The Importance of Coaching and Mentoring in 2022 - What Type of Coaching is Best for You?

What type of coaching is best for you?

Coaching and mentoring will be critical going forward. How are we going to develop those future leaders to navigate the uncertainty of the world, businesses, careers, and their personal lives?

In this post, I clarify the types of coaching to help you determine where and how coaching will be effective for you and for those whom you lead. Misconceptions and myths continue to muddy the concepts, necessary qualifications, and the expectations to ensure a return on investment of coaching.

I introduced coaching into my business in 2003 in response to a need to deliver my “consulting” services in a different way that helped clients be engaged and accountable for their own success. In 2003, engagement and accountability were called “buy-in”. Almost two decades later, the “confusion” around coaching continues. Can anyone be a coach? NO! And, here is why.

At its core, the objective of coaching is to increase performance, achievement, and/or well-being in individuals, teams, and organizations through proven methods grounded in scientific research. There are many types of coaching and many ways to achieve results. The following four broad categories illustrate different emphases:

1. Behavioural Coaching/Coaching Leaders: Typically, executive coaches focus on behavioural coaching. They work with leaders in achieving positive, long-term, interpersonal behavioural change. Successful coaches assist leaders in building better relationships, skills, and efficiencies, especially in motivating and assisting those whom they lead.

My work in emotional intelligence is instrumental in helping executive clients and women entrepreneurs who aspire to develop personal quality and leadership in their lives, their professions, and their businesses.  

2. Life Coaching/Career Coaching: Life coaching or career coaching can be a blend of personal and business coaching. Life coaching depicted on reality shows does a disservice to those highly trained and qualified coaches who work with individuals on personal growth, career development, and life issues that have apparent and logically proven value to self-actualization and to an organization. Qualified coaches often assist individuals with identifying personal values, personal mission (and/or positioning) statements, and the broader aspects of life.

There are qualified coaches who focus on particular niches based on demographics and specific life challenges and aspirations. I work with women who are rebuilding their lives and careers after cancer treatment and those women who are reinventing their lives and careers after the age of 60.

3. Coaching for Organizational Change: Coaches who focus on organizational change work with senior leadership in successful change initiatives. They often assist with a wide array of challenges, including innovation, strategy, mergers, and crisis recovery. In addition to being trained and accredited in coaching, these coaches possess specific knowledge, expertise, and experience in organizational change and often focus in specific industry sectors to bring theory and practical experience together for added value.

I blend consulting and coaching with the principles of Quality to help my clients in the service sector implement standards and process improvement programs. ISO 9000 Quality Systems, Health and Safety Culture, and Accommodation for Disabilities in the Workplace are my areas of expertise in organizational change.

4. Strategy Coaching: Strategic coaches typically work with CEOs and C-suite executives to set the tone for long-term organizational direction.

My work with executive leadership teams inspires new ways of thinking to transform the essence of their organization and their workplace and to shift from compliance to integrity-based cultures. 

I also work with a consortium of consultants and coaches with varied disciplines under the brand of UpShift, powered by AskPatty. We work with CEOs in automotive retail and service in the U.S. and Canada to create and sustain equitable and inclusive work environments.

While there are distinctions between coaching, consulting, mentoring, advising, and counseling, trained and qualified coaches are able to straddle different categories in different areas of their practice. They meld differences into a successful coaching process at different times and particular situations in the ever-changing workplace culture.

As I wrote in my last post, Developing Leaders in the Ever-Changing Workplace Culture, good people are hard to find, and harder to keep. To recover from crisis and stay competitive, companies are now acknowledging the importance of coaching to help valued employees—even gig workers—develop swiftly in a rapidly changing business environment.

We know that the quality of the manager/employee relationship is a major predictor of an employee’s success. Whether hiring qualified coaches or training leaders and managers in coaching skills, coaching is essential for creating change and developing people towards their highest potential – toward self-actualization.

What type of coaching is best for you, for your organizational goals, for your employees?

I am happy to help you hire a qualified coach to meet your needs and/or find the best program to train your leaders and managers to be effective internal coaches.

Be sure to do your due diligence when hiring coaches. Ask for their qualifications. Are they accredited? Do they adhere to coaching ethics? What is their specialty?