contrast to most other conversations people have in their daily lives.
Different coaches work in different ways. Most aim to increase your self-awareness so that you’re better able to see the situation & options available to you, and hence are better equipped to deal with those challenges ahead.
Why People Choose Coaching
While some coaching relationships are open-ended, many more are short-term and last just a few weeks or months because they’re based around a specific challenge. Some of the reasons for choosing coaching include:
- navigating stressful situations
- improving work-life balance
- managing workplace conflict
- changing leadership style
- transitioning to a leadership position
- dealing with feelings of imposter syndrome
It’s also the case that organisations might offer coaching to an individual to address specific situations and behaviours that they see as holding the person back.
What People Report after Coaching
Studies have looked at people’s responses to coaching and what they got from the experience. Despite the huge range of scenarios in which people choose coaching, they’ve reported a range of similar experiences, including:
- bringing clarity to a situation
- a safe and independent non-judgemental space
- honest feedback
- increased insight
- a supportive relationship that isn’t found elsewhere
Coaching Outcomes
As coaching becomes more popular, it’s become feasible to measure the impact of coaching programmes within organisations.
Two recent papers have looked at coaching outcomes measured across a number of studies (Jones, Woods, and Guillaume 2015; Wang et al. 2021). Both found that coaching interventions had a measurable positive effect on a number of outcomes including self-efficacy, goal attainment, perceived performance as measured by feedback from colleagues, motivation and well-being. While these analyses were limited to workplace coaching, they do show that coaching has a positive impact that can be measured within an organisation.
Summary
In summary, coaching is a powerful tool that can help individuals to achieve the outcomes they want. While individuals or organisations might approach coaching with a specific purpose in mind, coaching as a whole provides a safe space to explore challenges, and has been shown to positively impact many people.
