How well you coach relates directly to how well you can foster a great working relationship with your employees through understanding them and strategic goal setting.

An easy-to-understand coaching model taught in this course will guide you through the coaching process. Prepare yourself to change a few things about yourself to coach your employees to better performance.

Defining Coaching and Mentoring

Before getting deeper into coaching, it is prudent to discuss mentoring and what it tries to achieve. Understanding the difference between coaching and mentoring will help you clarify your coaching objective.

This course aims to define both concepts and introduce a coaching model that will allow you to focus on improving performance.

What is Coaching?

Business coaching is personal or human resource development by providing positive support, feedback, and advice to an individual or a group to improve effectiveness in the business setting. Business coaching includes executive coaching, corporate coaching, and leadership coaching.

There are almost as many different ways of delivering business coaching as business coaches. Some offer personal support and feedback; others combine a coaching approach with practical and structured business planning and bring disciplined accountability to the relationship. Particularly in the small business market, business coaching is as much about driving profit as developing the person.

Coaching is not a practice restricted to external experts or providers. Many organizations expect their senior leaders and middle managers to coach their team members to reach higher performance levels, increased job satisfaction, personal growth, and career development.

A coach tutors or instructs a person to achieve a specific goal or skill. In baseball, a batting coach only focuses on the mechanics of hitting the ball. They spend time instructing the hitter on how to change their swing to improve their performance. They give exercises and goals to the hitter that target the bat’s swing.

You may see similar coaches helping others improve skills in the office environment. They may be sales coaches or customer service coaches. No matter what the area of focus is, a coach specializes in improving one or two development areas at a time.

Here is a recap of the characteristics of a coach:

• Trainer
• Instructor
• Tutor
• Focuses on one or two skills at a time
• Interaction is planned and structured

What is Mentoring?

Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or knowledgeable person helps guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. However, true mentoring is more than answering occasional questions or providing ad hoc help. It is about an ongoing relationship of learning, dialog, and challenge.

Mentoring is a process that always involves communication and is relationship-based, but its precise definition is elusive. Two definitions of the many are:

• Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development.  
• Mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé).

Mentoring in Europe has existed since at least ancient Greek times. Since the 1970s, it has spread in the United States, mainly in training contexts, and it has been described as an innovation in American management.

Mentoring has a different purpose and goal than coaching. Mentoring is the act of guiding, counseling, and supporting.

Mentorship is voluntary and is less formal than coaching. The mentor and protégé collaborate on a broad development goal, like becoming a leader. Mentoring encompasses many complex areas of development. 

Coaching scenarios include the following:

• Sales
• Customer service
• Production work
• Behavioral issues like tardiness

Mentoring scenarios include the following:

• Networking
• Political strategizing
• Negotiation
• Managing

A manager’s goal should be to develop their people to further their careers; mentoring does this. In this course, you will learn how to effectively coach; later, there will be a discussion on how to transition from a coach to a mentor.

Introducing the GROW Model

In Module One, you will learn about the GROW model. The GROW model helps you provide a consistent and uniform coaching approach, enabling a more effective strategy and direction. Using a coaching model will also instill confidence in your employee because they see a methodical approach. When we approach coaching haphazardly, we become disorganized, and this creates frustrating coaching sessions. In Module One, you will learn about the GROW model. The GROW model helps you provide a consistent and uniform coaching approach, enabling a more effective.

Setting Goals

Module Two will discuss setting goals with an easy-to-remember technique, the first component, or the G of the GROW method of coaching. Without a goal, your chances of successfully coaching your employee to better performance are low. Defining specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-driven goals will plot a marker on the horizon that acts as your beacon. Without it, you are navigating blindly, causing frustration for both you and your employee because you never seem to make any improvement. It becomes a constant cycle of failing to meet the goal and talking to your employee about it.

Understanding the Realities

In the last module, you plotted a marker in the horizon like a beacon, guiding your employee to a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goal, which is a great start. Still, there is also a need to know where your journey began. Placing a marker at the starting point of your employee’s coaching journey enables both you and your employee to determine and measure progress. The goal may never seem to get any closer because you have no point of reference to gauge your progress.

In Module Three, you will learn how to place that stake in the ground, marking the coaching journey’s beginning. Examining the current realities is the second component or the R of the GROW model.

Developing Options

Module Four discusses how to explore options that will enable your employee to move towards the goal set before them, the next component or the O in the GROW model, a pivotal step in the coaching process; if done correctly, you will engage your employee and create a desire for them to improve. If done incorrectly, your employee will disengage, and they probably will fail again. It is the coach’s job to create this participative environment.

Wrapping it All Up

In the last module, your goal was to get your employee to participate in the coaching process by identifying action steps together. It is time to solidify what has been said and establish action steps or wrap it all up. 

In Module Five, you will learn how to finalize your employee’s plan in a way that motivates them to take action immediately. Wrapping up the coaching session is the final component or the W in the GROW model to coaching. This step is crucial because it should set things in motion quickly, which is your goal.

The Importance of Trust

In your coaching session with your employees, you will discover your employee’s personal and sensitive topics; this is normal and demonstrates trust in you. As their coach, establishing and maintaining trust is the most important ingredient in the entire process. If your employee determines your purpose of improving their performance is to further your career, they will not trust you. Without trust, whatever you say and do will be subject to skepticism. 

Module Six discusses the meaning of trust, building trust, and its relationship to coaching. Building trust must be a sincere desire in you because it requires an investment of time and emotion. Anything less will not foster a trusting relationship between you and your employee.

Providing Feedback

In Module Seven, you are going to learn techniques for delivering feedback. You will learn how to structure feedback, which is essential in balancing trust and discussing desired and undesired behaviors with your employee.

Overcoming Roadblocks

It is common to encounter roadblocks during the coaching process. Roadblocks manifest in many different forms. Roadblocks, however, should not spell an end to the coaching process. You should expect roadblocks to occur because we expect behavior change, which is a task for your employee.

In Module Eight, we will discuss ways to overcome roadblocks. Some of the things you will learn are identifying common roadblocks, re-evaluating goals, and focusing on progress. Roadblocks are not dead ends. They are warning signs that will help you identify when you need to intervene and get your employee back on track. 

Reaching the End

Identifying the end of the coaching process for a particular goal is a vital step that helps both you and your employee acknowledge you have reached the end. Failing to acknowledge the achievement of a goal could result in disappointment for your employee. Many times, they are anticipating the end and perhaps expect some form of celebration or kudos. No matter how you do it, you must know when your employee has reached their goal and acknowledge it as a coach.

In Module Nine, you will learn to recognize success, transition your employee from this coaching goal to another, and wrap it up.

How Mentoring Differs from Coaching

Earlier in this course, we defined the terms of coaching and mentoring. We learned both concepts vary greatly in terms of the goal each seeks to achieve. In Module Ten, you will learn the practical differences and blend them for a balanced development program. Also, we will discover how to integrate the GROW model when you are mentoring your employee, and finally, you will learn how to focus more on building relationships.