The Benefits of Professional Coaching: 6 Ways it Can Boost Productivity

"Coaching isn’t therapy. It’s product development, with you as the product." — Fast Company Business experts often cite coaching as an effective way of enabling employees, by making sure they embrace their jobs and maximize performance. By coaching, I don’t mean those all-hands-on-deck motivational sessions where a celebrity or high-powered speaker (like me!) delivers a keynote address aimed at improving solidarity or general productivity. Those definitely have their place, but count as coaching only in the most general sense. Coaching isn’t the same as an annual evaluation, either, though some coaching may take place during the evaluation. It isn’t mentoring, because that usually doesn’t involve a manager. Nor is training, another essential, the same as coaching. True coaching involves one-on-one, informal face-time between a manager and his or her direct report, in which both parties discuss what the employee needs to do, learn or become