Coaching Conversations

Help your people solve their own problems, and grow in the process.

The Problem

Coaching is one of the rarest, most prized and most difficult skills to acquire in the workforce.

Under pressure, most leaders default to giving answers. It feels helpful, but it quietly keeps their people dependent and it stops them scaling their leadership.

The Insight

The leaders who master coaching have a mindset and a method that unlock the potential of individuals and teams. They resist solving the problem, and instead help their people solve it for themselves.

The Program

In this program leaders learn the mindset and method of great coaching, and practise it on real conversations. Over more than fifteen years, Michelle Rushton and Shaun Kenny, founders of People of Influence, have taught this method to thousands of leaders.

Watch
Telling, coaching or neglect?

Great coaching is a balance of support and stretch. Lean too far one way and we take over, too far the other and we leave people to fend for themselves.

Coaching sits somewhere in the middle: we challenge people to find their own solutions, and support them to get there with great questions and deep listening.

“Give a person a fish, feed them for a night.
Coach a person to fish, feed them for the rest of their life.”

Key Outcomes

What your leaders walk away with

01
Know what great looks like
Leaders understand what great coaching looks like, and the KPIs that tell them they are coaching, not telling.
02
See where they stand today
Through the Growing Great People Diagnostic, an honest read on how well each leader currently Stretches and Supports their people (coaching is key to Support).
03
Strategies they can use immediately
A simple, repeatable structure and a bank of powerful questions we've curated over 15 years, to use in the very next conversation.
04
Practise the skill for real
Each leader coaches, and is coached, on a real problem, with feedback from a colleague and the facilitator, so they have a baseline for their current skills and clarity as to what they need to work on next.
05
A toolkit and an action plan
Each participant receives a Takeaway Toolkit, plus their action plan built in the session for themselves and their team.
06
Nudges that reinforce over time
Behavioural nudges that remind and reinforce the coaching habit long after the session.
The Diagnostic

The Growing Great People Diagnostic

Coaching is one part of a bigger picture. Pair the program with the Growing Great People Diagnostic, a holistic measurement and improvement tool for being a great people leader. It measures how well a leader Stretches and Supports their people, across coaching, feedback and the other conversations that grow people, then tracks their progress over time.

Support
How well the leader provides the encouragement, coaching and mentoring their people need to succeed.
Stretch
How well the leader challenges their people to grow, through high expectations, accountability and increasing responsibility.
See the Diagnostic →
The Growing Great People Diagnostic report shown on a laptop
Session Flow

How the session unfolds

Timings and emphasis are tailored to your group and the time available.

1
What good coaching looks like
The Coaching KPIs: the percentage time talking for coach and coachee, the ratio of questions, what great questions look like, who is doing the most effortful thinking.
2
Hold up the mirror
They review the results of their Growing Great People Diagnostic to see how their coaching is currently perceived and compare this to what great looks like. The organisation's Dashboard shows patterns across the cohort.
3
Structure the conversation
A simple, repeatable problem-solving framework, plus a bank of our favourite coaching questions.
4
Apply coaching flexibly
How to coach across different situations, from a formal 1:1 or development conversation to a quick moment in the corridor.
5
Practice
Each leader coaches a real goal or problem and is coached in return, tracking the Coaching KPIs, with feedback from a colleague and the facilitator.
6
The Golden Rules of coaching
Ask before tell. Coach the person, not the problem. Silence is where the magic happens. Believe the person is capable and resourceful enough to solve the problem for themselves.
7
Make it real
Each leader commits to the specific shifts they will make to implement better quality coaching conversations into their day to day.
8
Embedding
Over the following weeks to months: behavioural nudges, facilitated peer group coaching, individual coaching - a range of options depending on the engagement.
Format & Delivery

Shaped around your context

Duration
2 hours, half day or full day
Delivery
In person or virtual
Audience
People leaders at any level
Two ways to work with us

People of Influence is the consultancy through which Michelle Rushton and Shaun Kenny deliver leadership programs, team offsites and impactful conferences.

Contact People of Influence →

Leadership Engine is our proprietary platform for measuring and improving leadership effectiveness with diagnostics, dashboards and behavioural nudges.

Visit Leadership Engine →