Why Coaching?
Employees need support to thrive. In modern tech, managers are expected to actively support their employees as professionals. Sometimes this works out and you have a great people-manager who supports your growth and cares about your happiness. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does it works out great for the employees at least!
Who supports people at the top? For example, a CTO. Who can a CTO talk to about CTO problems? Who can support technical leaders like engineering managers and product managers when the CTO is too busy to be an active mentor (it’s common!)?
Ignore this situation and everyone loses out: you lose out as an individual, your company loses out by not having you stay and grow, your customers lose out by having less effective, engaged employees. Conversely, doing a great job at this has huge benefits: employee happiness, effectiveness, retention, easier hiring, and happier customers. It’s a shame any company misses out on these!
Without Support
With Support
Where does anyone get professional support?
There are generally three approaches to getting one-on-one support as a professional: internal coaching, external coaching, and personal coaching.