Allowing and Encouraging Creativity

Using Business Coaching to Motivate Employees

Sometimes if you are a manager you do not need to make use of financial incentives to motivate your employees which can prove expensive over the long term, or even in the short term if you are being particularly generous!

If you have already made use of business coaching techniques and have discovered the factors which both increase and conversely have the potential to decrease their motivation and performance in the workplace, then you will be in a strong position to effectively tailor your incentive schemes to help achieve the desired conclusion that is increased performance.

Enabling Creativity Can Benefit Both the Business and the Employee

One such non-financial motivator which can be used is the promise to allow a worker to be more creative and use their ingenuity to come up with solutions to problems and new forms of marketing for the business. Not only can this give an employee greater motivation and a "new lease of life" if they were feeling fairly uninspired by a monotonous routine, but it can also prove to be highly beneficial for the company if their new ideas are implemented and turn out to be a great success.

Managers Need to Monitor and Treat Each Worker as an Individual

Whilst creativity is more often than not something to be encouraged rather than stifled, managers need to ensure that employees are being creative in ways which will have a worthwhile and positive impact upon the success of the business, and are not just spending vast amounts of effort being creative which will take up a lot of time but not really achieve very much. Managers also need to remember that some people are not creative and would become demotivated by being tasked to design something when they would prefer to be working on the solution to a problem for example.

How Behaviour in Business Can Hinder Progression

Training and Development Can Only Progress a Person so Far

Training and development courses, along with the provision of business coaching, has been used to great effect for many years when it comes to developing employees. The necessity for continually developing staff members and managers is well documented; not only to teach them new information but also to refresh existing knowledge that has previously been acquired either through experience and/or from previous training courses.

Employees and managers who have received coaching and training over a period of time, and have therefore become highly skilled in issues relating to their employment, will in all likelihood have enjoyed a degree of progression within the company. This can take a number of different forms including promotion, job enrichment, greater authority and responsibility, less scrutiny from line manager etc. There are also likely to be associated benefits which come from this including greater freedom (e.g. to work from home sometimes), and the most common desire, more money.

So whilst training and development are often vital for career progression, there are also factors which can inhibit it. Primarily these will be a person's behaviour and attitude towards work, management, customers or their fellow colleagues.

No matter how well-trained an individual is, or how technically proficient they are at performing the tasks required of them in the business, if their attitude and behaviour is below the standard expected from managers, the probability of them being promoted to higher positions decreases substantially.

This is because there are very few jobs where an employee will be hidden away in an office somewhere completing tasks in virtual isolation. 99.9% of job roles will require interaction with others in some way; whether this is with customers, colleagues, suppliers, media outlets or any other group. Consequently it is essential that an employee can work with others effectively, and that their behaviour does not jeopardise the potential for a productive and profitable outcome for the company. Not only can this be extremely damaging for the organisation, but will also seriously hamper the career progression of the individual concerned. Managers will be reluctant to promote someone to a position if they believe there is a very real danger of them causing damage to the company's reputation or future commercial success.

Business Coaching for Highlighting and Changing Employee Behaviour

Sometimes employees may not even be aware of what they are doing and how they are acting; sometimes they will be. Either way, business coaching meetings can serve to identify the behaviour and convey the necessity for change to them. The coach can spell out the impact of how the employee acts both on the business as well as for their own career prospects. Action plans for change can be devised and put into place, with regular business coaching sessions serving to monitor progress and provide support through this difficult process.

Business coaching therefore not only provides a tremendous benefit for the business in this case if it helps mould an employee into a more effective and productive member of staff, but also significantly boosts the career prospects of the individual as they can now be considered for roles at a higher level than their current position within the firm.

Motivation and Teaching Others

A Number of Employees Will Want to Teach and Train Their Colleagues

Whilst some will hate it, there will be many people who will greatly enjoy and become motivated by the opportunity to teach and train others. Similar to the desire of teachers in a school to impart their knowledge to children, some workers will greatly enjoy being regarded as an expert in their particular field and feeling important by having colleagues listen to what they are saying.

An Opportunity to Provide Training May Increase Motivation

The opportunity to become a trainer and impart their knowledge to others in the workplace will for these people be a tremendous source of motivation and can also provide job enrichment and diversity in the role at work if they are beginning to feel like they are doing the same tasks every day.

Not All Employees Will be Keen on Teaching Others However

However, it must be remembered that whilst some people will love it, equally some will hate it. It is important to discuss the feelings the person has towards training and teaching others before the manager puts their name down for taking a training session, even if it is a one-on-one induction as opposed to a big training session where they have to stand at the front of the room and address a large number of delegates.

This can take the form of an informal chat over lunch or scheduled business coaching meetings. Either way, a manager should gain a fairly accurate picture of not only what would motivate their various employees, but also what additional or changing roles they would feel happy about doing.

Motivation and Becoming an Expert

Being The Best

For some employees in a workplace, the idea of becoming an expert in their particular field or being the best that they can possibly be is one of, if not the most, powerful motivational factors in them striving to achieve excellence. Whilst some employees will be quite content to bumble along in the same job doing the same things with little to no variation, others will have a strong desire to learn and gain as much experience as they can in order to improve their abilities at work.

Developing and Encouraging These Employees

As long as it does not detract from the tasks that they are supposed to be doing and need to get completed as part of their job role, managers in an organisation should do everything they can to encourage these types of people as they are a fairly rare breed.

Allowing them to attend training courses, seminars and the like can help them increase their knowledge and will often be extremely beneficial for the company in the long run.

For example a worker who is an expert in health and safety will be a tremendous asset to the business in helping them comply with applicable health and safety legislation and reducing lost worker time through injury or sickness absence.

Utilising Business Coaching Sessions to Identify These Employees

A business coaching meeting or series of meetings should identify these valuable types and bring to the manager's attention how they can be incentivised with opportunities to increase their knowledge and repertoire of skills. It can also help to keep them at the company rather than them becoming disillusioned and moving elsewhere to obtain more opportunities to learn.

Related Pages:

• Become a Business Coach