Overview
Coaching is essentially an informed dialogue to facilitate new skills, create possibilities, set direction, and achieve positive individual and organizational outcomes. This course introduces students to coaching definitions and components, and assumes that coaching skills can be learned and developed. The course lessons give learners tools for building a coaching relationship with employees, while addressing the importance of communication skills and the role of trust and accountability in such coaching relationships, all with an “eye” on the wider/environmental (preferred) outcome. Ideally, students must be open and willing to reflect, build emotional awareness, and experiment with change, proceeding from the inside-out. Establishing and cultivating a coaching relationship between student-as-leader and a coachee (i.e., experiential learning) is a core requisite of the course. As such, learners should identify a “coachee” before the course starts (direct report employee preferred over a peer/colleague). This coachee will be coached by the student over the four weeks of the course.
Objectives
After completing this course, learners will be able to:
- define coaching for a leadership context, and describe the benefits of coaching within organizations;
- explain the role and importance of trust in organizations and coaching relationships;
- discuss the importance of communication styles and intentions in coaching;
- describe and apply the skills of effective questioning and listening;
- outline the elements of a high-performance organizational culture based on coaching;
- explain the importance of accountability in organizations.
Evaluation
Students will be evaluated based on their participation in weekly online discussions (60%) and one comprehensive written assignment (40%). To pass the course, students must achieve 60% or more on each of the credit activities.