Coaching Skills For Leaders, A Force Multiplier

Investment in leadership skills needs to be more employee-focused and organizationally driven within government as a means to create an operation that runs with increased effectiveness. One engine for this is developing coaching skills within your workforce. These skills are not only foundational for your organization right now; in leveling up employee empowerment and development, their use and execution will shift workplace culture for the long term.

In 2020, the Department of the Interior’s Coach Training Program (ICTP) was launched to provide department employees with coaching opportunities. Those who volunteered for the program received professional coach training. Later in 2021, during a strategic planning session, it became clear the program wasn’t reaching all the employees who wanted training in coaching skills. The options were zero training, or going 100 mph with the 10-month long ICTP.

The agency needed additional training options to fill in the gap and build coaching skill capacity. Introducing coaching skills for leaders and managers through a one-day workshop could be an engine to spread those skills exponentially.  Here’s what this concept can do for you and your organization.

• Enhance Leadership Skills: You’ll be investing in your leadership development by introducing and building coaching skills. Train your leaders to unlock awareness and activate their coaching mindset, which builds their confidence to lead their team.

• Increase Learning Environments: Instituting coaching skills leads to creating learning environments to drive results, challenges employees to aim up with their goals and dreams, yet supports them in striving for their full potential. You have a team for a reason: Utilize their talents, strengths and gifts by reminding them what got them to where they are.

• Promote a Culture Shift: By empowering employees to find their own solutions to challenges and problems, leaders can focus on projects and progress within their respective role in your organization. Leaders can lead rather than solving all of their employees’ problems for them.

• Advance Training Possibilities: With your culture incorporating the coaching mindsets and approaches, you can begin to evaluate which leaders can further energize the coaching culture by providing advanced training to stretch and sharpen their skills to multiply their impact. 

• Create the Foundation for a Comprehensive Training Program: With your early adopters fully embracing the coaching skills and reshaping your organizational culture, the time has come to transcend where you’ve been and create a powerful coach training experience through a formal, internal program to train and develop professional-grade coaches to grow your leaders and organization even further.

Empowering your workforce to solve their own problems and challenges builds their own capacity, provides more space for your leaders to trust their employees, and allows for a more efficient and effective organization as employees can focus on being more effective in their respective roles. Starting out with foundational coaching skills can be the force multiplier you’re looking for to incorporate meaningful employee, leader, and organizational development.

Matt Wallat serves as a District Ranger with the National Park Service (NPS) in Colorado. His 20-year career spans eight different NPS units in six different states with assignments in patrol, investigations, program management, court liaison, training officer, and supervisor for 11+ years.

With a strong background in employee development as an agency instructor, Matt continues to evolve with his coaching practice, creating leadership training programs, engaging in curriculum design work, and leading a recent international training program in Tanzania.

He enjoys family time and many other interests including fly fishing, creative DIY projects, music, craft beer and Boston sports.

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