Coaching

A discussion aimed at helping someone to learn how to improve or maintain their performance.

Coaching someone in order to improve their performance (ie behaviour) is a mixture of appraisals and counselling. If appraisals were done more frequently and less formally than they usually are, they would be synonymous with coaching.

On-the-job coaching aims to help people to learn from experience in a low-key, routine way (see Learning from experience). Coaching usually occurs when someone has made a mistake or not performed to the required standard. This is helpful because learning from mistakes cannot be taken for granted, especially as people frequently don’t even recognise a mistake as a mistake. However, coaching is just as fruitful after someone has succeeded in doing something well. People often don’t understand why things went well and are therefore not in a position to repeat the success. Coaching is the process that helps people to review, conclude and plan so that they make fewer mistakes and have more successes.