Why do managers need coaching skills?

Today’s highly competitive business environment demands that individuals and organizations perform at higher levels and with greater speed than ever before. Leaders and employees alike must place a new emphasis on individual and collective learning and creativity. In order to achieve this, managers must do more than administrate, they must coach those that they work alongside. There is a different and key set of skills that managers must use while coaching. When managers learn and apply these skills, employees improve their performance, and the company sees increases in their KPIs. Coaching skills are critical for this
development step.

What does the program look like?

Objectives
After this course, participants will:

• Understand how coaching enables managers to bring out the best in others
• Recognize the differences between coaching and other methods of learning and development
• Gain an understanding of the key principles of coaching
• Learn and use a model of coaching for developing others
• Practice key skills required to coaching effectively

Course Outline

1. An Introduction to Coaching & the Key Qualities of a Coach: 1 hour 15 minutes - This section will give a brief introduction of what is and what isn’t coaching and how coaching differs from other forms of development. We will also do an activity to help participants understand the key competencies or qualities of an effective coach.
2. 7 Coaching Principles: 1 hour - We will use an activity to look at the 7 Coaching Principles which underlie a collaborative coaching relationship. These 7 principles include: Commitment to the individual/coachee, Build the coaching relationship, personal responsibility of the coachee.
3. Level of Direction – how much do you give? 45 minutes – Coaching requires the manager to look at the situation and decide how much support or level of direction to give. While pure ‘coaching’ is non-directive, participants will use a continuum to decide the level of direction needed based on the context of the situation.
4. Introduction to the Coaching Conversation Model: 30 minutes – This section will look at a simple model of how to structure a coaching conversation. This model looks at the following steps: Establishing focus for the conversation, Discovery of current reality and future possibilities, Plan Action, Remove Barriers, and Accountability
5. Skills of the Coach 90 minutes (30 minutes for each skill) -  This section will look at three key skills necessary for the manager as coach: We will spend time learning and practicing the skills necessary to be effective. The skills we will cover are: Empathetic Listening, Questioning, and Building Rapport
6. Barriers to Coaching and how to overcome them – 30 minutes – This section will look at what can get in the way of an effective coaching conversation and steps to use to overcome them. This section will not only look at environmental and physical barriers, but will help participants become aware of the barriers they my unintentionally bring into the coaching conversation.
7. Putting it all together: Practice Coaching – 1 Hour – The last hour of the day will see the participants in groups of three practicing the skills they have learned throughout the day. Each participant will spend 15 minutes coaching another participant while a third participant acts as an observer. Each coach will receive 5 minutes of feedback from their co-participants.
8. Action Planning: 30 minutes - Each participant will be required to develop a personal action plan of what they will do over the next 30 days to implement these skills back in the workplace.

Course Follow Up
While a one-day course on the skills is needed to be an effective coach, it is only a first step in developing managers as coaches. Participants need time and practice to become efficient in their use newly acquired skills. We would recommend that each participant at the end of the course set a goal on how they will apply these skills back into the workplace. They would then receive 2, 1 hour coaching sessions for themselves to further their understanding of coaching in the workplace and to support the sustained application of the skills they have acquired. (follow up sessions will be administered via VOIP unless other arrangements are made)