The Use Cases of Executive-Style Coaching Across All Levels of Staff

1:1 Professional Coaching Is A Versatile Team Development Tool

Executive coaching has traditionally been used only at top levels of leadership within large companies. Our mission at CoffeeChat is to democratize access to executive coaching for teams of all sizes and staff at every level. To achieve this, CoffeeChat has built a network of peer and professional coaches to provide the right types of support for professionals at any stage of their career and current contribution level within their team.

Every organization has its own way of structuring its team and managing a system of job titles and levels of responsibility, which continually evolves over time as its team changes its size, scope and complexity. At CoffeeChat, to make it easier for us to appropriately match participants with the most suitable coaches and advise teams on what common themes arise during sessions, we have developed our own broad categories below. We assist all participants in identifying their most relevant category.

Executives

Executives are highly seasoned leaders, often having led organizations at top levels for over 10 years. Executives often use coaching sessions to help themselves identify blindspots, think through high-impact decisions, and refocus around their priorities. Executives typically serve in a C-Suite role, overseeing hundreds of staff at the country, regional or global level.

Directors

Directors are very experienced managers, often having held managerial roles across several teams or companies over at least 5-10+ years. Directors tend to use coaching sessions to hone their strategic decision making skills, their ability to effectively manage across multiple functions, and comfort in leading through others. They also deal with the need to both upwardly influence their top level of leadership and downwardly influence their own teams. At larger companies, Directors typically directly oversee a large department or 3-5+ smaller departments. At smaller companies, Directors might be the founder, CEO or another top leader.

Senior Managers

Senior Managers usually have held managerial roles for at least 2-3+ years, so often use executive coaching to refine their leadership style based on what they’ve learned from their initial successes and failures in leadership roles. They also grapple with the increased complexity of their roles as their own managers continue to grant them more autonomy and they must collaborate with peer managers to make progress. At larger companies, Senior Managers typically directly oversee 3-5 members, multiple small teams, or in some cases serve as expert-level individual contributors. At smaller companies, Senior Managers might oversee several team members and a large portion of the company’s operations or strategy.

Junior Managers

Junior Managers are typically new managers, and therefore often use executive coaching as they adjust to their new managerial responsibilities and build a strong foundation for their leadership style. They also commonly work through a number of other workplace dynamics as they begin engaging with peers in different ways. At larger companies, Junior Managers typically directly oversee 2-3 team members or coordinate several projects or processes. At smaller companies, Junior Managers might not oversee a team, but oversee a mission-critical day-to-day function.

Professionals

Professionals are relatively new to the workforce, having worked as a part of a team for anywhere from 0-5+ years. They use coaching sessions to navigate topics such as their career plan, resolving interpersonal conflicts with team members and managing their productivity.