Your company may already have the coaching capability it is preparing to buy.
It may not appear in the leadership curriculum, competency framework, or list of certified coaches. It may be sitting inside the judgement of a supervisor who knows how to stop a recurring error, help an employee see what made the mistake easy, and make sure the correction survives the next shift.
CEOs often see the need as a performance problem. Errors repeat. Managers avoid difficult conversations. Employees wait too long for help. Work gets corrected, but the same issue returns.
L&D leaders often receive the request in a different form: “We need coaching.”
The next move seems obvious. Select a coaching model, find a provider, train the managers, require documented sessions, and certify those who complete the process.
That may be useful. Some leaders need formal coaching skills. Some roles require depth, supervised practice, ethics, and professional standards.
But before building the program, look inside the work.
Someone in your organization may already know how to produce the movement you need. That person may not call it coaching. They may not know the names of the models. They may not have a certificate to display.
They may simply know what to do when the problem appears.
The Three-Day Coaching Answer
At Meridian Customer Operations, a fictional composite in Impact-First Leaders, the coaching proposal looked impressive.
It offered three days of instruction, six documented coaching sessions, observation by an external coach, and an internal certificate. Selected managers could later pursue a higher level of certification.
The program would create a common language. It would give managers a recognised process. Participants could point to something official that proved they had completed the learning.
There was only one problem.
Some supervisors had already attended a coaching program. They knew the GROW model. They had learned to ask questions rather than immediately give answers.
Yet repeat errors continued.
Ramon, the Operations leader, described what sometimes happened when an operator made the same mistake again. A supervisor would keep asking questions until the employee discovered an answer the supervisor already knew.
That could be useful when the employee needed to think through a goal or consider options. It was less useful when another defective output was minutes away.
Operations did not need coaching in general. It needed supervisors to recognize a repeat, examine why the wrong action remained easy, correct the next move, assign ownership, and check whether the next output was protected.
“How long should that take?” someone asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Ramon said. “Thirty if the cause is not obvious.”
Then came the question that changed the discussion:
“Who already does this well?”
Grace Did Not Carry a Framework
Ramon named three supervisors.
One was Grace Bautista, a night-shift supervisor whose team had one of the lowest repeat-error rates in the plant. Operators called her before calling Quality because she understood the packing line and knew how to move problems without creating unnecessary drama.
Grace had no coaching certificate.
The following evening, Ana from L&D joined Operations leaders at the packing line to observe her.
A new operator named Ben had selected the wrong package code. Grace did not begin with a lecture or a formal coaching session. She placed the correct and incorrect labels beside each other and asked Ben to show her what he had seen.
The product descriptions were almost identical. The inactive code still appeared above the current one on the screen.
“So what happened?” Grace asked.
“I chose too quickly,” Ben answered.
“Maybe. What made the wrong choice easy?”
That question moved the conversation away from blame. Ben still had responsibility for checking the code, but the screen had also made the wrong action easier than it should have been.
Grace called the team lead. They marked the inactive code, assigned someone to request its removal, and asked Ben to process the next item while Grace watched.
Eleven minutes had passed.
Grace had corrected the immediate work, identified a likely system cause, assigned ownership, escalated the barrier, and checked the next result. She had not solved every source of error in the company. She had completed the response this moment required.
“That is coaching,” Mira from HR said afterward.
“Partly,” Ana replied.
It was also problem-solving, communication, instruction, judgement, accountability, and follow-through.
The competency catalogue separated those subjects. Grace used small parts of all of them in one real moment.
The Certificate Was Not the Enemy
It would be easy to turn Grace’s story into an argument against certification.
That would miss the point.
Certification can establish a standard, deepen knowledge, create supervised practice, and protect quality in roles where poor coaching can create real harm. A structured coaching process may help leaders conduct conversations that go beyond immediate correction and support longer-term development.
The problem is not the certificate.
The problem appears when the organization buys a complete competency before examining the specific contribution the work requires.
Meridian had begun with the topic of coaching. That led naturally toward models, course duration, observed sessions, and certification. When leaders returned to the workplace problem, the required move became smaller and more precise.
The supervisors did not need every theory of coaching before they could respond to a recurring packing error. They needed a usable play for that moment.
The certificate proved that someone had learned a process. It did not yet prove that the process had helped reduce repeat errors, protect the next output, or remove the condition making the error easy.
Change Your Questions
When a business problem appears, organizations often ask:
“Which program should we provide?”
“What competency is missing?”
“Who can certify our managers?”
These questions direct attention toward a learning solution before the problem has earned one.
Change your questions.
What keeps happening in the work? What should the leader notice sooner? What must the leader do in that moment? Who already handles that situation well? What makes that person effective? Which part can others learn, practise, and repeat?
Those questions do not reject outside expertise. They help the organization decide what kind of expertise it needs.
Perhaps the internal expert has sound instincts but cannot explain them. L&D can help make the judgement visible.
Perhaps the practice works on one shift because the supervisor has unusual authority or relationships. Operations must identify the conditions other supervisors need.
Perhaps the internal method works for immediate performance correction but not for deeper development conversations. A formal coaching program may still fill an important gap.
The goal is not to prove that internal people are always better than external coaches.
The goal is to stop overlooking working capability because it did not arrive with the expected label.
