13 December 2024
For many organizations, hiring a professional coach to support their business change programme can really help deliver a smoother transition over to any new way of working. It can also help to identify or eliminate any resistance to change by giving key stakeholders or teams the opportunity to have a voice and co-create the way change is going to be implemented.
This ‘show not tell’ approach is at the heart of coaching and is designed to make individuals, teams and organizations more effective by unlocking the insight needed to find their best solution. So we wanted to explore the role of a professional coach and how you can help shape the approach taken to identify and deliver positive, people-centric change.
We have identified three key roles you can cover as a professional coach when working in any organization as part of a business change team. This will help ensure you add real value and maximize the experience you have:
In a traditional coaching environment, you have full control over the process you use to unlock information that was previously unavailable or unrecognized. However, in a corporate setting, you may need to adapt your style to fit with the corporate culture and availability of key individuals, who may not initially see the value in your work.
One approach to overcome this is to position yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) providing a consultancy service alongside the core change management team. This way you will normally have more autonomy to shape any coaching elements of the overall business change plan. However, you will also be expected to take full control of this work and have sole responsibility for delivering it.
You therefore need to quickly build confidence your work will deliver the valuable insight needed and enhance any decision-making discussions. Having a good knowledge of different project management methodologies can be essential to ensure your work is aligned to support the core plan and not seen as a stand-alone or competing activity.
Another important role you can fulfil when working within a business change environment is as a facilitator, so you can design and lead any training and engagement activities or set up co-development groups, drop in sessions or team building events. These activities will all help inform your approach and can also provide valuable feedback on how the employee base is feeling and interacting with any initial business change activities.
If working within the corporate world to support business change is something that interests you, it may be helpful to formally train in project management or change management and take a more active role in identifying and leading any change.
However, many people move into coaching from the corporate world and this valuable experience is something you should not overlook and can be used to your advantage. Especially if your experience was gained from working in a specific sector or within a department like HR or training.
And as a professional coach, you may already be working within an organization or with key individuals on a leadership team, so where possible remember to check in with them to see if they have an opportunity for you to help shape their approach to delivering business change in a more people-centric way.
This will help you show how the insight and understanding you have of the people side of change and how it impacts individuals or the people around them can be used as a valuable advantage. This may then lead to you being asked to support an internal business change initiative or work with an external consultancy brought in to deliver a major change project or program.
To fully support you in understanding how a professional coach can utilize their skills and training to help shape corporate or business change, we have published an ebook that specifically looks at the people side of change, the different methodologies used within the corporate world, ideas on how to land a contract and what you need to know so you can support delivery teams, executives and managers to successfully deliver lasting change.
Plus a virtual card game you can use in your coaching sessions to explore transformation and change.
Please note – Please include a reference and link back to this original blog if you wish to copy or share anything we have written: (cc) MyCoachingToolkit.com – 2022
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