Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

28 The Five Most Important Qualities in Coaching Your Employees Anywhere in the World

Howard J. Morgan & Ben Croft

Ben is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur who specializes in executive and leadership coaching. He is the founder of WBECS (World Business & Executive Coach Summit), the world’s leading professional coaching event that hosted more than 49,000 attendees this year. He is also the co-founder of The Global Team Coaching Institute, ACE, and five other active companies.

One of the most challenging responsibilities that a leader/manager must do is to effectively coach their employees. Much has been written on the coaching process in the last twenty years, but little has focused on identifying the critical elements for success.

At first glance, many believe that being an effective coach should be inherent or instinctive to a leader. This is untrue for most leaders. For example, Bob, a senior leader with a chemical company, was promoted into a role that required him to lead a 10-person team scattered around the world. His question, given the cultural differences and geographic challenges, what were the key things he needed to do to establish an impactful relationship? To begin, being an effective coach takes intention: it requires the leader/manager to treat coaching in a different manner than most of their other management-focused skills and competencies.

If you have been lucky enough to have experienced a great sports coach as a child (or with your children), you have ...