Context Overview
New knowledge and skills do not reliably translate into performance without support at work. The Coaching Environment aimed to increase managers’ presence in the field while strengthening team members’ confidence in their capabilities and their trust that they would receive support for their development. It builds team leaders’ practical coaching capabilities through training, individual follow-up and a community of practice.
It helps them observe execution, give effective feedback, connect coaching action plans to individual development plans and sustain open feedback. The approach has been used across several organisations, internally and as an external provider.
Practical field-observation routines, a coaching app and team-member feedback make coaching easier to apply and improve over time. About 85% of managers adopted the tool, while approximately 30% of tracked field interactions with reports included recorded skills assessment or structured coaching. Manager training achieved an average NPS of 76; a coaching climate survey recorded a 56% improvement in key respondent-perception indicators, including feedback clarity, action-plan relevance and conversation quality.
Stakeholders
HR stakeholders; Sales Leadership up to VP level; team leaders and line managers; mentors; internal L&D team.
Deployment
- Define the knowledge, observable behaviours and results managers need to assess, using a framework that brings performance and coachability together.
- Equip team leaders with practical coaching routines: generative questions, skills analysis, shared action plans, follow-up and assessment of reports’ coachability.
- Train and engage a community of team leaders to build practical, sustainable coaching capabilities: run effective feedback conversations, integrate coaching action plans into individual development plans and foster a culture of open feedback. Follow group training with individual sessions to support application.
- Develop an internal Power Platform coaching tool to record conversations, feedback and shared skills assessments, keep action plans accessible, and automate notifications, co-travel scheduling and follow-up.
- Integrate an AI agent to refine managers’ feedback and action plans so messages to the coachee are clearer.
- Combine assessment scores, observed skills and learning completion in a performance-and-coachability view; use the dashboard to relate gaps to specific projects and agree priorities with HR and business leaders.
- Measure coaching activity across the population: how often real conversations happen over time and how that compares with tool adoption.
- Survey team members on how they experience coaching and what support they want for their development; use their input on feedback clarity, action-plan relevance and conversation quality to guide improvements.
- Activate and sustain communities of practice through online meetings and collaborative spaces for sharing content, ideas and insights.
Metrics & Results
- About 85% adoption of the coaching tool among managers.
- About 30% of all tracked field interactions with reports – co-travels and field meetings – were skills assessments or structured coaching conversations with recorded feedback.
- In about 70% of cases, tracked on-field coaching was connected to learning activities. Easier tool access, structured feedback and active monitoring supported the on-the-job performance-support step of the 6Ds.
- Coaching and its supporting tools became an established practice for follow-up and performance support across major go-to-market projects, with field skills application tracked and compared with business results.
- Coaching records enabled analysis of the relationship between observed field skills application and business results across go-to-market projects; the correlation was monitored and used as best practice foundation.
- Manager coaching training achieved an average NPS of 76; individual follow-up sessions supported application of the learning.
- Learning retention at six weeks was 73%. Review materials and coaching guidance were embedded in the coaching app; 87% of consistent tool users consulted the materials.
- The coaching climate survey recorded a 56% improvement in key respondent-perception indicators, including feedback clarity, action-plan relevance and the quality of coaching conversations.
Competencies, Frameworks and Tools
Coaching culture design and manager capability building; behavioural observation and skills assessment; learning transfer and on-the-job support; AI-assisted feedback; learning analytics and dashboarding; business partnering and change management; community management.
Coaching for Performance and the GROW model; skills-based design and competency frameworks; structured feedback and field observation grids; performance versus coachability matrix; coaching temperature survey; Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Dataverse, Copilot Studio); AI agents based on GPT and Claude language models; LMS and assessment data, Viva Engage.