Create Empathetic And Emotionally Intelligent Leaders With 1-on-1 Coaching

Digital coaching is an agile, goal-oriented employee development method

Eighteen months ago, the world was flipped on its head. We repeatedly heard about “unprecedented times” and “people need empathetic leadership.” Many organizations worked hard to support the employee experience despite the challenges and often made it up as they went along. What we learned is that people thrived most when supported by empathetic and emotionally intelligent leaders. People who struggled often pointed to stressed and ill-equipped bosses.
 

We’re not sure what counts as “back to normal” in a post-pandemic world where much of the workforce is struggling with work-related stress. The trauma everyone faced with Covid-19, social unrest, political strife, and economic uncertainty left indelible marks. And new stressors have emerged. It is creating a dire need for empathetic leadership in the workplace. The same personalized, one-on-one support that rank-and-file employees expect is the same recipe for supporting leaders. Developing the soft skills that current conditions mandate requires one-on-one coaching, if we hope to instill a sense of empathy and unlock emotional intelligence in our leaders.

Traditional coaching sessions always relied on in-person formats, which were inflexible, time-consuming, and unscalable. Employees need emotional and mental health support now.

Digital coaching provides a democratized approach to learning and is perfectly suited for the way we work today. Digital, remote employees have unique needs, and the coaches on digitized platforms understand this. They have the skills to help managers not only develop the techniques that foster the growth of empathy for their employees, they can also help those managers adapt to what will likely be a completely new way of working.

Personalized coaching has always been able to help people build their self-confidence. The coaching also allows them to come back to situations they are not always able to analyze with their managers or peers afterward. Having the necessary skills to wade through these unfamiliar waters is more important than ever.

It especially holds true for managers. They have always been under pressure to respond to conflicting demands while attending to each team member’s needs. Those demands have been amplified during the pandemic. Coaching is a powerful tool to help keep managers from exhausting their capacity and providing the support they need to remain resilient and agile.

Nine out of 10 people coached say digital coaching increases their sense of purpose. Four out of five of those people coached say their stress is reduced by an average of 18%.

Companies that invest in employee well-being programs show four times higher profit than those that don’t. They also end up with 20% higher productivity and innovation. 

The pandemic has required businesses to adapt rapidly. The success of any transformation rests on its people.

According to McKinsey & Company, more than four out of five transformations fail because of people reasons. However, 85% of managers who received coaching outperform their peers in soft skills like agility and resilience.

Companies that invest in resilience and agility see a 256% ROI. There’s also a 91% success rate in the transformation of teams where the managers were coached in a one-on-one setting versus a 30% success rate with traditional e-learning.

After achieving stability, businesses need to refocus on growth. Organizations that can foster a growth mindset and embrace the digital transformation of learning and development significantly increase their performance and are three times more profitable.

Seven of 10 people coached reported improved work performance. Only 30% of those using traditional e-learning platforms report being highly engaged compared with 96% of those using digital platforms. And nearly nine out of 10 of those coached report reaching their goals compared with 15% of those who learned in a traditional classroom setting.

Add to that the fact that there is no teaching in a traditional classroom setting.

Digital coaching is an agile, person-centered, goal-oriented employee development method that fits into this new world of work and the employee experience. Investing in an employee’s development demonstrates a commitment that employees want to see given the time they are committing to their employers. Offering an individual and personalized digital coaching experience helps companies retain these valuable employees, improve profitability, and stimulate growth all in the new normal.

Yannis Niebelschütz is Managing Director and Co-founder of CoachHub, a digital turnkey solution in learning and development democratizing coaching for employees of all career levels worldwide. He is a serial entrepreneur and former senior sales manager at LinikedIn. Yannis has more than 15 years of experience in New Work, startups and digital business building. Connect Yannis Niebelschütz