Coached, Present and Accounted For

Fortunately there are sophisticated interventions that identify collective barriers to better organisational functioning. But these systemic interventions must always go hand in hand with a focus on individual barriers and potentials.

Performance coaching is well suited to equip employees with strategies to better manage the stressors and challenges contained within the complex individual-workplace interface.

Employee Emotional Health

So how do we equip people with the strategies and resources to manage their increasingly stressful work environments?

The abovementioned report went on to recommend certain solutions to the problems of absenteeism in the NHS, including regular health checks and counselling for staff.

On the positive side, there seems to have been an acknowledgement that both physical and emotional or psychological issues are at play in the high rates of absenteeism. Health checks can certainly identify illness early and help employees get appropriate treatment, but anybody can recognise that this is a highly reactive and ‘first-degree’ solution that does not address the root cause of the symptom (literally and figuratively).

So is counselling the way to go?

Although traditional counselling or therapy provides individuals with a supportive context within which to process and debrief the stressors of their personal and work relationships, for many there is a negative stigma attached to this intervention.

In a progressive and psychologically sophisticated society we might expect people to be open to, and comfortable with, counselling as a valid strategy for managing their work-related emotional stress. But, there still exists a perception that counselling is a last resort for those who “aren’t really coping”. And even those who would say “I’m just not coping” might consider counselling “rather extreme”.

Basically, the counselling paradigm poses two problems.

Firstly, counselling is still perceived and used as a remedial and reactive ‘crisis management’ strategy, rather than a development intervention that can improve employee performance and resilience. This means that employees tend to get support only once they are in some form of “ill health”, which makes counselling (as with health checks) a reactive rather than proactive intervention.

This often means that much money and time is invested in ‘recovering’ rather than in improving or enhancing.

Secondly, many employees who would greatly benefit from a strategic professional and personal development process never have access to it. This is because, in a sense, things aren’t yet viewed as being quite “bad enough” to warrant intervention. Just as those who are still able to come to work are not necessarily functioning well, those who have not yet needed counselling may be functioning well below potential.

Just think of someone in your workplace who is maybe getting on people’s nerves, or who seems perpetually overwhelmed, but does just enough to stay out of real trouble or to avoid taking sick leave.

So is there an alternative?

Performance Coaching towards Emotional Intelligence

When we think of performance coaching we may at first think of only big corporates and top business executives, but performance coaching is about equipping and developing any person.

Performance coaching is a systematic strategy for improving employee performance by shifting employees out of their self-defeating habits, while harnessing their natural potential and skills.

Building on a foundation of scientific research, psychological theory and human development models, performance coaching aims to empower individuals to not only avoid ever getting to “bad enough for counselling”, but also to help them become their best professional selves.

As stated at the start of this article, coaching aims to not only reduce stress levels and resultant absenteeism, but also to increase the level of “presence” (or motivated engagement) of employees who are at work.

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