This guide is part of a progression set comprised of Core, Advanced, and Emerging Coaching and Mentoring practices.

What it is

Coaching and Mentoring at the emerging level involves the directed development of key employee populations identified as having a disproportionate impact on the company’s success. This engages not only top and senior leaders but also more senior individual contributors and (earlier-career) high potentials whose job performance is crucial to achieving the most strategic objectives and initiatives. Such development may be delivered in individual or group settings, with the latter focused on expanding the reach of the development. At the same time, participants simultaneously learn to act as coaches and mentors themselves. These practices include integrating programming into other talent management strategies and processes, such as leadership and management development, succession management, career development, etc., for enhanced reinforcement of lessons learned in coaching or mentoring sessions, plus strengthening of all programming. 

Technology comes to the forefront, with platforms that support coaching and mentoring engagements through matching, assessments, scheduling, goal tracking, documentation, and online coaching and mentoring support. Using these platforms simplifies administering and delivering coaching and mentoring in ways that enable a company to provide thousands of hours of coaching and mentoring on an ongoing basis. Demonstrating the true value of coaching and mentoring is often a challenge that can be addressed by applying statistics and analytics for tracking and reporting.   Such measurement of coaching and mentoring progress and outcomes is a key practice at this level, with the collection and reporting of critical process, effectiveness, and impact metrics informing the return on investment for this capability.

Why use it

Coaching and mentoring are highly individualized development activities that bring the most valued employees into contact with experts to successfully develop employee skills and capabilities and navigate to more influential positions. Coaches and mentors leverage unique skills to help those individuals enhance their ability to succeed and provide guidance on their goals and aspirations. By targeting the employees most closely aligned with the achievement of critical corporate objectives and initiatives, such development becomes focused on the sustainability of business successes through its current and future leaders. Technology and measurement further the effort through increased management and delivery efficiencies, syndication of the capabilities across expansive geographic boundaries, and provision of markers for the tracking and continued refinement of program effectiveness.

By focusing on leaders and their future successors, as well as high potentials (HiPos), a more robust and diverse leadership capability can evolve to support future growth and transformations. Through group-based offerings, participants can receive valuable feedback and guidance about their leadership capabilities and demands and practice their coaching and mentoring skills by providing the same to their peers in their assigned cohort. They can learn through real-life case studies that their peers are encountering and struggling with and by hearing the guidance the others receive. 

Technology enhances the quality of the development experience by supporting their matching to the most appropriate coach or mentor, simplifying the administration of the relationship, and improving the tracking of progress (e.g., goals taken, achievements, etc.) in the relationship. Through well-developed measurement, the delivery efficiency and overall effectiveness of all coaching and mentoring relationships can be monitored, skill and capability growth can be evaluated, and coach/mentor performance can be assessed and improved upon.

Outcomes

The adoption of these practices can lead directly to a more robust and well-populated pool of current leaders, their successors, and future leaders. With properly leveraged identification processes and tools, the highest potential business, functional, and critical workforce segment leaders can be developed in a highly tailored and targeted manner well in advance of their rising into those roles. Using group programs, current and future leaders can be developed and continuously assessed (for strengths and weaknesses) against and with their peers for improved pool management.  

The deployment of emerging technologies enables a more streamlined and cost-efficient provision of coaching services. Employees worldwide can access qualified (and certified) coaches who are fluent in their language and culture, prepared to guide them while meeting company standards, and whose efforts can be tracked and measured for utilization and effectiveness. Matching technologies are also available that can more effectively help guide the employee through the selection process based on their profile, profession, industry, and personal style.

Practice guides at this level

Targeting critical skills employees for coaching and mentoring to enhance business results.

Developing key and critical role-holding employees based on their membership in both a position or function and their longer-term potential.

Creating group coaching and mentoring programs to broaden and syndicate the potential for impact.

Syndicating the use of coaching and mentoring deeper into the ranks by more efficiently delivering coaching and mentoring to targeted groups of employees.

Leveraging technology that supports coaching and mentoring programs.

Scaling coaching and mentoring programs using technological solutions that offer online administration and program management capabilities.

Measuring the impact of coaching and mentoring for tracking action and success.

Identifying the most appropriate and useful metrics through careful assessment of the purpose of coaching and mentoring and reliance on best practices in process and outcome measurement.