Barclays steps up managers’ mentoring and coaching skills |18 May 2013

The 18 officials were taken through a one-day leadership mentoring workshop and a two-day leadership coaching workshop, all led by Maria Cussell Humphries, who specialises in coaching and mentoring, and works in the Barclays Africa human resources team and has led such workshops across the 13 other Barclays Africa countries.

She also specialises in helping people overcome cross-cultural barriers and translating the complexities of banking into practical and common sense language. She also specialises in helping colleagues unlock their full potential.

Speaking to Seychelles Nation on Thursday afternoon, the acting managing director of Barclays Seychelles Teddy Phillipe said when organising the training, their initial thoughts were that these were key skills which could give them a big insight into grooming their leaders for tomorrow.

“While mentoring is about using our knowledge and experience to listen to the one being mentored and to give him the advice he needs to move in the right direction to the next level, whereas coaching is more about understanding the issues, and although one has the solution, it is about leading the one being mentored to discover the solution himself, so these are the two main skills being imparted,” he said.

The training is part of Barclays’ People Strategy, where they plan to train local staff and give them important skills to eventually take up higher responsibilities in the organisation.

Ms Cussell Humphries said three people have already been identified for a further seven-month coach training programme, and will be able to act as internal coaches in the organisation.

“One of the constraints we face not only in Seychelles but across the whole continent is that there are very few internal coaches,” she said.

“It is very easy to run a one-day training programme which then gets forgotten, so we are aiming to set up a mentoring community, and the people in charge of it can share with their colleagues in other countries what is working and what is not, so it is those being mentored who will benefit.”

Mr Phillipe said after the training the coaches will go into the organisation and groom their colleagues and bring out their full potential, from the highest down to the lowest level.