What Does the Process of Coaching in the Workplace Look Like?

Coaching isn’t just valuable to an organization—it’s necessary. The top-performing businesses and company teams all employ coaching in the workplace. Even in a remote work environment, coaching is necessary and doable.

Does your company have a culture of coaching?

Have you thought about the importance of coaching at work?

Are you wondering what’s involved in the process of coaching in the workplace?

These are all great things to be thinking about, and we’re here to provide you with direction when it comes to coaching.

In this article, we’re providing insight into the purpose of workplace coaching and planning a coaching session in the workplace. We’ll also share the roles and responsibilities of an effective coach.

Let’s dive into the world of business coaching!

What’s the Purpose of Workplace Coaching?

The overall purpose of coaching in the workplace is to give employees space, time, and tools necessary to grow and develop in specific areas. When done correctly, workplace coaching benefits your employees and your company. 

Coaching in a business environment is a powerful way to:

• Drive employee engagement
• Encourage employees to take action
• Identify high-performing employees for in-house promotions
• Motivate and empower employees

However, it’s up to your organization to initiate and implement coaching. If you’ve never coached before, it can be challenging to know what makes a good coaching process and coach.

The Roles and Responsibilities of an Effective Coach

Coaching is different from mentoring or training. Training is instructive and teaches employees a new skill. Mentoring is a holistic approach to development, focusing on other areas in addition to business (e.g., personal development).

A coaching relationship isn’t meant to be instructive and it focuses solely on an employee’s business development. Coaches have one main role: ask questions to help their coachee come to decisions and solutions on their own.

An effective coach won’t:

• Tell the coachee what to think
• Tell the coachee what to do
• Spend the whole time talking
• Provide overwhelming negative feedback

Instead, an excellent coach will ask the employee questions to help the employee:

• Think for themself
• Gain a deeper awareness of goals and obstacles to those goals
• Find solutions to overcome obstacles
• Create personal action steps
• Feel more confident in their role

The best coaches realize that the potential is already inside the employee. Their role as a coach is to draw out ideas and solutions from the employee. A good rule of thumb for coaches is: don’t tell, ask.

Now we know what a coach should do. But how do they do it?

The Process of Coaching in the Workplace

The coaching process for each company or individual may be slightly different, but it’s helpful to have an outline, especially if you’re new to coaching.

Here are five steps we believe should be included when planning a coaching session in the workplace. 

1. Connect Regularly

Coaching is a relationship, and relationships grow through regular time spent together. It takes time for coaching (sometimes months) to start reaping the rewards you expect. Find a time to meet or check in with your coachee on a recurring basis. 

Connecting regularly is also a way to build trust and provide consistent feedback. Trust will make your coachee more open to communicating and sharing with you, while feedback will help you both grow in your roles and relationship.

2. Track Progress

Once you start connecting regularly, it’s best to take time to revisit previous steps and goals to track progress. You can track progress by asking questions like:

• How are you feeling since our last meeting?
• Did you perform the actions you said you would?
• Did you accomplish any of your goals?
• Were there any new breakthroughs?
• Did you encounter new problems?

Tracking coachee progress can help you know whether the coachee is setting realistic goals and developing in the correct ways. Progress tracking is also a way to evaluate the effectiveness of the coaching process.

3. Revisit or Set Goals

Tracking employee progress assists you in knowing whether you need to keep working on old goals or whether you can start creating new goals. 

Hopefully, your coachee will be progressing and accomplishing the goals they set. But don’t be discouraged if they aren’t. It’s okay to revisit previous goals, ask new questions, and help them gain a new awareness of what’s happening.  

If your coachee is progressing and accomplishing previous goals, you can move forward into new areas and help them set new goals.

4. Work Toward Solutions

Whether you’re working with your coachee on old or new goals, your job as a coach is to empower them to find and implement solutions. You don’t want to give them answers or tell them what you would do. Rather, ask them questions to help them gain awareness:

• What’s holding you back?
• In an ideal world, what would be the solution?
• Are there new or innovative ways you could approach the situation?
• Is there anyone else we could ask for assistance with this?
• What do you think is the best option?

Get the coachee to think and process the situation. If you tell them what to do every time, they won’t learn to think independently. Asking good questions helps them get a working solution on their own.

5. Create Action Steps

Lastly, you’ll want to work with your coachee to create concrete action steps they can take to reach their goals. These steps should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based.

For example, let’s say your coachee says their goal is to make two sales this month. Some good actions steps might include:

• Prospect 200 potential clients
• Send personalized emails to prospects
• Follow-up with replies within 24 hours
• Send follow-ups to prospects who don’t reply three days after the first email

Employees should feel comfortable and empowered to perform action steps on their own. The next time you connect with them, you can ask if they performed these steps and saw any progress.

How to Implement Coaching in the Workplace

Coaching is the process of guiding the person being coached from one level of competency to another. It’s a way to encourage them in their role and help them develop into a more effective employee. Coaching in a business environment allows an employee to learn how to think on their own, create goals, and take actionable steps towards achieving those goals.

It can be challenging to implement the process of coaching in the workplace, especially in our new remote workforce. Coaching is important regardless of whether or not work is taking place in a physical office. Using an online coaching platform can make remote coaching easier.

At Unboxed Training & Technology, we’ve developed a coaching platform that streamlines the coaching process. Our comprehensive coaching software packs a punch with:

• Real-time feedback
• Two-way communication between the coach and coachee
• Personalized coaching topics at work (in-person or remote)
• Remote accessibility
• Progress tracking

Request a demo of our powerful coaching platform to see how you can start engaging, empowering, and transforming your top employees today.