Coaching Skills for Engagement & Inclusion

Discover how coaching develops new skills, builds self-sufficiency, and overcomes performance roadblocks, boosting confidence and enabling career growth through goal clarity, feedback, and action on goals.

Discover how coaching creates a positive work culture, boosts employee engagement, and advances inclusion. Learn how managers as coaches build trust, model active listening, and foster safe, inclusive work environments.

Pause the course to determine your coaching goal and reflect on what you want to accomplish as a coach, using the goal-setting activity in the participant guide.

Explore the hats of coaching—thought partner, reframing ideas, feedback giver, forward action, teaching and advising, and drawing others out—to help employees think differently, connect ideas, and turn insights into action.

Ask open-ended coaching questions, inspired by appreciative inquiry, to reveal coachees' growth opportunities, gain buy-in, and avoid closed, leading, or solution-oriented prompts.

Master the GROW coaching framework: goal, reality, options, and will, to structure focused conversations and drive concrete, action-oriented outcomes.

Practice active listening with open body language, eye contact, and forward leaning. Clarify understanding, empathize, and summarize to keep conversations on track and reduce distractions.

Avoid coaching pitfalls by resisting rigidity, embracing flexibility, and thorough preparation. Leverage the GROW model with back-and-forth dialogue and thought-provoking questions to keep conversations focused on goals and action items.

Learn continuously about people with different experiences, listen actively to coachees, and adapt questions using the grow model to address systemic barriers and diverse realities.

Take action to remove barriers and build trust in inclusive coaching. Ask how to help, then connect to resources, advocate for them, involve them in decisions, and empower other managers.

Identify coaching pitfalls that undermine inclusion, such as saying 'I understand' or deferring to others, and replace with inclusive responses that validate experiences and empower all.

Assess your coaching skills by reflecting on recent conversations, identifying the inclusive skills you currently use, and inviting someone you coach to observe you for a week and provide feedback.

Tailor your coaching to individual engagement levels by assessing scope, reflecting on goals, and adjusting approaches to balance under, engaged, and over engaged employees for sustained improvement.

Coach under engaged employees by uncovering root causes, addressing signs like boredom, poor communication, and reduced quality, and using grow-based questions to explore development and upskilling.

Coach engaged employees with regular feedback, career conversations, and growth opportunities, using the grow model to explore options and accelerate development.

Coach over engaged employees by uncovering motivation, align goals with team priorities, and guide them to prioritize, rest, and focus on what matters, preventing burnout and overdevelopment.

Coach remotely by sharpening active listening, reducing distractions, keeping the camera on, and documenting meetings to support asynchronous access and remote-aware grow model options.

Create a coaching plan for an engaged learner, establish regular coaching sessions, apply the GROW model questions, and ensure action leads to goal achievement.

Identify common coaching failures and learn to build trust, set expectations, and foster commitment and active coachee participation to drive growth.

Move from identifying your coaching goal and current reality to exploring options for a coaching plan with the Grow model, practice the skills using the attached guide, and take action.