Montse Altarriba: "Coaching came to SMEs to stay"

Sometimes it is taken for granted that small and medium-sized businesses must be content to focus their efforts on selling a lot and having few expenses; as if that spiral of short-termism and obsession with money were its raison d'être due to its limited resources.

But the reality is that the productivity and efficiency of companies is not something completely disconnected from the human side of these, something that occurs in all organizations, regardless of its size. That is why Coaching specialists don't just work in large corporations; They also have an important role in SMEs. In this interview with Montse Altarriba, from the EDPyN Coaching School, we will talk about it.

• Related article: "What is Coaching and what is it for?"

Interview with Montse Altarriba: coaching training for SMEs

Montse Altarriba is Director of the EDPyN Coaching School, located in Madrid, and Mentor Coach. In this interview we talked to her about training and intervention in coaching adapted to small and medium-sized companies.

Is the belief that coaching is a matter of top executives and large companies deeply rooted?

Coaching was actually born some 30 years ago in the field of the big company, by the hand of the first professional coaches that provide senior executives of large corporations a professional accompaniment service that obeys certain characteristics different from other services to the use. Specifically, coaching, as a change management discipline, endorses three key premises: the confidentiality of the relationship, non-judgment by the professional and non-advice.

Coaching is a methodology, an accompaniment technique for people who seek to go through changes more effectively. And how? Generating through the reflection that occurs in the work sessions a greater awareness of the client in relation to what he wants to achieve, delving into the beliefs, values and the emotions that will enable you and challenging those that would limit you in relation to your goals, inviting the client to take charge of his share of responsibility and designing action plans that direct him to goals.

It just so happened that this technique works; Already in those early years, professional coaching brought very good results to those executives and to those large companies that were pioneers in investing in it. And that has meant that, little by little, coaching has spread to other areas. In the business world, throughout these 30 years, coaching has permeated the entire structure of the organization, no longer limited to only management positions. Today the possibility of being able to hire coaching services at more than reasonable prices makes this discipline a great tool for companies of all sizes that want to navigate through situations of change in a more conscious and responsible.

On the one hand, a greater supply of qualified professionals and, on the other hand, a growing interest in the discipline have allowed coaching to be present today both in the great companies, as in medium-sized companies, and small companies and businesses that are also finding in this tool a way to promote talent, to generate alignment with the future vision of the business, to increase the productivity of the workforce, to improve the labor relations of the employees, and ultimately to achieve better results at the level global. And yes, coaching came to SMEs to stay.

What are the main benefits of coaching training for small and medium-sized companies?

Small and medium-sized companies, SMEs, face multiple challenges on a daily basis, looking for how to sell more, how to scale their businesses, how to grow and be more competitive. Among these challenges, apart from the already well-known digital transformation, an aspect that transcends the entire conception of the business, there is also how to manage diversity, how to manage new talent, and how to resolve uncertainty and resistance to change. change.

In addition, in the field of SMEs, the entrepreneur is asked to be the architect of this transformation that allows the business to adapt to the new needs of the client and the new circumstances of its around. Leading the change in first person will allow you to search for new processes, new opportunities, and at the same time help the people of your organization to participate in that change from the commitment and the motivation. But to lead others, it will be very useful for us to know how to lead ourselves first and from there to know how to build trust in others.

Training in coaching provides knowledge and subsequent training on the keys to the development of these three basic leadership competencies: trust, collaboration and commitment. Confidence, understood as generating confidence and trusting in oneself; collaboration understood as working together in pursuit of a common goal; and commitment understood as the kilos of desire, illusion and action that we put in to achieve what we want to happen to us.

And it is that training in this discipline will allow us to enhance our self-knowledge, reflect on that future that we want to achieve, learn to better define objectives, understand how people work in relation to changes, improve our communication and especially improve the management of our teams job.

Leaders and employees of small and medium-sized companies trained in coaching will see their soft skills, the now famous soft skills, substantially improved, which remember, they are transversal skills, applicable to many areas, both professional and personal, and that ultimately revert to the results of the business. This is something that large companies are already aware of because they have been investing in coaching training for a long time, and now more and more SMEs are becoming aware of it.

Is it common to assume that only large companies should worry about managing the work environment that reigns in them, while small companies must imitate themselves to reach their short-term production goals term?

We are facing a resource issue and resources are usually scarce when we refer to small businesses. It would seem, then, that large companies do have greater resources, both economic and people, knowledge and time, to dedicate to better management of the work environment. And in many of these large companies, that's the case.

Significant resources are devoted to enhancing the value proposition for employees. There is a lot of talk about the new ESG criteria -environmental, social, governance- which seem to be Values ​​that are highly valued by investors today, beyond even the criteria solely financial. It is said that those responsible for the great global companies are transforming their models productive to attract and retain talent, focusing on people and changing environments labor. Talent management is becoming an operational priority and this value proposition to the employee, a key aspect.

And I say, why should we limit this only to the realm of large companies? Why give up doing the same in small businesses, which are often successful precisely because of the value of their people, and their people are the greatest of their assets? I think it's not so much a matter of cost, I think it's especially a matter of will and conscience, and that doesn't depend on the size. I believe that small companies can also focus on becoming places that attract talent and that can retain it. And they can also become those so-called "enriching work environments" that enhance the productivity of their employees.

