How Employee Coaching Can Boost Your Team's Confidence

Employee coaching is an interactive and highly individualized program that can help your team members unlock their own potential and move forward in their careers. Whether you’ve been asked to be a coach or are looking for new ways to support your team, employee coaching might be the perfect fit.

But what is employee coaching and how can it help employees build the confidence they need to push themselves further?

Often included as part of an organization’s talent development plan, coaching and mentoring are often used interchangeably—and they do overlap. But each type of relationship has its own purpose:

• Coaching is about empowerment. Coaching relationships typically have a set time period and a clear purpose. Think of a sports coach who focuses on one specific aspect of someone’s capabilities and pushes them toward excellence.
• Mentorship provides guidance along a journey. Taking the long view of an employee’s career, a mentor provides advice, insight, and perspective, not as a one-off interaction but any time their help is needed along the way.

Mentorship relationships can be deeply personal, but they’re also more hands-off. As a coach, you’re much more likely to be directly involved as you work alongside an employee to help them learn to navigate and avoid missteps.

Different types of employee coaching

The word “coaching” can be preloaded with expectations that executive coaching is for top performers while remedial coaching is for people at risk of falling behind. The reality is a lot less polarized. Coaching has become essential for any organization that wants to achieve positive results over the longer term.

Janet Lockhart-Jones, EdD, founder and chief learning leader at Project Partners Consulting, told SHRM that companies are increasingly making coaching available from the C-Suite to entry-level employees: "[Coaching] can give [employees] an opportunity to express what their challenges are. And it can give them a partner to help them brainstorm what some solutions might be and hold them accountable to act on those things that they say are important to them.”

While coaching is individualized, its purpose often fits within one of the following categories:

• Career coaching nurtures professional aspirations, such as defining a career path, setting goals and objectives, or creating a plan for personal growth and development.
• Executive coaching helps senior managers and executives lead effectively and improve their performance. It may focus on specific considerations such as leadership and management capabilities, strategic planning, or change management.
• Developmental coaching, or leadership coaching, moves an employee toward their next leadership position. It’s a forward-thinking relationship that may help explore leadership styles, strengthen strategic thinking capabilities, or navigate workplace challenges.
• Performance coaching helps employees thrive in their current positions. Coaching might center around feedback from colleagues, performance-driven targets, or an employee development plan.
• Skills coaching taps into the knowledge of an expert who can teach and share information while also stepping back so the employee can learn for themselves.
• Transition coaching supports employees through periods of change. Transitions may be personal, such as returning from an extended leave, or professional, such as starting in a new position.

From finding the right coach to identifying the steps to take in order to find success, when a coaching strategy fits the needs of the coachee, the impact can be meaningful and powerful.

Employee coaching scenarios and examples

A study by coaching platform BetterUp—conducted during the COVID-19 crisis—found coached individuals were more productive (129%), more optimistic (112%), and more satisfied with life (129%) than their uncoached colleagues.

That makes coaching a flexible tool that can benefit your team in many different ways. Let’s look at a few examples.

An inexperienced leader having an impact on team morale

Emma was recently promoted to the head of communications. She has a wealth of experience and has always been a top performer—but has never led a team before. She’s struggling in her role as manager and it’s having an impact on the team’s morale and performance.

Developmental coaching can help Emma work more effectively with her team, align her approach with the company’s culture and values, and build self-confidence as she moves forward.

The first step is to identify the specific challenges that Emma is running into:

• What’s her perspective?
• How does she interact with her team?
• What feedback does the team give when asked about Emma’s performance?

With the support of a coach, Emma can practice critical management skills such as communication and delegation. She can also learn different leadership styles and how to apply them to her situation.

An employee considering a move to a new position

Samuel is a software engineer who’s interested in product management. His company offers opportunities for lateral movement and training, but he isn’t sure he wants to make the move or what to do next.

Career coaching can help Samuel explore his career aspirations more fully and be certain about his next career move.

By combining coaching with on-the-job training, such as job shadowing, Samuel can gain insights into the work of a product manager and clarity around what he wants to do next. If he decides to transition to product management, a coach can work with Samuel to assess his transferable skills and educational options, then help him come up with a strategy to move on to the new role.

Support through the onboarding process

Johanna has just graduated from college. Her technical skills are sharp, but she’s never worked in an office before and feels apprehensive as she starts her new job.

An experienced employee can help coach Johanna as she adjusts to this new environment. The coach can introduce her to the company’s culture, establish expectations, explain the team’s workflow, and help her integrate more quickly.

Equipped with the company’s employee onboarding plan, a coach can also help create a welcoming and informative experience for Johanna. Regular check-ins will help Johanna understand her progress through frequent feedback, expert insights, and shared resources.

Returning to work after medical leave

Mateo has been out of the office for several months, recovering from major surgery. He’s excited to get back to work, but anxious about getting up to speed on current projects and wary of potential setbacks to his recovery.

A transition coach can help Mateo get back into a routine that incorporates strategies that can help him balance work with his health requirements.

For a successful reintegration, a gradual approach could help rebuild his confidence and support him through any challenges that might come up. Regular check-ins can help Mateo monitor his progress and make adjustments if needed.

Adjust to a higher workload

Celeste normally excels in her customer service role. However, the company recently had a jump in users, which is generating more customer inquiries. Celeste is struggling to keep up and her customer satisfaction scores have dropped.

A performance coach could work with Celeste to strengthen her customer service skills and develop the capacity to manage her workload more efficiently. Ultimately, the aim is to get Celete’s customer satisfaction scores back up, improve her overall job performance, and rebuild her confidence.

