Coaching Skills Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Line Managers, HR Business Partners and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 9 Nov 2026 Course code SD-LD-127

Before you join: Participants should have experience of workplace conversations with colleagues, direct reports, clients or stakeholders.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Managers, HR professionals and learning practitioners are often expected to help colleagues solve problems, build capability and make better decisions without taking over the issue themselves. Advice, instruction and performance management have their place, but they do not consistently build ownership. Effective coaching requires disciplined listening, purposeful questions, clear boundaries and a reliable way to turn insight into action.

This five-day Coaching Skills Training Course develops the practical capabilities associated with skilled workplace coaching. Participants learn how to contract a coaching relationship, use active listening and powerful questions, structure conversations with GROW and OSKAR, handle difficult topics, support motivation and maintain accountability. The course also addresses the distinction between coaching, mentoring, counselling and line management, helping participants choose the right response for each situation.

Instructor-led sessions combine short briefings, facilitated analysis, paired coaching practice, workplace cases, observation and structured feedback. Participants work with realistic issues such as underperformance, career decisions, delegation, change resistance and development planning. They leave with a personal coaching toolkit containing conversation structures, question banks, feedback guides, session records and a 90-day application plan. The course is available in classroom venues in more than 50 cities or live online, runs for five days from 08:30 to 16:30, and includes approximately 6.5 contact hours daily. Participants receive a certificate of completion.

The course suits professionals who already hold regular development, people-management or advisory conversations and need a more disciplined coaching approach. It is particularly relevant where managers must build capability while retaining clear accountability for results.

What you will be able to do

  • Contract coaching relationships using clear agreements, confidentiality boundaries and measurable goals
  • Apply active listening, paraphrasing and summarising to identify underlying coaching issues
  • Use powerful questions and Clean Language techniques without directing the coachee
  • Structure goal-focused conversations using the GROW coaching model
  • Apply OSKAR and scaling questions to support solution-focused behaviour change
  • Deliver SBI feedback and challenge unhelpful patterns with appropriate sensitivity
  • Conduct coaching sessions that end with owned actions, measures and follow-up dates
  • Create a 90-day personal coaching application plan with peer review arrangements

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Conduct more focused one-to-one conversations without defaulting to advice
  • Recognise when coaching is appropriate and when referral or management action is needed
  • Build confidence handling silence, emotion, resistance and difficult feedback
  • Use repeatable coaching models for career, performance and development discussions
  • Create evidence of coaching progress through actions, measures and follow-up records

For your organisation

  • Improves manager-led development conversations and employee ownership of actions
  • Reduces unnecessary escalation of routine problem-solving decisions
  • Strengthens feedback quality through observable behaviour and stated impact
  • Creates greater consistency in career, delegation and performance support conversations
  • Builds an internal coaching culture without confusing coaching with formal counselling

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can define the purpose and boundaries of workplace coaching and establish an appropriate coaching agreement.

  • Coaching, mentoring, training and managing distinguished by purpose and accountability
  • Ethical boundaries: confidentiality, consent, competence and referral decisions
  • International Coaching Federation core competencies used as a reference point
  • Coaching agreements define goals, roles, boundaries and session logistics
  • Psychological safety established through candour, respect and non-judgmental attention
  • Recognising when performance management, counselling or specialist support is required

Participants can listen beyond surface statements and agree a focused agenda for a coaching conversation.

  • Contracting questions convert a broad issue into a workable coaching agenda
  • Active listening distinguishes facts, interpretations, emotions, values and assumptions
  • Minimal encouragers, paraphrasing and concise summarising demonstrate accurate understanding
  • Silence used deliberately to support reflection rather than fill space
  • Noticing tone, pace and incongruence without claiming certainty about meaning
  • Empathic responses acknowledge experience without rescuing, advising or agreeing

Participants can use questions that deepen reflection while preserving the coachee's ownership of decisions.

  • Open, probing and scaling questions expand a coachee's thinking
  • Clean Language questions reduce coach assumptions and embedded suggestions
  • Powerful questions connect current patterns with desired future outcomes
  • Using laddering to uncover values, beliefs and competing priorities
  • Distinguishing curiosity from interrogation through pace, permission and purpose
  • Sequencing questions from exploration toward choice, commitment and action

Participants can structure a coaching conversation using GROW while adapting to the coachee's needs.

  • GROW stages structure goal-focused conversations without forcing linear progression
  • Outcome goals translated into observable measures, dates and evidence
  • Reality exploration separates known facts, interpretations, constraints and resources
  • Options generated before evaluation to prevent premature advice giving
  • Will questions secure ownership, first actions and accountability arrangements
  • Adapting GROW for career, performance, change and development conversations

Participants can use solution-focused methods to identify resources, progress markers and practical next actions.

  • OSKAR model applies outcome, scaling, know-how, affirmation and action
  • Exception questions identify conditions when the problem has less influence
  • Preferred-future descriptions make desired behaviour concrete and observable
  • Scaling questions establish current position, progress markers and next steps
  • Resource spotting identifies strengths, relationships and prior successful actions
  • Affirmations reinforce agency without offering empty praise or reassurance

Participants can give feedback and raise difficult issues without losing the coaching relationship.

