Coaching for Improved Performance

The challenge of achieving and sustaining high performance levels, reflecting a high performance culture, is one of the most critical roles facing senior managers today. Instilling a coaching culture, based on providing feedback and setting challenging performance standards is a key aspect of this. Graphite's approach to coaching is designed to enhance corporate performance through participants becoming highly effective coaches within their organisation.

We support organisations through the provision of coaching and the development of coaching skills

Our coaching and mentoring service is designed to support leaders enhance both their own and their team's effectiveness through a combination of means. The essential component is that leaders identify a number of real or potential future threats to team performance. Through use of a Team Diagnostic Profiler, quantitative data is gathered to highlight the team's current perception of the factors contributing to or hindering effective team performance.

The next step is to explore and implement some prevention or recovery intervention, which allows the team to function effectively and deliver on their goals. Team leaders will often readily identify with the problem, but be unclear or unsure of what action to take. The support from an individual coach or mentor helps the manager to understand what would constitute effective action and the steps to take to achieve it. The process allows for quantitative progress reviews measured through repeated application of the Team Diagnostic Profiler.

The benefits to the leader are:

• Appropriate support, guidance and direction for their team leadership interventions
• Access to a wealth of information from their dedicated personal Consultant
• Confidential communication with external expert
• Personalised, practical, relevant action plans
• The skills, knowledge and confidence to implement these actions
• Structure process incorporating progress measures

The benefits to the organisation are:

• The risk of poor team performance is reduced
• Leaders concentrate their minds and the team's efforts on achieving the goals
• Leaders are fully up-to-date on current thinking and best practice in leadership and team performance
• Follow-through on issues emerging from a TDP survey
• Demonstrable support for leaders by the organisation
• Leaders can apply the mentoring process to their own teams for improved individual performance
• Reduced workload for in-house HR / HRD personnel
• The monthly consultation clinic creates action plans with follow up
• Monthly overview reports highlight issues on an organisation wide basis

Performance Coaching Skills

Graphite also support organisations though skills based coaching workshops, which provide the skills, knowledge and awareness critical for leaders' who have to achieve high performance from their people.

The performance coach will learn that the reason for their role in the organisation is to do everything in their power to make their people successful.

This programme focuses on achieving results, what stops them from being accomplished and how to overcome these performance barriers. It shows clearly that most of the blocks to performance are not a result of an individual employee's bad attitude, rather the blocks often stem from poor management practices.

The workshop facilitates managers to become performance coaches through input, group-work exercises, case studies and a range of highly participative activities that vividly demonstrate the key learning points. Participants will be provided with a variety of step-by-step checklists for use back at work. Individual cases studies will be analysed and worked-on by each participant so that they have immediate implementation actions.