If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. One of the most important roles of a manager is to ensure everyone knows the destination. The most effective managers set expectations and assess their employees’ performance against those expectations, and take a coaching approach to helping them get to the destination. That’s exactly what you’ll learn to do in this course!

You will explore how to collaboratively develop expectations with those you lead. When you encounter expectations that are not being met, you’ll learn how to use "Coaching Algebra" to determine the underlying issues that are impeding performance, and how to respond as a manger-coach. We look forward to you joining us as we explore these essential coaching topics!

In order for coaching to be most effective, it’s important that there is strong culture of coaching and accountability which you will learn how to incorporate into your one-on-one meetings in this course.

We’ll discuss strategies in coaching great employees who are highly motivated, consistent performers, and poor performers. We’ll explore specific tools, such as a coaching agenda, you can employ immediately in your coaching conversations. You will learn how to use the "Coaching Algebra" technique in typical performance scenarios managers encounter. Finally, you’ll walk away from this course with some concrete strategies on how to coach other coach-managers. If you are ready to begin creating a coaching practice within your own organization, please join us in this course!

Throughout the Coaching Skills for Managers specialization, we’ve discussed many topics for improving coaching conversations with our employees. It is now time to put all of that theory and discussion into practice and examine great examples of common coaching conversations!

Note: This course builds on all previous courses in the Coaching Skills for Managers specialization. It is highly recommended that students complete or be familiar with the topics covered in those courses before taking this course. In particular, you should be familiar with the coaching strategies and tools discussed in previous courses (such as the 5 whys technique, resisting what is, among others), and should have a full understanding of the Thought model and the various components of it: circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. By the end of this course, you will be able to demonstrate appropriate and effective strategies when engaging in coaching conversations with those that you lead. By exploring and analyzing common coaching scenarios that are acted out in this course, you will have a great sense of what works well and not so well during such a conversation. Specifically, you'll be able to better differentiate between a developmental coaching approach and a directive management style, discuss new strategies and techniques for dealing with both mind set and skill set gaps, describe how to use the feedback loop effectively in a conversation, and demonstrate the use of good questioning techniques and the thought model to not only help an employee identify issues, but help the employee really change their thinking. The final assignment is all about actually having a coaching conversation with another person where you can apply everything you've learned in this course and throughout the Coaching Skills for Managers specialization. Again, it is highly recommended students complete the other courses in the specialization before taking this one. This peer review assignment, in particular, will be difficult to complete without knowledge of the topics covered in these courses. After going through the course materials and completing the assessments, you will be able to have more effective one-on one-coaching meetings with those you manage and deepen your understanding of the essential practice of coaching conversations.