  • SBI feedback separates situation, behaviour and impact from personal judgement
  • Feedforward requests focus discussion on future choices and support needed
  • Direct observations tested against assumptions before raising sensitive patterns
  • Coaching through resistance distinguishes disagreement, uncertainty, fear and overload
  • Naming difficult issues with neutrality, specificity and appropriate challenge
  • Escalating safeguarding, conduct and wellbeing concerns through correct channels

Participants can help coachees build motivation and take realistic action towards behaviour change.

  • Self-Determination Theory examines autonomy, competence and relatedness needs
  • Values elicitation links development choices to personally meaningful outcomes
  • Motivational interviewing spirit supports collaboration, acceptance, compassion and evocation
  • Ambivalence explored through decisional balance rather than persuasion or pressure
  • Change talk recognised and strengthened using reflections and evocative questions
  • Small experiments reduce risk and build confidence during behaviour change

Participants can run time-bound coaching sessions that move from agreement to accountable action.

  • Session opening confirms confidentiality, agenda, outcome and available time
  • Conversation flow managed through contracting, exploration, insight, action and review
  • Coach presence maintained while balancing structure, responsiveness and timekeeping
  • Notes capture commitments without creating unnecessary personal records
  • Mid-session summaries test direction and restore shared focus
  • Closing reviews learning, action, support, measures and follow-up dates

Participants can apply coaching skills in management and peer relationships while maintaining role clarity.

  • Manager-as-coach boundaries preserved alongside accountability for team performance
  • Career conversations distinguish aspirations, capability gaps and realistic opportunities
  • Delegation conversations build judgement through questions, guardrails and review points
  • Coaching remote colleagues addresses attention, silence, technology and inclusion
  • Cross-cultural communication checks assumptions about hierarchy, directness and disclosure
  • Team coaching distinguishes collective patterns from individual coaching needs

Participants can evaluate their coaching practice and implement a structured personal development plan.

  • Reflective practice reviews coach impact, assumptions, emotions and missed opportunities
  • ICF Core Competencies guide self-assessment of coaching behaviours
  • Session recordings evaluated using a consent-based observation checklist
  • Development goals prioritised through feedback, reflection and supervision needs
  • Personal coaching philosophy states purpose, boundaries and preferred methods
  • 90-day application plan schedules conversations, peer review and progress measures

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Coaching agreement template
  2. GROW conversation planner
  3. OSKAR question bank
  4. SBI feedback preparation checklist
  5. Coaching session record template
  6. 90-day coaching application plan

Who should attend

  • Line Managers — need to develop staff capability while retaining performance accountability
  • HR Business Partners — support managers and employees through sensitive development conversations
  • Learning and Development Professionals — design and facilitate coaching-led development interventions
  • Talent Management Specialists — guide career, succession and capability discussions
  • Project Managers — build ownership and problem-solving within cross-functional teams
  • Internal Consultants — help clients clarify issues without prescribing every solution

Skills and tools covered

Coaching contractingActive listeningPowerful questioningGROW coachingFeedback conversationsCoaching accountability

Tools and standards

GROW Model, OSKAR Coaching Model, SBI Feedback Model, ICF Core Competencies

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce coaching principles, followed by case analysis, structured group discussion, paired coaching conversations and observation feedback. Participants practise with workplace scenarios involving performance, career decisions, change, delegation and motivation. Simulations allow participants to test GROW, OSKAR, SBI and Clean Language under realistic time constraints. Facilitators provide specific feedback on listening, questions, structure, boundaries and accountability. Each participant develops an application plan for immediate use after the course.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience of workplace conversations with colleagues, direct reports, clients or stakeholders. They should be comfortable discussing goals, performance, development needs or work challenges in a professional setting. Prior exposure to people management, HR, learning and development, consulting or project leadership is useful. No formal coaching qualification, psychology background or previous knowledge of coaching models is required. This is not therapy training and does not qualify participants to provide counselling, clinical support or regulated psychological services.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should have experience of workplace conversations with colleagues, direct reports, clients or stakeholders. A prior coaching qualification is not required, but the course assumes confidence participating in discussion and role-based practice.

Participants should bring examples of real, non-confidential workplace situations where coaching could be useful. A notebook or device for course materials and personal action planning is also useful.

The course is designed for line managers, HR professionals, L&D practitioners, project managers, internal consultants and talent specialists. It is most useful for people who need to develop others without taking responsibility for every decision.

Mentoring usually involves sharing experience and guidance, while performance management focuses on expectations, evidence and accountability. This course develops a coaching approach that uses listening and questions to help the other person formulate their own actions.

Participants can use the models in regular one-to-ones, career conversations, delegation discussions, development reviews and problem-solving meetings. The 90-day application plan identifies specific conversations, peer feedback and progress measures.

Each day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. The ten modules are delivered in teaching order across the five days, combining instructor input, cases, practice conversations, feedback and application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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