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For experienced managers and executive teams

Coaching Skills Lab

The fastest way to build capacity in a team is to stop solving everything for them. The Lab trains managers to coach through real, live work problems, drawing on the individualised consideration and intellectual stimulation at the heart of transformational leadership, and on the self-leadership habits that make coaching stick between sessions.

Two colleagues in a one-on-one coaching conversation at a table in a minimal, light-filled office
Format
Hybrid — live virtual labs plus 1-on-1 coaching
Duration
8 weeks · fortnightly labs
Who it's for
Experienced managers and executive teams
Investment
R11 900 per seat

What you'll walk away with

  • Ask guiding questions that unlock thinking instead of shortcutting it.
  • Coach through live work problems as they happen.
  • Build psychological safety so problems surface early.
  • Develop successors deliberately rather than by accident.

Course content

Sample lessons are shown below. Full lesson content, workbooks and templates are released to enrolled participants as a formatted e-course pack (PDF, print-ready) after enrolment.

  1. 01

    Lab 1 — The coaching stance

    Sample lessons

    When to coach, when to direct, and how to tell the difference in the moment.

    • Direct, coach, support, delegate

      Read the person's competence and commitment on the specific task in front of you, then choose your response deliberately.

      Informed by Situational Leadership® (Hersey & Blanchard).

    • Individualised consideration

      Treat each person as a distinct developmental case rather than applying one management style across the team.

      Informed by the Full Range Leadership Model (Bass & Avolio).

  2. 02

    Lab 2 — Questions and listening

    Sample lessons

    Question frameworks and listening practice that get past the first answer.

    • Intellectual stimulation in practice

      Questions that make someone re-examine an assumption without making them defensive.

      Informed by the Full Range Leadership Model (Bass & Avolio).

    • Teaching self-leadership

      Help the person build their own goals, cues and self-review loop so they need you less.

      Informed by Self-Leadership Theory (Manz & Neck).

  3. 03

    Lab 3 — Peer coaching

    Enrolled only · 2 lessons

    Small groups where leaders practise listening and advising one another on real issues.

    • Running a peer coaching triadlocked
    • Enabling others to actlocked
  4. 04

    Lab 4 — Action learning and succession

    Enrolled only · 2 lessons

    Live work problems as coaching assignments, and deliberate development of successors.

    • Action learning setslocked
    • Building your benchlocked

Course material

Enrolled participants receive the complete formatted e-course pack and all implementation materials listed below.

  • Lab handbook (A4 screen edition and 6×9in print-ready edition)
  • Coaching question card deck (printable)
  • Peer coaching facilitation guide
  • Session logs and development-plan templates
Prerequisites
At least two years managing people, or completion of Confident Manager Foundations.
Facilitation
Led by an XZX senior partner; peer groups are self-facilitated using the supplied guide.

References & acknowledgements

This curriculum draws on the following published leadership work. Participants are encouraged to read the primary sources.

  • Self-Leadership Theory

    Dr Charles C. Manz & Dr Christopher P. Neck

    Self-observation, self-set goals, self-cueing and constructive thought patterns.

  • Situational Leadership®

    Dr Paul Hersey & Dr Ken Blanchard

    Matching directive and supportive behaviour to a person's development level on a given task. Situational Leadership® is a registered trademark of its owners.

  • The Leadership Challenge®

    James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner (John Wiley & Sons)

    The five practices of exemplary leadership, used as a reflective lens rather than a reproduced instrument.

  • The Leadership Pipeline

    Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter & James Noel (Jossey-Bass / John Wiley & Sons)

    Transition passages between individual contributor, manager, manager-of-managers and functional leader.

  • Level 5 Leadership

    Jim Collins, Good to Great (Harvard Business Review)

    The combination of personal humility and professional will in enduring leadership.

Course material is authored by XZX Business Consulting. Where established leadership frameworks inform a lesson, the originating authors and publishers are credited by name. No proprietary text, assessment instrument or diagram from those works is reproduced, and XZX is not affiliated with or endorsed by their authors or publishers. All trademarks remain the property of their owners.

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