Level Four: High Potential

Obviously, there is not clear line to be drawn between these five levels. Certainly a developmental approach to coaching can be blended with a level four focus on the high potential employee. The man or woman showing great promise often will be given the opportunity to participate in leadership or managerial development programs – this is a frequent component of “fast-track” programs. There is something more, however, that operates at level four. This form of coaching focuses on the high potential’s strengths and on the leveraging of these strengths for the benefit of the organization. The high potential typically possesses some distinctive abilities that are not easily learned by or “trained into” the average manager or formal leader. The high potential, metaphorically, is a race horse who should never be strapped to a plow. As we will note throughout this article, many of the strategies that can be effectively employed in level one, two, and three coaching are also appropriate for level four coaching. There are some distinctive challenges, however, that require distinctive strategies or, at the very least, variants on the more traditional level one, two, and three strategies. We will identify some of these coaching strategies in this article.

Level Five: High Performance

What about the level five coaching client? This is a person who is already performing at a very high level. This is not only a race horse that shows great promise—this person is like a horse that has already won many races in a specific class. The challenge is to help this “race horse” move up to an even higher class of performance and to win even higher class stakes for the organization that is fortunate to have the person in its “stable.” Once again, many of the level one, two, three (and four) strategies are applicable. We propose, however, that there are some coaching strategies that only make sense for these high performance employees. They face distinctive challenges in part because of their success. They can benefit from exceptional organizational coaching precisely because they are often placed in a class by themselves, and as a result feel isolated and even under-appreciated (or frequently misunderstood). By definition, uniqueness creates a paradoxical sense of loneliness that could be reduced through the appreciative support –that  comes from coaching.  And in that experience of appreciation and reflection, a place and space for development emerges.  As in the case of level four, we will suggest several distinctive coaching strategies for high performance employees.

We will first identify several of the key principles of effective coaching that underlie all five levels of coaching, then we will turn to ways in which these key principles get applied distinctively when working with high potential and high performance clients.