Leveraging coaching for future leaders

As a chief learning officer, your decisions matter. What you do, how and when you choose to spend company time and resources on developing talent can mean the difference between having people ready now, and ready for future challenges to meet the demands of the business.

Leveraging coaches to support your future leaders’ development is one of those decisions. Coaching can be leveraged in different ways to ensure the pipeline of future leaders is skilled and ready to go. In this article, I will describe how coaching can augment leadership development, promote knowledge transfer and skills on the job and sustain leadership behaviors over time.

Coaching aims to help the person move from where they are to where they want to be. In the case of leadership development, coaching can augment the formal classroom or virtual learning experience. For example, as a CLO, you may be responsible for identifying and developing leaders to ensure a talent bench is ready now or in the future to meet a business need. From needs analysis to program evaluation, your team plays a key role in identifying the target population to receive leader development, providing the training to develop the knowledge and skills needed for success and supporting their ongoing development for readiness.

Fully leveraging coaching for leader development requires a collaborative approach among the learning facilitators, leader/participant, manager and coach. A collaborative approach allows time to clarify roles, identify resources needed and agree on the expected outcomes for the leader. The CLO and learning and development team are instrumental in setting expectations and establishing role clarity before, during and after the learning.

Before attending training, leaders can work with their coaches on key focus areas for development that prepare them for the learning experience. Since the learning may span over several months, it will be important for each person to understand their role in the leader’s development journey.

Leaders may have an alignment meeting with their manager and coach to discuss the leader’s development and the roles each will serve throughout the learning process. Sometimes, the HR or learning leader may participate in the alignment meeting where they agree on expectations. During training, coaches may be present as a learning resource to facilitate conversation, observe and meet one-on-one with participants to discuss the learning experience. This coach is a resource for the leader to access throughout the training. The manager ensures the leader has the support, time and resources to attend.

After training, the leader can work with their manager and coach to align the leader’s learning application back on the job and the type of support the leader may need in time, resources or feedback to take accountability and successfully transfer the learning from the classroom to the job.

Process Overview 

Coaching can become one of the compliance requirements and not a commitment to the leaders’ development. Conversely, leaders who experience coaching without the support of L&D and organizational resources (e.g., manager, CLO/HR team) may not experience the full benefit of the coaching experience. Accountability may suffer when the support structure is not in place and work priorities take precedence.

The CLO can create a system with periodic checkpoints to support the leaders throughout their journey. Leader participants will be responsible for owning their development and asking for what they need when needed, including feedback.

Coaching is not a panacea for L&D, but a resource that can augment the leaders’ learning journey before, during and after a learning experience. The ROI is a talent bench with the knowledge and skills ready now and ready for future roles in the organization.