Coaching sessions are not always formal. Research shows that managers who coach their team members continuously with and without formal sessions get better results. A staff member, who feels comfortable in sharing her issues and seeks your advice, can be coached successfully without even realising it. On the other hand, a formal coaching session might be resented by some especially if they are coached by someone who has great influence in their life, such as a manager who can promote or demote them.

Research and experience show that coaching can be quite effective when it is given by peers and colleagues. They have access to similar level information and probably understand the coachee better as they must tackle similar issues daily. The pressure of showing off the performance in front of the manager is reduced since your colleagues do not evaluate you as much as a manager might do. It is possible to take advantage of this concept in setting up an effective formal coaching system. 

One system that has been used in the business world with great results is to use third-party peer coaching. This is how it works.

Each member of the staff is assigned a coach. This is certainly not the immediate manager, supervisor, or line manager, nor any of the immediate peers or colleagues that the employee works with daily. The coach is usually a person who has been in the company a few more years than the employee, so there is a sense of seniority involved. This helps the psychological aspects of being coached by someone who is at least perceived to know more. This coach is usually selected from a different department who is involved in a similar work and does not work daily with the employee. If they know each other already and are acquainted, the result is even better. 

The setup is that the coach and the coachee, will meet each other every six month or so (the frequency is up to you of course). The important point is that the timing of this is not correlated with the employee’s performance appraisal, or annual wage increase to minimise the impact of the coaching session with the need for money. The coaching session is designed to capture issues, aspirations and goals and is more like a career advice given by another employee. As a result, the designated coach not only reflects on the coachee’s issues, but also shares his or her own experience of moving up the ladder in the company. The other benefit of this system is that the coach is not one of the immediate people that the employee works with. The employee is free to complain or raise issues even about his own manager. This is quite powerful as it lets the process to be observed from a relatively neutral point of view.

The coaching session is then recorded, goals are setup, actions are identified, and the log of the session is archived through the HR system, ready for retrieval for the next session a few months later. A separate form can be sent off for the attention of the manager which can include a summary of what has been discussed. The content of this is agreed by the coach and the coachee. The coach can also separately inform the HR and the manager of issues that rose through another form or simple informal chat. This is usually useful if the coach suspects some friction developing between the employee and his peers or just a general issue that needs to be addressed by the manager perhaps by approaching other team members. For example, the coach may realise that the employee has been intimidated by other team members though the employee might not have thought of it in that sense. The manager should become aware of this kind of situation so the necessary steps can be taken, indirectly, to solve the problem.

The system proves to be quite effective and observations in practice have shown that staff look forward to their regular coaching sessions. They are free to approach their designated coach at any time and this can create a tremendous feeling of support within the company.

Now that you have become familiar with the principles of coaching and the general process of setting up a session, it is time to examine a coaching session in more detail and see what methods work best.