3 Management Coaching Cheat Sheets to Help You Succeed

October 4, 2022

Management Coaching Cheat Sheets

Management coaching is a proven method for helping people improve their performance at work. It helps individuals develop skills that will enable them to perform better in their jobs.

However, new and even seasoned managers sometimes struggle in their role as a coach. For over twenty years, Zenger Folkman has been gathering data on hundreds of thousands of leaders and coaches and has established a method to become an extraordinary coach.

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Here are a few cheat sheets for starting the management coaching process.

To learn more, download our The Extraordinary Coach eBook or learn more about our coaching and feedback assessments and development experiences.

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Are You a Good Coach?

Any positive steps forward begin with an honest assessment of your coaching abilities. We found that leaders who overrated their management coaching skills were typically rated lower by their managers, peers, direct reports, and others.  This finding is not a new phenomenon. Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger observed that for any given skill, incompetent people fail to (1) recognize their own deficiencies and (2) recognize the skill in others.

Use this first management coaching cheat sheet to evaluate your current coaching practices.

Management Coaching Cheat Sheet #1

Management Coaching Skills Feedback versus Coaching Conversation

In order to provide feedback, you must first understand where the employee is coming from. This means understanding why the employee is doing something and what he or she expects from the situation. It also means being able to empathize with the employee’s perspective.

When feedback is frequent, timely, and balanced, the individual is more likely to interpret the feedback as useful information through their own filters and beliefs.

Not every conversation is a coaching conversation.

When do you decide to stop and provide fast feedback to someone, or when should it be a longer coaching conversation?

Management Coaching Cheat Sheet #2

Management Coaching Fast Feedback Sheet

A Guide for Starting the Conversation

Coaching conversations are worth planning.

They take valuable time, so that time should be put to its most efficient use! The FUEL management coaching model provides a valuable framework or set of guidelines to follow.

This coaching model is malleable and flexible. You won’t use all of these steps in every conversation, BUT the more you follow the guidelines, the more productive your coaching conversations will be.

Management Coaching Cheat Sheets #3

Management Coaching FUEL Sheet

The research for these coaching tips comes from Jack Zenger and Kathleen Stinnett’s bestselling book, The Extraordinary Coach. Read more of Zenger Folkman’s management coaching tips and best practices in our insights library. 


Schedule a demo to learn more about Zenger Folkman’s coaching assessments and development experiences.