The Coaching Triangle in Organizations

The illustration below shows what we define as the coaching triangle and enables you to separate performance coaching from developmental coaching. Our program covers both styles of coaching and begins with performance coaching.

It is important to understand the two and how they are different so that you know what methodologies to use and when. 

In 2009, the Corporate Leadership Council conducted an international study to find the answer to the question “What is the single biggest driver of employee performance”? The answer surprised them specifically, Honest, Informal, Voluntary, Immediate and Specific Praise from my direct manager. We have taken this at StellaHP to create the acronym HI-VIS. Be a HI-VIS Coach and Leader who gives their people:

Honest, Informal, Voluntary, Immediate, and Specific praise, or positive feedback. 

A Haphazard Approach

Unfortunately, many organizational leadership coaching programs haphazardly employ coaching techniques without truly understanding what coaching is and the different reasons and methodologies for achieving coaching success. 

All too often, we have gone into organizations and observed that they have been using the wrong coaching approach to deal with an issue, often resulting in performance decreasing even further and people pairing coaching with criticism. 

We consistently see developmental coaching methods being used to deal with day-to-day performance and performance coaching methods very rarely being used at all. 

People leaders use the term coaching to identify and communicate employee inadequacies and then proceed to tell the employee what they need to do to fix or improve this. This IS NOT Coaching. At best, it is simply criticism and very quickly it will diminish the performance, engagement, and productivity of the employee. Employees then pair or associate the word coaching with being told what they are doing wrong. 

It is important that employees pair or associate positive emotions with coaching such as excitement, curiosity, inspiration, self-belief, and self-confidence, and think of coaching as a tool to help and encourage them. 

What is Performance Coaching?

Performance coaching is coaching people to perform to the best of their ability in their day-to-day job - what they are employed to do. This is about coaching people to get better at what they are doing and how they are doing it. This approach helps the individual, team, and organization achieve better results. 

It is letting people know what they are specifically doing well, where they are “on track” and when relevant and appropriate where they are "off track". Most importantly, it is helping people find solutions and getting back on track through asking questions. 

Performance coaching is done daily across your team, both formal (systems) and informal (conversations). 

What is Developmental Coaching?

At first glance, the term “developmental coaching” may seem to be an oxymoron, since all coaching is naturally intended to develop certain characteristics and strengths within an individual. However, many coaching programs carelessly employ so-called coaching techniques that have little or no effect. 

Developmental Coaching is about “what else” is important outside of everyday on-the-job performance. It is bigger picture orientated and generally more formal in its approach. Developmental coaching is an ongoing growth process between leaders and their people. 

GUIDE Coaching Model

Goal - What do you want to achieve?

Understanding - What is currently happening?

Investigate - What can you do to get there?

Decide - What is to be done, when, and by whom?

Evaluate - How are they tracking? What next?

Developmental coaching is about working with an individual on more formal goals and outcomes that develop them as human beings. It is taking a person from where they are to where they want to be, and helping them recognize the changes they need to make and supporting them to take the actions they need to take to get there. 

Developmental coaching can use assessments, profiling, feedback, and past experiences to take into account the stage of development that a person is in.