According to Gallup’s 2022 State of the Global Workplace report, only 21% of employees are engaged at work. That has repercussions. A disengaged workforce translates into productivity and revenue losses, as well as higher turnover rates.
Gallup identifies development as a key driver for employee engagement. Organizations that provide opportunities for professional development are more likely to retain and engage employees. Consider, 94% of employees would stay longer in companies that are willing to invest in their professional development.
According to Sounding Board’s 2022 report, learning leaders agree that development opportunities create a more engaged workforce — 60% of respondents cited increasing employee engagement as the greatest need for leadership coaching. Additionally, learning leaders are expanding their target audience for coaching. Nearly two-thirds of learning leaders believe that high-potential employees are the best target cohort for leadership development and coaching.
While traditional coaching programs target established leaders, there is value and potential in developing the foundational leadership mindset and capabilities within high-potential individual contributors — that bench of talent who will step into leadership roles next. These employees represent the future of an organization — and early leadership development can help ensure their retention and engagement, as well as their ability to create business impact.
“Often, leaders I have coached would say, ‘I wish I had coaching earlier in my career,” said Sounding Board Co-founder and Chief Coaching Officer Lori Mazan. “They feel as if they could have been even more impactful if they had the opportunity for this type of development as an individual contributor.”
Sounding Board will now offer coaching to high-potential individual contributors, supporting customers who want to extend leadership development programs to their organization’s next generation of leaders. As a result, organizations can accelerate promising employees’ development and career trajectories, enabling them to have a greater impact within their organization faster.
With one-on-one coaching for individual contributors, Sounding Board will address the current gap in professional development for front-line, high-performing employees who have the qualities and attributes needed to move into future leadership roles. Leadership coaching for this cohort can increase the impact they can have within their departments and companies as a whole today — and can increase the speed at which these employees become promotable, allowing organizations to seed their leadership pipeline with stronger, more prepared candidates.
The time needed to prepare someone without formal people-management experience for a leadership role is a drain on resources and can cause burnout for a new manager. Further, traditional leadership development program offerings may not stick. Early leadership coaching readies the next generation of leaders and increases the team’s ability to scale quickly when the time is right.
Leadership coaching also empowers high-potential individuals to expand the way they think and act today, within their current roles. Coaches encourage and challenge individuals to seek leadership opportunities and to become positive influencers on their teams — immediately.
Sounding Board’s one-on-one leadership coaching for individual contributors will use the same framework and methodology as our programs for leaders, but with fewer engagements. Each session will focus on accelerating the individual’s capabilities, shifting their mindset and behaviors, and expanding their influence within their current role.
As with all of Sounding Board’s service offerings, customers will have access to our award-winning leadership development software. The software allows organizations to build, scale, measure, and track all of their development programs from one centralized platform.
To learn more about one-on-one leadership coaching for high-potential individual contributors, request a demo today.
