The Coaching School
Welcome to The Coaching School—the podcast where leadership development is taught like a cooking school.
We've reimagined our long-running Coaching Conversations podcast into a practical, engaging learning experience designed to help leaders become exceptional coaches.
At The Coaching School, we believe coaching isn't a personality trait—it's a skill that can be learned, practiced, and mastered.
Every episode gives you another ingredient, another recipe, or another secret sauce you can immediately use to develop your people.
Our Coaching Ingredients are the different types of coaching every leader should know—from one-on-one coaching and group coaching to peer coaching, observational coaching, career coaching, self-coaching, and AI-assisted coaching.
Our Coaching Recipes combine those ingredients into proven, step-by-step approaches for real workplace challenges. Whether you're coaching accountability, motivation, communication, teamwork, difficult attitudes, performance improvement, emotional intelligence, or career development, we'll show you exactly how to structure the conversation.
Then we share the Secret Sauces—the small coaching techniques that create extraordinary results. You'll discover powerful questions, accountability strategies, learning projects, recognition techniques, feedback models, motivational approaches, and practical coaching habits that transform ordinary conversations into meaningful moments of growth.
Every episode is designed to be practical, actionable, and easy to apply. Our goal is simple: help leaders feel more confident coaching their employees while helping employees feel great about getting better.
Whether you're a new supervisor, an experienced executive, an HR professional, a coach, or someone passionate about developing people, The Coaching School will provide you with the tools, frameworks, and confidence to coach more effectively.
So grab your notebook, pull up a chair in our coaching kitchen, and let's start cooking up stronger leaders, stronger teams, and stronger workplace cultures.
The Coaching School—where great leaders learn the recipes that help people grow.
The Coaching School
Beyond Quick Fixes: Understanding the Three Dimensions of Effective Coaching
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Welcome to Coaching Conversations
We have created a NEW and Innovative line of books called Workplace Coaching Books. These books use QR codes with embedded audio and video lessons speaking directly to the reader. Each book comes with assessments and journal based coaching pages where they document what they've learned and what they've applied. In addition each book comes with the self analysis link that prompts them to share what they've learned and what they've put into action leading to greater learner application a
Coaching Talks is a dynamic leadership development speaking series customized to your needs. Need help spreading the value and application of workplace coaching? Let us help:
We provide many styles of speaking services:
- We provide virtual keynotes
- We specialize in 4 part virtual series (we always customize)
- We have a unique feature called "Speaker Tracks" where we send to all audience members reinforcement lessons after the talk (to the pc or cell phone), thus keeping people on track after the talk
Get More Info Here: https://form.jotform.com/241193119118149
Core Coaching Challenges
Speaker 1The biggest challenge that we have in the coaching field is really understanding , I would say , our core objective . See , a lot of times when we're coaching we can also have people redefine coaching . So let me give you three fundamental views of what coaching can be or the types of coaching . Number one spot coaching . Some people call it observational coaching . When we spot something , we then coach to it . So if we see a teller in a credit union asking closed-ended questions and they should be asking open-ended questions we spot that . Here's the funny thing when we spot things , we're typically triggered by what we see as wrong or things that we want to correct . Spot things we're typically triggered by what we see as wrong or things that we want to correct . Yet we also know the flip side of that is the Gallup organization reports people engage eight times more when we lead with strengths . That's why we coach . That's
Three Fundamental Coaching Types
Speaker 1why we leverage strengths .
Speaker 1Number two situational coaching . Situational coaching can be where a situation is brought or created that a leader has to coach to , such as two employees not working well together . What do we typically do ? We bring them in . We rhetorically tell them they've got to work better together , like they don't know that , and then , when the conversation ends , we say to ourselves well , that was my coaching session . Two people who aren't working well together are going to need a lot of coaching to continue to work well together . So it becomes a second innate behavioral habit . The third type of coaching is what we teach . It doesn't mean it's the only thing that leaders should do , but that's continuous coaching .
Speaker 1Calendar-driven coaching . Scheduled sessions focus on a particular area of development . Here's why , if you take a basketball player , they have to play defense , they have to play offense . We could probably coach to 100 things on both sides , from both offense and defense . So if I talked about every single thing that went into dribbling , shooting , form , running plays , it would be overwhelming . So we encourage people to pick one or two things . Focus on that
Continuous Coaching Benefits
Speaker 1over a period of time until they have predictable , sustainable results .
Speaker 1What are the stages that we know that they get there ? First , it's effort . Are they producing effort ? When you have people at the effort stage , just reward them . Stay away from constructive feedback . Number two when they get to the progress level which is right between effort and results and we pinpoint where they're progressing , they know what to repeat . Yet if we only do spot coaching and we're typically triggered by what's wrong , they will never know where they're progressing . So here's the challenge that we have everybody , when we're coaching , we have to realize fundamentally
Stages of Coaching Progress
Speaker 1and there's certainly more we can spot coach which tends to lean towards the constructive we can situationally coach .
Speaker 1We tend to put ourself into a false sense of accomplishment , saying well , I coach them , to a false sense of accomplishment saying well , I coach them . People change slow . People require coaching on a continuous basis . So I always love Michael Phelps' depiction of coaching along with Katie Ledecky , probably the two most decorated Olympians in American history , I think in the history of the Olympics and he would always say about his coach he said look , I know how to do a stroke , yet I also know that I can create some bad habits where I start to cut corners with my stroke . It requires a coach to see that , but then I have to put it into practice .
Speaker 1The same premise , the same exact premise , holds true for leaders to become better coaches , we have to practice . And , yes , it requires what I call conversational excellence , not conversational perspective , conversational excellence . See , when we're improving we feel better . Evidenced by the study at Harvard by Teresa Amble in her book called the Progress Principle when we are progressing . We are at our most motivated state 76% of the time . Almost 8 out of 10 employees said I feel at my most motivated
The Progress Principle Motivation
Speaker 1state when I'm progressing , not reward , recognition and money . So human beings require coaching , they require positivity . They need positivity . When you spot coach , go look for the good stuff , because there's a lot out there . What are your thoughts ?