better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

The Coaching Funnel

11 June 2017

Organisational life can be tricky as we have many calls on our time each day.

If we are a perfectionist we can lose time by fretting over tiny details and can forget the big picture. Unlike school, where neatness tends to be a virtue, in organisations we can spend too much time polishing, instead of hammering out a piece of work and supplying the salient points in a speedy fashion.

Conversely, we might like to indulge ourselves in a wide variety of tasks and enjoy being a chatty and spontaneous sort of person. Although this makes for a lively working atmosphere we can find it hard to actually complete projects, as we allow ourselves to be excited by a juicy new task which is just begging for us to have ‘a quick look’ at. 

Awareness is the key to success. With it we can notice how we derail our working day and can take steps to make amends. The trouble though with our little habits is that they become ingrained and we don’t realise we are doing them.

Which brings me to an aspect of coaching that is often overlooked.

When working organisationally the coach has to keep asking herself, the bill payer and the coachee ‘what does the organisation really need?’

This question focusses the work on achieving relevant outputs and creates openness and objectivity. The coachee can then be held to account more effectively because coaching funnels them towards the organisational goals for the piece. 

If a coachee commits to do a piece of work and then fails it is obvious in the next coaching session. This should prompt the coach to explore underlying reasons for the failure and offer permissions and honest challenges to the coachee. This can be tough for both parties, but it’s what the bill payer is seeking. 

This is the coaching funnel, where the coachee is continually made aware of the truth of their situation, which encourages them to realise the problem isn’t going away and needs to be sorted.

The result is that things get done! 

And ‘getting done’ might also mean the task is refined somehow, or the bill payer and the coachee review progress and reset the task. Either way the organisation benefits.

Coaching isn’t fluffy. Rabbits and cats are fluffy and to date I’ve not met any of them working as coaches. They prefer to roam the great outdoors and good luck to them with that.

If you have a colleague who is struggling with their time management in someway, offer them some coaching support. The coaching funnel is there to get things done!

Next week: Own It!