Coaching employees emanates with a lot of benefits, not only to employees but to the company as well. Coaching is the key to structuring and maintaining an enthusiastic staff. Employees who respond positively to coaching and improve their performance can become respected contributors to the success of the company. It is advisable to offer coaching to staff as discussed below; According to Bruno Ark Agaba, a social commentator in Kigali, giving the freedom to employees to express their gifts, talents and abilities are the surest way of getting the best out of them. For him, employees ought to be allowed to fail. Most leaders expect their employees to do wonders from start to end. This makes many employees mediocre at their work because they are afraid to fail or underperform. “As such, they try to do what their employees want, which most times never comes out well. But allowing them to fail brings out confidence, best lessons carried forward and consequently leading to best-performing employees because they are not afraid to try out something new for the sole purposes of doing well,” he says. Agaba highlights that it would be best for most employers to first coach their employees on the culture of the company and where the company is heading. This would give a context to employees on what they can contribute to the mission and the vision of the company. He also notes that leaders should change the narrative of saying, “It starts and falls on leaders.” With coaching, it all starts and grows with employees. This is why employees ought to know that, they contribute the greatest share of the company’s success. Once they know that, they will definitely do their part. Agaba explains that small details like key performance indicators, milestones, among others, require some training to be done well. He calls upon leaders to offer these short-term training to increase the productivity of their employees. Business personnel Henrick Tayebwa says that there is a two-way to this, as leaders sometimes don’t want to let go or let their employees develop themselves besides the concerned work, which is not good. And then, on the other hand, he says that leaders sometimes want to retain all the knowledge they have accumulated over the ages to themselves and not share it with those under them, a thing that leaves the success of the employees tricky. “Any employee who doesn’t grow in various skills doesn’t help the company to grow as well, an issue that many leaders and managers take lightly,” Tayebwa says. He carries on that leaders should deliberately get involved in their employees’ lives both at work and outside to enable them understand each other in order to work properly. This is because people are encountering challenges both at work and outside and if leaders are able to get involved to a certain extent, they would understand their employees at a deeper level and therefore see how to treat them, help, guide, and monitor them, he adds. The business personnel says that relationships are crucial between workers and leaders because they avert fear hence permitting employers to have a better approach to handling their employees for example based on their strengths or weaknesses or likes or dislikes. He highlights that employees need freedom and that if used properly, it can generate a lot of good. But if misused, it can bring disasters like laziness, time wastage, and so forth. Tayebwa believes that leaders should extend a level of freedom to their employees in terms of decision making, executing work or projects to allow them to have a sense of responsibility that can lead to growth.
