If you are in a leadership position within your organization, it is quite likely that one of your responsibilities is coaching your staff. In a poll conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership of its Leading Effectively e-newsletter readers, 70 percent of the 262 respondents said that coaching others is part of their job description. Interestingly, very few of these leaders has received any formal training in how to coach. Specifically, the poll questions and results were:

What types of training or guidance have you had on how to coach others?
Respondents said they learned about coaching most commonly from “reading” (70 percent); “figured out my own way of coaching” (62 percent); and “learned from watching others” (60 percent).

What types of training or guidance would you like to have on how to coach others?
Respondents said they would most like “coaching programs or workshops” (68%); “opportunities to practice coaching” (54%) and “books and articles” (53%).

Although there are a number of good books available on the topic of coaching, it is difficult to become a good coach by just reading. I offer a one-day experiential workshop that introduces leaders to the coaching role and 5 critical coaching skills. If you are interested in learning more about this workshop or bringing it to your organization, please contact me.

Below are some other results of the CCL poll on coaching.

Have you ever had a one-to-one leadership coach?
60 percent of respondents said they have worked one-on-one with a leadership coach.

What was the most valuable outcome of the coaching?

If you were able to work with a coach, which outcomes would you want?

What is your level in your organization?
Upper middle managers (26%) had the strongest representation in the poll, followed by top management and executive management (22% each).

In what sector do you work?
Employees of businesses with 499 or fewer employees made up the largest block of respondents (26%), followed by those in businesses with 500 to 4,999 employees (21%) and businesses with 10,000 or more employees (18%).