Unlike the skilled and unskilled manpower of yester years belonging to traditional industry, knowledge workers involved with the new age industries require more direction and guidance. With high knowledge and restlessness much higher than the yester year workers, knowledge workers take more managerial time if not properly coached and directed. This write up highlights some important aspects of coaching the knowledge workers.
Introduction
The modern day workers are knowledge workers and are highly empowered.
They are as forceful as the river water; always find ways to direct their energies in directions that allow them to. Because of the dynamism and flexibility the knowledge workers may go in all directions which was not the case in case of skilled and unskilled workers of yester generations.
It is said that knowledge workers probably require more direction and guidance than skilled and unskilled workers of manufacturing era. Because they can see more world than what their predecessors could see, the opportunities to loose themselves into the wilderness are more.
Be it a research assignment, new product development, a short term engagement or a long term project, directing the workers is the only way to achieve even intended results. One of the effective ways of directing the high power knowledge workers is coaching.

Coaching in the knowledge environment

Coaching in the knowledge environment needs to be handled with a high degree of involvement from the coach who is normally the leader in charge. The leader may or may not hold a formal managerial position in the team to act as a coach. A senior member of the team with sufficient maturity can act as a coach in directing the energies of the team in to intended directions.
Modern day workers can be motivated, their energies can be directed and can be guided but these workers cannot be controlled by organizational barriers. It is important to motivate the employees to improve continuously. The knowledge workers possess inherent urge to learn and move up both from learning and organization perspectives. In the absence of proper direction, the learning can go into directions which may not be useful to the organization and can prove to be hindrances to achieve the target performances.
Why coaching
Coaching is a technique aimed not just to help the employees to achieve a specific intended goal. It should trigger a success which can engender another and instill the self confidence that leads to high levels of performance and productivity of all subsequent tasks.

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