Winning The Long Game: Coaching at Scale Takes The Field

Have you been watching Ted Lasso? Just in case you've been marooned on a desert island and are thinking "Ted who?,” the lovable, Emmy-winning show is about an American coach who beats the odds to take a hopeless UK soccer team and make them great. He doesn't do it immediately — there's a learning curve, and he's playing the long game. As Ted says,

“For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”

Lasso is, frankly, the best kind of coach: he's a visionary. And, like Ted, I believe that a team becomes great when each player, regardless of their position, is seen for their potential — and then given the chance to grow. Simply put, individual growth leads to organizational growth.

But, growth doesn't happen in a vacuum. That's why the right professional leadership coaching program can make all the difference.

Businesses are now turning to coaching to accelerate the development of leadership competencies across their organization, not just for executives, but for individual contributors, too. In essence, organizations are practicing what my Skillsoft colleagues and I fundamentally believe — creating a modern company culture requires emphasis on mutual growth.

The landscape of the workforce has changed dramatically over the past few years, greatly accelerated by the pandemic. As businesses look to retain top talent and fill their pipeline, building effective leaders becomes an integral part of skilling across organizations. Coaching helps leaders at all levels develop strong power skills, such as empathy, agility, emotional intelligence, and problem solving, which, in turn, helps them lead through change and build a stronger, more diverse company culture.

To meet the evolving needs of a distributed workforce, Skillsoft digital coaching can play a critical role throughout the employee lifecycle. Our ICF-accredited professional coaches work one-on-one and in groups with employees to help them develop and enhance their leadership capabilities. More than 350 executive coaches speaking multiple languages and spanning six continents provide support, guidance, and feedback as employees work towards achieving their goals and objectives. Throughout their journey, employees apply those skills to their day-to-day roles, bringing both exponential and real-time value to their workplace.

And at Skillsoft, we’ve seen coaching delivers demonstrable behavioral change — at scale — that organizations can measure and track. The stats are in, and coaching is paying off in a big way. In fact, typical six months’ results bear this out:

+20% BEHAVIOR CHANGE
More adept at the behaviors they chose to focus on with their coach

+14% CAREER ADVANCEMENT
More equipped to advance in their careers

+90% GOAL ACHIEVEMENT
Percentage of goals achieved that they worked on with their coach

Now, if coaching at scale sounds overwhelming, take a note from Ted: "Be curious, not judgmental." Listen to the ATD fireside chat to learn how to build a coaching program from the ground-up — from getting stakeholder buy-in, to launching the platform across the entire business, to truly delivering coaching at scale.

Sounds like a win to me.