Can great leaders exist in small teams?

Definitely yes. We understand the leader as that person, not that he commands, but as the one that serves, although it may seem paradoxical. The leader is that person whose mission is to guide his team towards the goal, towards that vision of the future that everyone knows.

We also understand leadership as a skill that, therefore, can be acquired and trained by anyone. And leadership has three layers: first, leading oneself, self-leadership, linked to self-confidence, motivation or managing one's own emotions. The second layer is already leading others, and here skills such as communication, influence and inspiration come into play. And the third layer would be leading the environment, which requires imagination, intuition, or curiosity. What I am passionate about leadership is that all of us can exercise it. I like to talk about that everyday leadership, about those actions that can serve as a source of inspiration for others, about those moments that make a difference for other people. And again, that has nothing to do with the size of the business, it has to do with the quality of the relationships that are established in that environment, large or small.

So yes, there are great leaders who drive small teams very efficiently, both in large corporations and in small companies. And it is that in an increasingly open, complex and collaborative environment like the current one, work teams not only incorporate people internal, more and more are incorporating these "stakeholders", external people to consider in the decision making of any business.

Bearing in mind that coaching can be applied in many different contexts, do you have a very simplified vision of the usefulness of the coach in companies?

I am going to give you some information: according to a study carried out by the ICF (International Coaching Federation), coaching has proved to be very useful in the business world in the last 25 years, as well as in The companies in which it has been applied have achieved increases in employee commitment of 62%, increases in productivity of 39% and improvements in communication skills of a 42%.

From the organizations that promote coaching worldwide, and specifically ICF, which is today the organization that represents the largest number of coaches in the world, much emphasis is being placed on extending the concept of "coaching culture" to companies, businesses and organizations.

We speak of a coaching culture when coaching is used consistently by all employees and key partners, to foster understanding, shared visions and personal responsibility of those people who are responsible for the results.

Companies that adhere to this coaching mindset would be companies that partner with curiosity and growth, that build relationships. through trust, that empower people, that encourage co-creation, and that make a flag of responsibility and recognition.

The first step to move towards that "coaching culture" is to invest in professional coaching, hiring coaching services for the company's staff. The return on that investment is going to be very positive. Once again, the data supports this: it has been shown that approximately 80% of the companies that have invested in coaching say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the results obtained.

A next step is to have internal coaches, coaches on staff, who are part of the organization and provide coaching services to employees and can also provide some training in skills through the methodology of coaching.

So you see, fortunately, coaching still has a long way to go in the business world. And more and more there is greater awareness of its usefulness and its good results. Coaching is in fashion, yes, and it is not by chance.

It is often said that each organization is an ecosystem, and that the solutions to its problems should not be applied without working "on the ground". How is coaching applied through in-company training?

The business world has long known the benefits of training for its employees. In addition, the training of collaborators and staff is in most cases subsidized by public entities such as FUNDAE and all workers are entitled to it employees. Promoting training in soft skills, in the so-called soft skills, is today a priority for governments and public bodies that is also endorsed and collected by the objectives of the Agenda 2030.

Training in coaching is also a subsidized training by FUNDAE, from which employees of any company, based on Social Security contributions and a series of scales by number of employees. And through the in-company training offered to companies and organizations, an effort is made to meet the need of each of them, obviously adapting both the contents and the duration of these formations. In this way, short training sessions can be given in "training pills" mode, up to more extensive training sessions, both in terms of time and period of delivery.

In the cases of in-company training, it will always be very appropriate to define a proposal based on the need that the company wants to cover and the results it wants to obtain.

From what you have been able to see in EDPyN, what do you think will be the most important soft skills to be developed in the business world in the coming years?

At the EDPyN Coaching School we have been training people who want to change something in their lives since 2016 through our coaching training. Our students usually come looking for three reasons: the first one is wanting to practice the profession of coach professionally. The second is wanting to incorporate skills to enhance their professional careers. And the third reason is personal development, finally wanting to invest in yourself and your personal growth.

The skills that are enhanced through training in coaching largely coincide with those skills that we believe will be key in business environments in the future.

We believe that the first of those key skills in work environments in the future will continue to be self-leadership. And in this there is a lot of self-knowledge, that recognition of one's own abilities and behavior patterns. When we talk about leading ourselves, managing emotions, both our own and those of others, is very important.

Another of the important generic skills to continue perfecting is, for us, undoubtedly the improvement of communication: from improving the quality of listening to practice assertiveness to ask more effective questions, give feedback in a more helpful and friendly way, and reduce interference in communication between sender and sender receiver.

Generating productive and effective relationships would be for us a skill to continue developing, based on collaboration and trust. And the future brings us the challenge of managing uncertainty more effectively. For this, we believe that training skills such as intuition, imagination and agility are going to be key.

I want to end this interview with a very personal opinion. I would like that among those skills to be developed in the field of business and organizations there was also ethics, which I consider very necessary and at this time on occasions something scarce.

Thank you very much for the opportunity you have given me to answer all these questions, I really enjoyed doing it. Now I hope they can be of some use to whoever reads the interview. A hug and goodbye.