The practices of effective managerial coaches

Coaching is a frequently cited, but less often effectively implemented, developmental tool for enhancing managerial performance at all levels. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore the practices junior managers consider to be most critical for senior managers to employ when implementing coaching as a performance improvement practice. In this research, we engaged 45 focus groups consisting of 225 middle managers from over twenty different US organizations to explore the issue of managerial coaching and its implications for organizations and individual managers.