Coaching Conversations

About the Course

The most powerful leadership tool is not the answer you give; it is the question you ask. This practical course introduces coaching as a leadership stance, equipping participants to move from directing and advising to unlocking others’ thinking, ownership, and growth. Through live practice, structured frameworks, and real workplace scenarios, participants build the presence, listening depth, and questioning skills needed to hold coaching conversations that inspire action and accountability.

What You Will Learn

• Define professional coaching and distinguish it from leadership, mentoring, consulting, and advising
• Cultivate the grounded, curious, judgment-free presence that creates safety and openness in conversations
• Practice active listening that captures meaning, emotion, and what is unsaid
• Ask open, forward-looking questions that expand thinking rather than narrow it
• Structure coaching conversations using a goal-focused framework, from goal to reality to options to committed action
• Close conversations in ways that generate commitment, follow-through, and self-directed growth
• Recognize and avoid common coaching traps such as advice in disguise, judgment, and premature solutions

Key Topics & Agenda

• What Coaching Is and Is Not: Coaching vs. Managing, Mentoring, and Consulting
• The Coaching Mindset: Presence, Curiosity, and Trust
• Active Listening and the Levels of Listening
• Powerful Questions: Open, Reflective, and Forward-Looking Inquiry
• Structuring the Conversation: A Goal-Focused Coaching Framework
• Psychological Safety in One-on-One Dialogue
• Accountability and Action: Turning Insight into Commitment
• Common Coaching Traps and How to Avoid Them

Related Roles

Executive / Senior Leader, People Manager / Team Lead, HR & People Professional, Product Owner / Product Manager, Scrum Master / Agile Coach, Change & Transformation Lead