Benefits of Coaching

Working with a coach to understand yourself better is the biggest benefit of coaching.  Our clients often don’t realise how little they understand their own thought processes and approaches before they start their coaching.

This knowledge of oneself means that you can better understand what causes issues in relationships and how to avoid and overcome conflict.  That difficult boss suddenly seems to be a lot less frustrating and conversations become smoother.

By understanding more about how you work, your energy levels, what tasks you find easier and harder, your coach will help you plan your week in a way that will make you more efficient and manage your time better.  Those micro-efficiencies add up quickly.

Everyone experiences some negative impacts of stress and reducing this is a big benefit from coaching.  Your coach will help you understand your triggers and also your symptoms of stress, creating a plan that will help remove avoidable stress.

By having a team of more self-aware individuals, your teams will work better together, you will have happier and healthier team members who will be more efficient in their roles.  And we all know that more efficient employees makes for more productive employees which makes for a more profitable team.  (If you like numbers, let us know and we can help you work out the impact it could have on your team.)

Don’t Just Be.  Be More Caring.

Coaching FAQs

1. What is Coaching?

If you think of a coach like a personal trainer but for your career. In theory, we could all go to the gym and exercise however, a personal trainer keeps us motivated to think about our exercise goals and can provide us with better techniques to use equipment. A coach does the same for other parts of your life, a coach will give you techniques to help give you structure to your development and keep you accountable by setting goals with you and developing an action plan to get there.

A coach can also be seen as a facilitator of learning rather than an expert. In coaching, fundamentally, the coach is helping the individual to improve their own performance: in other words, helping them to learn. There is an important difference between teaching someone and helping them to learn. Good coaches believe that the individual always has the solution to their own problems but recognises that they may need assistance to discover the answer – this is what a coach aims to achieve.

2. What are the different types of coaching?

There are many different coaching techniques however we specialise in workplace-based coaching. The process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to fully develop themselves to be effective in their commitment to themselves, the company, and their work. There are many different forms of workplace coaching including:

Executive Coaching: An executive coach is a qualified professional that works with individuals (usually executives and high potential employees) to help them gain self-awareness, refine goals, achieve their development objectives, unlock their potential, and act as a sounding board.

Leadership Coaching: Leadership coaching is an individualised process that builds a leader’s capability to achieve short-term and long-term organisational goals. Coaching is personalised, customised, usually conducted one-on-one for a defined period of time and with a specific business purpose in mind.

Career Coaching: Career coaching is getting the support and help you need to figure things out to reach your ultimate career goals. A career coach helps you establish realistic goals, discover solutions to challenges, develop action plans, build self-confidence, and gets you pumped up and motivated.

Team Coaching: Team coaching involves a single coach working with a group of managers or executives. This type of coaching gives members of the group the opportunity to stretch beyond their current abilities.

Business Coaching: A business coach will assist and guide the business owner in running a business by helping them clarify the vision of their business and how it fits in with their personal goals. Business coaching is a process used to take a business from where it is now to where the business owner wants it to be.

3. What are the coaching skills?

If you are a manager who would like to use a coaching technique with your client or team members you will need to develop certain skills. You can be assured that all of our coaches have the following necessary skills to provide a comprehensive coaching experience to help you develop your own skills and also those of your employees. This is ideal for managers who wish to lead with a management coaching style:

Listening – Listening is key! That is why it’s top of the list. You cannot be a good coach unless you can really listen. This doesn’t just mean listening to what is being said. It also means listening to what is not being said. This is how you can really support your client – by asking insightful questions about what you notice might be going on for them.

Questioning – Asking questions is at the heart of great coaching. There are many different types of questions that can be used. Some are more helpful than others.  The best questions are ones that give insight into the person you are coaching. 

Building Rapport – This is the first skill you need to use as a coach as it is the gateway to trust. The coaching process will not work unless you create a good rapport from the beginning, and it should be maintained throughout the coaching relationship. Having a god rapport means the person that is being coached will feel relaxed and are more likely to open up – so that personal barriers and fears can be identified. This allows the coach to ask harder and more challenging questions.

Empathising – Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes and appreciate how they are likely to be feeling or thinking in a given situation. What might it feel like to be them? This is important as you need to understand the situation from the coachees perspective.

Summarising and Reflecting – The advanced listening skills of summarising and reflecting help you guide your coachee to allow them to make sense of what they are grappling with. This will help them reassess their thoughts and help shape appropriate actions to take going forward.

Unlocking Limiting Beliefs – There will be situations in which you will need to trust your intuition and ask challenging questions. Underneath the initial symptom or issue, there is usually something deeper.

Staying Focused – It’s really important as a coach to make sure that the coaching session stays on track and does not degenerate into a general discussion or chat. It’s also important to ensure the coachee doesn’t digress too much or get caught up in too much detail.

Being Non-Judgemental and Open-Minded – This is a critical skill which is the foundation of good coaching. As a coach, its vital not to judge. Being a great coach is about being curious and having an open and inquisitive mind. This will allow you to focus on doing the best for your coachee by reflecting, providing feedback and asking probing questions.

Giving Constructive Feedback – One of the most useful things for your coachee can be you pointing out to them things you are noticing about them, for instance, their behaviour, their reactions to questions, and their facial expressions. Understanding body language is pivotal in grasping everything that is being said, not just the words.

Resisting Temptation to Tell – Not telling your coachee what you think the answers are or giving advice. The aim of coaching is to help the coachee identify the answer for themselves not giving them advice on what you think is right, however many of our clients come to us as coaches asking for the answer, we know they know it, they just don’t often want to say it aloud!

4. What if my team are all over the country or world?

No More Ifs Or Buts provide three different forms of coaching platforms for you to choose from Face-to-face coaching across the UK (link).
Video/over the phone coaching (link) and
Email coaching that is available internationally (English only speakers).

We have clients across Europe and in the UAE which our coaches manage with a flexible working hours approach to suit the needs of our clients, wherever they are based.

5. Where do the face-to-face coaching sessions take place?

Our face-to-face coaching can take place in-house or at a local coffee shop/members club wherever you or your team member would feel most comfortable.

6. Are wellbeing and coaching linked?

Coaching and wellbeing are both in the realm of improving yourself and your team. Wellbeing is key to having a healthy, happy and engaged team while coaching can be a way of helping your employees reach their full potential. Visit our sister company Stress Matters for a more tailored wellbeing approach in the form of pledge schemes, wellbeing workshops and Mental health first aider (MHFA) training.