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Heads or Tails?
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| Two sides of the same coin |
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Workplace coaching and counselling can be viewed as two sides
of the same coin and both can benefit a business and its employees. Sarah Prince explores how both services share valuable elements for enhancing performance.
Coaching is the new currency in personal development; it is often seen as a must have for rising executives and ambitious managers. In contrast, counselling suffers from the unjustified stigma that surrounds mental health. However both have core elements that offer a unique service to the individual, whether motivated by themselves or by their organisation.
On one side of the coin, workplace counselling is frequently seen as a reactive, crisis driven intervention for employees who may be suffering from stress at work, relationship difficulties or other personal issues. We all have mental health fitness (as with physical fitness) at different levels and it needs maintenance. Counselling can sustain mental wellness as well as providing an opportunity to alleviate emotional distress.
The other side of the coin is the more aspirational idea of coaching. Coaching offers the individual a proactive opportunity to progress on a career path that seeks achievement beyond the status quo. Issues for coaching within an organisation can be time management, conflict resolution and assertiveness or on a personal level career development, retirement or communication skills.
The shared worth of both coaching and counselling is that they offer the individual a unique and exceptional opportunity to spend time in a relationship based on ‘helping through talking’, an opportunity all too rare in today’s busy life. The reflective process, coupled with exploring skills and solutions, are core tools for the coaching and counselling practitioner.
So whether you are looking at reacting to a crisis of personal mental wellness or proactively preventing the onset of the crisis while enhancing performance, each side of the coin has equal value in a holistic process. Counselling and coaching suffer from a difference in perception rather than an understanding of their true worth. What both these resources can offer an individual and a business is a set of resources and skills that, in their delivery in practical terms, are interwoven and complimentary offering an opportunity for sterling development.
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