The knowledge and ability levels of employees can be a critical component of the success (or lack of) for a business. Without skilled employees who are highly motivated and have a strong desire for the company to succeed, the business will soon begin to encounter difficulties and fall far short of its possible achievements.
Investing in the development of workers is therefore a vital necessity if the organisation wishes to be successful. Whether its goals are to make as much profit as possible, to be the industry benchmark, provide the most help if it was a charity etc, every organisation will struggle to achieve these goals if it does not have capable and committed people working to achieve them. To this end, organisations will spend money on training and development courses in order to provide new information for them or refresh their existing knowledge.
Both training courses and business coaching can be used to great effect when it comes to developing staff members and improving their performance at work. For teaching new information though, training courses are often a much better option. This is because whilst both coaching and training courses develop and improve performance, only training courses actively teach new information to attendees. Business coaching on the other hand does not teach information, but instead the business coach works with an individual to discuss current issues and develop plans of action which can be used to overcome these difficulties.
Business coaching will be beneficial for any worker, but it is more suited to those who already have the required knowledge and training under their belt, but are encountering challenges and issues which are preventing them from operating at maximum potential in their job role. Business coaching and mentoring sessions can only have a limited effect if the individual does not have the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their workplace tasks well.
It is for this reason that, whilst it may be expensive, the best results often come from a person receiving both training and coaching in conjunction with each other. Not only does the person acquire more knowledge and/or refresh existing information which they may have largely forgotten about, but the coaching element will provide much greater clarity about how to implement this knowledge effectively and overcome metaphorical obstacles which hinder the effectiveness of the individual.
So whilst both training and coaching are similar in that they both have the ultimate aim of improving the performance of a person in their workplace role, they go about it in quite different approaches. Whilst conducting both at the same time to complement each other is the most effective approach, cost and time constraints often force a decision down one route or the other. In this case, a manager needs to decide whether the employee (or themselves if they are the one requiring assistance) would benefit more from a coaching approach or a training course.