Dive Brief:

• According to The Conference Board's 2016 Global Executive Coaching Survey, coaching is now a regular part of developing mid-level managers. It's a shift in thinking from previous performance based models. Amy Lui Abel, Ph.D., managing director of human capital at The Conference Board says that a number of large and influential companies are adapting coaching to their team building methodology, including Google, Northwell Health, L-3 Communications and Citibank India.
• "Historically, organizations used external coaches who focused their efforts on the C-suite or other organizational leaders,"  says Kathy Gurchiek, associate editor of Global Issues, OED and Diversity for SHRM.  She adds that now companies see the value that coaching has on impacting future leaders, especially millennials who like constant feedback.
• A good example of coaching in action is Google's Career Guru, an internal coaching program launched in 2010. Employees at all levels are encouraged to use Google Hangouts to coach each other and offer peer feedback. To be eligible to be an internal coach in this program, employees must be considered subject matter experts with 2 years on the job and their manager's approval. They are well-trained before coaching others.

Dive Insight:

Peer-to-peer coaching is not new, but the way in which companies like Google are approaching this is. By using a more structured internal coaching program, organizations can tap into the great amount of knowledge and culture that's a part of every company.

This method can easily translate to other types of learning and development where coaching is a principle, such as the soft skills that the SHRM article mentioned. When real employees coach each other, this raises the bar on expectations. How does this affect the average organization? Thinking about coaching as a teaching tool rather than a disciplinary aspect is a shift in thinking that managers need to make.