DFS | Design
In 2016, we were commissioned by DFS, a major furniture retailer, specialising in sofas and soft furnishings, to design and deliver a one-day coaching workshop for managers and head office staff. The aim was to introduce them to the benefits of coaching and show how it helps people develop and progress their careers.
Coaching encourages people to achieve their best, solve problems, make better decisions and learn new skills. It’s a way of managing people through collaboration and delegation, rather than confrontation, and it creates a ‘thinking environment’, where people feel comfortable about sharing their thoughts and ideas.
In this one-day workshop, delegates learned:
- The importance of skillful questions to establish rapport, explore opportunities and build relationships
- That listening is a critical skill. It has a major impact on job effectiveness, and on the quality of relationships with others
- About GROW – a simple four-step framework to having coaching conversations
- How to create a ‘thinking environment’ for 1:2:1s and group discussions
- That your thoughts can hinder you, and how to overcome limiting belief patterns
- How to develop an action plan.
By the end of the workshop they had a clearer idea of what coaching is and had tools and techniques to help them have coaching conversations to integrate the learning.
