10 Coaching Employees

As a manager, I have found that coaching is one of my primary tools for helping employees be at their best. However, there is a lot of confusion about what employee coaching is and how it works. That s because there s actually different styles of coaching and different types of coaching conversations that you can use in a professional setting. So let s clear that up. Coaching has evolved from two important but very different fields, and this essentially creates two primary styles of coaching. The first is skill coaching, where the coach s expertise is in the skill and they teach that skill to another person. This mode evolved from athletic coaching where the coach is someone who has extensive experience with the skill, say baseball or swimming, and then coaches another on how to improve that skill. It s a model based on teaching, observation, and offering advice tips and strategies. It s intentionally directive, and it s what we naturally default to as managers. The benefits of skill coaching is that it s