Training or Coaching: Which Suits You Best?

In our previous articles, we talked about how investing in a training and coaching program can bring about many benefits to you and your organisation. However, choosing which among the two development options is best can be a difficult decision to make as this can affect the overall performance of your organisation. Understanding the different aims of training and coaching can help you make the right choice. To help you decide which option is best for you, your people and your organisation, let’s take a closer look at training and coaching – what their key differences are and how each can help boost your organisation’s overall performance.

Let us first take a better look at training…

Training

Training is defined as the action of developing oneself (others), any skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It seeks to improve one’s capacity, productivity and performance. Training also equips its participants with opportunities to discuss new information or practice new methods and strategies.

The need for training is assessed by asking these questions: “Are we skilled and knowledgeable enough to efficiently do what our responsibilities call for?” “Are we skilled and knowledgable enough to solve the challenge we are currently facing?”

If you answered “NO” to these questions, then training would be an excellent choice for development. For example, an HR executive may need to learn a new method of performance management, they can learn this through training.

Having you and your people trained will help your organisation reap benefits such as:

Higher efficiency and productivity
Reduced conflict and talent turnover
Improved levels of performance
Minimised supervision requirement

Now let’s look at the other side of the story.

Coaching

Coaching is defined as the process that aims to change one’s limiting beliefs to improve their behaviour. Unlike training, coaching provides a more customised approached that creates sustained change, over time, and needs a greater commitment. Your organisation may consider coaching if you answered “YES” to this question: “Do you have the skills but have difficulty employing them due unwanted, uncontrolled behaviours, reactions or reasonings?”

For instance, that same HR Executive may be highly skilled in performance management however, their limiting beliefs may create behaviours like being easily frustrated and stressed that prevents them from effectively employing this skill.

Coaching will help them get rid of their unwanted behaviours and improve their ability to effectively manage their team’s performance.

Coaching can also bring about behavioural change for you and your people by helping you hard wire the competencies found in the 4 quadrants of Emotional Intelligence: Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management.

Now that you’ve seen a clearer picture of what training and coaching is all about, their differences, their benefits and how each of them can help your organisation, you can now assess which development program can better meet your needs right now. Nevertheless, regardless of what development program you choose, both training and coaching, when applied correctly, can greatly benefit your organisation.

Best Practice

Whilst training and coaching both have a place in the development of individuals and teams in any organisation, fast return on investment and long term results are best gained by combining the 2 ingredients together. It’s all about taking people on a journey of incremental improvement by providing the information (training) and ensuring the implementation (coaching). These together provide support and accountability, both vital to the success of any development program.

If you are ready to investigate having a training and coaching program in your organisation, we at People Builders have expert corporate and workplace trainers and coaches who will help you evaluate your organisation’s needs and then engage everyone in the process. They will then educate and empower you and your team to create a culture of excellence within your organisation and achieve extraordinary results.

Contact us today for a quick chat to see how we can partner with you to coach you and your team.