COACHING &
MENTORING
BOOK
Increase productivity, foster talent, and encourage success
Nicholas Nigro
THE
Coaching & Mentoring Book,
2nd Edition
Dear Reader,
My life experiences have placed me in a wide range of business environments, including the hustle and bustle of retail, the often fickle world of publishing, and even a couple of independent entrepreneurial adventures and misadventures. Along the way, I observed manager-employee relations that ran the gamut from the mutually respectful to the pitifully poisonous. I gleaned from all of this that there's most definitely a right way to manage people and a wrong way.
This is precisely where coaching and mentoring and their enlightened managerial practices come in. The philosophies of coaching and mentoring view employees as individuals as, believe it or not, real people. There's no reason why managers and their staff cannot work together in productive harmony.
I've seen it happen. And, when all is said and done, the beauty of coaching and mentoring applications are that they can effortlessly transcend the office environs. They are relevant, too, in retail and service businesses, and a whole host of places outside of the push and shove of big business.
Straight Ahead.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Foremost, many thanks to editor Lisa Laing and the people at Adams Media for affording me the opportunity to do this book. These opportunities are what writers live for. And, although not the literary agent of record for this project, I'd like to express my gratitude to June Clark for encouraging me to take it on while simultaneously writing another book. Writers can successfully multitask.
Special thanks to Bill Lipman, Joe Nigro, Rosanne D'Esposito, Remy D'Esposito, Tom Nigro, Frank Rosa, Rich Covello, Nick Checki, and, last but not least, the trio of wise elders: Nicholas, Agnes, and Rose. These fine folks provided me food, transportation, and most importantly succor when I was laid up for a spell after an unanticipated medical moment. I couldn't have written this book without their selfless assistance.
Top Ten Reasons Why Coaching and Mentoring Bests Traditional Managing
- It maximizes overall performance results by appreciating each employee as an individual with unique talents and possibilities.
- It delegates challenging job roles and tasks, while setting bold but realistic goals for every employee.
- It expands knowledge and grows skills of employees and managers alike, thus enhancing their job futures.
- It establishes and maintains an open work environment with free-flowing dialogue and constructive feedback.
- It enhances communication abilities, both written and oral.
- It seeks solutions and positive outcomes to any and all workplace situations, including conflicts.
- It links workplace performance growth with personal growth.
- It recognizes the need for properly balanced work and home lives.
- It works with comprehensible, achievable performance plans for employees so they always know where they stand.
- It sweetens company bottom lines and efficiency.
Introduction
GETTING PERSONS OF any age to perform at their utmost is a bona fide challenge for those in tutelage roles, be they in the home, on the sports field, or at the workplace. Keeping a diverse staff of employees both contented and focused on the work at hand is a job that's not for the faint-hearted. As fate would have it, there is an increasingly utilized managerial methodology that meets these weighty challenges head-on and with a proven track record of success. This coveted managerial road map, known as coaching and mentoring, essentially asks that its devotees conscientiously manage men and women as distinct individuals with unique talents and possibilities.
With the baby boom generation poised to retire en masse from the workforce in the coming years, businesses will need to replace a wholesale brain drain of knowledge and skills. They will accomplish this in part by requiring their managers to be coaches. They will also need organizational mentors to pass down wisdom and know-how to the younger crowd. Right now, locating and maintaining the necessary critical talent to keep companies at once profitable and competitive is a huge concern.
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