To start, a coach could conduct a skills gap analysis and create a learning plan for her to strengthen key skills. Celeste and the coach could work together to troubleshoot her time management strategies, which may benefit from a different approach to prioritization, goal setting, or organization. Timely feedback will be an important part of helping Celeste feel like she’s back on top.

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How to implement an employee coaching program

Coaching is a partnership that takes commitment from both sides. If you aim to launch an employee coaching program, how can you create a framework that helps ensure the coachee gets the guidance they need to grow? Here are five steps for you to consider as you move forward.

Step 1: Check that you have buy-in from senior leaders

If coaching is part of your organization’s investment in employee development, getting support from the leadership team isn’t likely to be an issue. If this is something you want to start implementing for your team, however, executive support can ensure the budget, staff time, and resources for the program to succeed.

If implementing a coaching program could impact other teams or managers, share your plans with them and consider a collaborative approach that welcomes their feedback and participation.

Arranging training for internal coaches before the program launches can create a more consistent experience and help participants feel better prepared. Implementing peer coaching, allowing space for coaches to share their experiences and support each other, can help participants practice and improve.

Step 2: Set SMART goals and objectives

Because effective coaching typically needs a set purpose and a clearly defined timeline, it’s important for a coaching relationship to be guided by specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and objectives.

These aspirations should have a scope of work that fits within the coaching relationship, with targets that are within the employee’s sphere of influence.

Coaching often supports the goals defined within an employee development plan. However, if there isn’t already a plan in place, a coaching plan can serve as a helpful framework. This may include:

• The purpose for employee coaching
• The current baseline for the areas of focus
• Anticipated results and benefits
• An outline of the learning strategy
• A timeline for coaching

Step 3: Establish clear expectations for the coaching relationship

People often have different understandings of what it means to be a coach or a coachee, so it’s important to define this up front. How a coaching relationship takes shape will also vary from one coaching relationship to the next.

Setting clear expectations may include:

• Reviewing the purpose for coaching and desired outcomes
• Sharing your intended coaching strategy
• Confirming privacy and confidentiality
• Deciding how best to connect between check-ins
• Identifying additional support that might be needed
• Setting a regular schedule for meetings and feedback

Step 4: Learn how to give effective feedback

Regular feedback is essential for a strong employee coaching partnership, but it isn’t just about the timing. It can be difficult to give professional feedback in a way that’s accurate and inspires people to do better. However, effective feedback is essential—and so is learning how to give it.

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Step 5: Evaluate your efforts

Evaluation of employee coaching ideally goes two ways: measuring the coachee’s achievements and understanding the effectiveness of your approach. Take a critical eye to your coaching efforts:

• Ask for feedback from the employee you’ve been coaching. What worked well and what can you do differently? Did you meet the coaching goals?
• Consider obvious changes. What changes have you observed in the coachee? How have they applied the skills and strategies you’ve discussed?
• Evaluate yourself. What challenges have come up during the coaching engagement and how did you manage them? Consider strengths and weaknesses you’ve noticed in yourself, questions that prompted insightful discussions, or situations you might approach differently in the future.

If an employee coaching program is new for your team, you may also want to review business outcomes so you can track the impact on the company itself. For example, you can look at how coaching has had an impact on productivity, quality of work, retention, or other outputs.

What it takes to be a great employee coach

Sometimes a coaching role is best filled externally, by engaging a subject matter expert or a professional coach. And sometimes, it’s best to find a coach from within the organization, such as a more experienced colleague or manager—like you.

Stepping into the position of coach can be intimidating, but by setting your own expectations for the process and planning ahead, you can take the lead in a productive relationship.

Being an effective coach may not be what you think

In one study, business professor Julia Milner and business consultant Trenton Milner found that most managers don’t know what good coaching looks like.

“Managers tend to think they’re coaching when they’re actually just telling their employees what to do,” they wrote. Pushed into a coaching role with little-to-no training, managers often don’t see that they’re missing the point: empowering the coachee to find the answers themselves.

Dan Rockwell, a leadership and management expert, acknowledges how tempting it can be to provide guidance without answers when you have them—and how counterproductive it is to a coaching relationship. “Answer-giving creates dependency,” he wrote. “Guidance shows respect, builds confidence, and enables action.”

This type of leadership, Rockwell explained, means keeping your focus on the panoramic view—a critical role for a coach. There are also some situations where providing the information directly is the best choice. Most of the time, however, it’s better to use your experience to ask questions that guide an employee’s thinking through the specifics of a situation.

Sharpen your existing skills

Drawing on literature as well as their own experience, Milner and Milner’s management study focused on nine core coaching skills—some of which echo Rockwell’s advice:

• Listening
• Questioning
• Giving feedback
• Assisting with goal-setting
• Showing empathy
• Letting the coachee arrive at their own solution
• Recognizing and pointing out strengths
• Providing structure
• Encouraging a solution-focused approach

These soft skills, also referred to as interpersonal or people skills, are attributes that help strengthen teams and organizations. You’ve likely honed many of them to get where you are today, and they’ll serve you well as you become a coach. If you want a boost, many career development tools are available to provide help—including resources specific to coaching and mentoring.

Finding your own path to becoming a great employee coach

Employee coaching is dynamic and unique to the people involved, with many ways to approach different types of coaching needs. There’s no easy template to follow. But there are best practices to guide you, such as defining clear goals and objectives, establishing expectations, and empowering coachees to create their own success.

As you move forward with your coaching program, Upwork is here to help. On the world’s work marketplace, you can find business coaches to coach your team directly, executive coaches to help you fine-tune your coaching, and subject matter experts who are happy to share their knowledge with others. Search for talent to support your employee coaching program.