Coaching is really about a couple fundamental things. First you must be mentally dedicated to someone else's development so they ultimately are invested in developing themselves. Second, you must be willing to ask questions and not make typical management assumptions to truly understand where someone's ability is at as well as their comfort level from a behavioral perspective. Third, you must be willing to dedicate a portion of your schedule to truly scheduling coaching and not doing it in on an ad hoc basis that has no measurable or consistent set of results. Last, we must realize coaching is a process and not a destination. Recently I conducted a best practice at a client site and one manager shared with me that he'd always wanted to fix things to help his employees when in fact looking back he realizes he never fixed anything when in fact he ended up owning the performance for the employee. Coaching is about letting go of control and giving someone the choice in the opportunity to truly improve! 

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