In my experience anyone named on a succession plan or identified as part of a talent pool benefits hugely from coaching.

In my last blog post I shared two reasons why coaching is the first talent development strategy you should implement.

There is a third.

Coaching has an invaluable role to play in accelerating leader development.

Increasingly, we’ve recognised that leadership development takes place over time (rather than as the outcome of a single event) and that it should be integrated with day-to-day work. 

In times of high-growth and high-change, you need an approach that will have the greatest impact on leaders’ performance at that specific time and with minimal interruption and time away from the business.

That’s what coaching can help achieve.

Through coaching, leaders can focus on the one or two key leadership lessons that will really make a difference to their performance.  And a coach can help them identify the work tasks, projects and experiences which will give them the opportunities to learn those lessons.

Coaching helps leaders make the most of these experiences, by facilitating reflection and feedback.

And coaching can help the leader determine what knowledge, information or formal learning they need before engaging in those experiences or to address a gap identified as a consequence of the experience.  This will determine what workshops, elearning, books etc comprise the “training” element of any leadership development plan.

You may recognise that this approach is derived from a concept known as 70:20:10 based on research by McCall, Eichinger and MLombardo at the Center for Creative Leadership.

The 70:20:10 concept says that we learn 70% from practical experiences and doing things; 20% from conversations and relationships (coaching, mentoring, supervision etc) and 10% of our skills and knowledge through formal training inputs (workshops, elearning etc.).

So coaching is right at the heart of any leadership development and talent management.  Next week I’ll introduce you to the concept of Talent Coaching which brings these two concepts together.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, one of the things I do is coach high-potential employees i.e. focussed development to align their career aspirations with the needs of the organisation in a way that benefits both.

If you’d like a quick chat about how it might work in your organisation, please let me know.  I’m always happy help.