Coaching involves a more experienced colleague helping an individual develop their skills through focused one-on-one sessions. It is a style of developing employees that involves empowering them and providing guidance to achieve their aims, either for their current or future roles. Coaching differs from mentoring in that it focuses on specific tasks or skills that can be measured, while mentoring focuses on longer-term development. Effective coaching involves assessing skills constructively, providing tips and support, and helping the individual apply their learning.

2. Develop the skills of an existing employee, rather than having to take on extra or replacement staff.

3. Provides the coach with a sense of achievement and value.

4. Sends a positive message to other employees about the way the organization values its staff.

5. Motivates employees and therefore avoids unnecessary staff turnover and the associated replacement costs of recruitment and initial training.

7. If there is no real structure to the activity, it can be confused with the ‘sitting with Nellie’ approach.

9. Have good listening skills

10. Be aware of their own strengths and weakness

11. Have Good verbal and Non-Verbal Skills

13. Agree and set learning objectives-What the learner should achieve should clearly set out (for example ‘By X date you will be able to explain/demonstrate how to do YZ’).

14. Agree success criteria, or task objectives, between the coach and the learner, specifying the standard against which success will be judged.

15. These criteria should be defined, agreed and understood: by the end you will be able to weld two pieces of pipe to industry standard tolerances.

16. Review the options and make a detailed plan-this is where the coach prepares to demonstrate, explain and review a task or skill.

18. Watch for signs that the learner has missed something for example by observing body language or asking check questions.

19. Build in summaries and reviews at appropriate points, to ensure the learner has grasped the learner try out the task for themselves, with accompanying support.

20. Provide the encouragement all learners need and deserve when they are doing well.

22. How well the learner handled the learning process.

24. Carry out a detailed task analysis of an activity you are going to coach, listing all the steps in the process-especially the most obvious. These are easiest to overlook when you are experienced in an activity.

25. Accept the learner’s mistakes when tackling new tasks-learning by doing means working out why something may not have worked, and planning better ways next time.

27. Jump in and tell the learner what they should do, or take over if they have some difficulty.

28. Assume that everyone knows even the basics of a task; avoid the danger that, just because you are skilled and knowledgeable, the learner is too.

30. Whom can you think of in your team at work, who would benefit from coaching?

31. Which tasks and skills would you be best at coaching?

32. Whom else do you know who has skills that others would benefit from developing?<< . . . . Learning through Reading . . . >>