CTC - Professional development coaching FAQ

What is professional development coaching?
Coaching is a process that results in individuals changing their behaviour to be more aligned with their personal values and beliefs. This results in increased personal motivation and improved performance and effectiveness.

The aim of the CTC professional development coaching programme is to maximise individuals' strengths and talents, develop untapped potential, increase morale, improve retention and align individual and organisational goals.

Who works with a coach?
Leaders, managers and professionals use a coach for a variety of reasons. Leaders in senior positions are often isolated in their organisations from getting honest feedback and appraisals. A coach will give constructive and objective comments on how an individual comes across. A coach is independent of the organisation and can act as an impartial and confidential sounding board. Managers and professionals may use a coach because they want to improve their skills or progress within the organisation. An individual may be experiencing difficulties dealing with a particular situation or progressing beyond a certain level and coaching may be used to identify and overcome the blocks.

What exactly are the benefits of coaching?
Some of the benefits of coaching are:

You become more focused, motivated, efficient and productive
A culture of true teamwork is fostered
You enhance your ability to inspire and motivate others
You create more effective and empowering relationships
You set achievable and stretching goals
You adopt more effective decision making strategies
You are inspired to achieve your best
You focus on solutions not problems

What should I expect from a coach?
A coach helps you to find out what you really want and supports you in working towards those goals. The coach will ask powerful questions, give you their honest opinion, set you assignments and give you challenges. You can expect that the coaching will lead you to insights and new ways of thinking and being, as well as introducing you to new and different behaviours and skills.

What results will we get from coaching?
Coaching provides an alignment between the purpose of the individual and the organisation, leading to more effective performance and ultimately a healthier and more successful organisation. Coaching provides results in terms of individual performance: individuals are more effective which leads to increased organisational performance.

Wouldn't training be more effective than coaching?
Coaching does not replace leadership and management development training. Training is about learning new skills whereas coaching is about making maximum use of existing skills. Coaching may lead to the identification of a training need, which can be addressed separately. Coaching combined with training is far more effective at creating and consolidating change than training alone. The ongoing nature of coaching means that it creates greater opportunities for review and evaluation of newly acquired skills. The element of accountability in coaching increases the likelihood of continued utilisation and absorption of new capabilities.