Find the Coaches Hidden Inside the Work
Every organization has people others seek out before using the formal system.
A team leader who knows how to calm a difficult customer without promising something impossible. A project manager who can turn a confused meeting into a clear decision. A supervisor who can correct weak performance without humiliating the employee. A technician who sees the pattern behind repeating failures.
These people may not describe their work in leadership language. They may say, “I just know what to look for,” or “That is how we handle it here.”
Their capability is often tacit. They perform it faster than they can explain it.
That makes the work of L&D more important, not less.
The organization should not merely bring these people on stage to tell inspirational stories. Nor should it immediately appoint them as trainers and assume that performance expertise automatically becomes teaching capability.
Study the work.
Observe several real cases. Slow the expert down. Identify what they notice, what they ask, how they distinguish one kind of problem from another, where they decide to intervene, and what proof tells them the work is safe to continue.
Grace’s value did not come from one clever question. She could judge whether an error was truly repeating, whether the next move sat inside the supervisor’s authority, and what evidence would show that the next output was protected. Later, Meridian had to make those judgement points visible so people outside Grace’s team could use them without depending on her presence.
That is how expertise begins to travel.
Capture the Play, Not the Personality
Organizations often celebrate excellent performers without capturing what makes them effective.
Everyone knows Grace is exceptional. Her team produces strong results. People trust her. Leaders send difficult cases in her direction.
Then Grace transfers, retires, or resigns.
The capability leaves with her.
The answer is not to reduce everything she knows into a rigid checklist. Experts often respond to differences that a simple procedure cannot anticipate. But the organization can still capture the few moves and judgement points that help others begin.
Grace’s response could become a short workplace play:
See the repeat. Find what made the wrong action easy. Correct and assign the next move. Check the proof.
That play does not contain everything Grace knows about people, quality, and the packing line. It contains enough to improve how another supervisor responds to the same kind of moment.
This is the discipline: do not try to copy the person. Capture the smallest useful part of the performance that can travel.
Then let other supervisors practise it with real cases, receive feedback, and learn when the play fits and when it does not.
Do Not Turn Grace Into the New Bottleneck
Finding an internal expert creates another risk.
The organization may begin sending every case to Grace. It may ask her to observe every supervisor, solve the difficult problems, and carry the intervention because she produces the strongest results.
The program improves whenever Grace is present.
That is not yet scale.
The purpose of finding the best internal coach is not to make that person indispensable. It is to discover what other people need so they can produce comparable movement without relying on the expert’s direct intervention.
Grace could prepare internal observers. Those observers did not need her years of experience before they began. They needed the minimum judgement required for the cases they would support, access to Grace when the situation exceeded that judgement, and a way to compare decisions and improve.
The proof of transfer would not be more success stories from Grace’s shift.
It would be supervisors and observers elsewhere making sound decisions, correcting the next move, and protecting the work without Grace standing beside them.
What CEOs Should Ask
When leaders request another coaching program, CEOs should not ask only about provider reputation, course duration, certification, or participant numbers.
Ask what business problem coaching is expected to help move.
What keeps happening? What should managers do differently when it happens? Who inside the organization already does that well? What can be learned from them? What evidence would show that the new practice reached the work?
The answer may still justify a substantial coaching investment. But the investment will now have a clearer job.
It may combine internal expertise with external depth. It may focus first on one recurring management moment rather than every possible coaching conversation. It may replace a broad rollout with a smaller test that reveals what support, authority, and practice managers actually need.
A large company should not become less interested in formal quality.
It should become more interested in whether the formal solution reaches the problem.
What L&D Must Become
For L&D leaders, Grace’s story creates an uncomfortable question.
When the best response already exists inside the organization, what value does L&D add?
The answer is not to compete with Grace.
L&D can find the capability, help explain it, turn it into a simple practice, create safe opportunities for repetition, support feedback, and follow the evidence across teams. It can also recognize where Grace’s method is insufficient and where deeper coaching capability is necessary.
This is the work of impact-first L&D.
It does not begin by defending the program. It begins by finding the movement the organization needs and discovering the smallest credible contribution leaders can make.
Practical leadership training should therefore do more than transfer respected models. It should study real workplace moments, convert useful judgement into plays leaders can practise, and build proof that those plays continue working when the expert is no longer in the room.
Look Before You Buy
Grace did not make formal coaching irrelevant.
She made the real requirement visible.
Meridian did not merely need managers who could follow a coaching model. It needed supervisors who could recognize a repeating problem, investigate the work with the employee, correct the immediate move, assign the barrier, and check the next result.
Grace could do that in eleven minutes.
The lesson is not that every three-day program should become an eleven-minute conversation. The lesson is that organizations should look at what effective people already do before deciding what everyone else must learn.
Your best coach may have no certificate.
Do not overlook the person.
Study the performance. Capture what works. Help others practise it. Then use outside expertise where it can add something the work does not already possess.
A certificate can prove that someone completed a process.
The business still needs proof that the work moved.
About Jef Menguin
Jef Menguin is a leadership development consultant and motivational speaker. He created The Leader’s Game and Supervisor Factor, practical leadership-development systems that help organizations turn priorities into everyday leadership behavior.
Explore his work in leadership training, discover his motivational speaking programs, or connect with him on LinkedIn.