Involving your Manager in Your Coaching Journey

Along with working with your coach 1:1, we want to support you and help impact overall communication with your manager about your coaching journey.

What exactly does this mean? It means that Sayge will provide you with the tools and templates for how to have proactive, self-driven, and productive conversations with your manager about your 1:1 coaching engagement.

We encourage you to discuss with your manager 1–2 topics that you’ll work on with your coach and to have follow-up conversations along the way about how your coaching is supporting you in your professional development.

Our experience shows that enlisting your manager’s support in this process can be very helpful. However, it’s not mandatory – as with the rest of your coaching, this is a self-driven process, and ultimately, it’s your choice if and how you want to involve your manager.

Don’t forget your relationship and conversations with your coach are 100% confidential. It will be up to you, with support and prepping with your coach, to decide what you share with your manager along your journey.

Timing For Meeting With Your Manager

We recommend that you discuss your coaching with your manager at least three times throughout the course of your 1:1 coaching journey. These sessions should happen:

➔ Session 1: Before your first coaching session

➔ Session 2: At the mid-point of your coaching journey (e.g. after your 4th coaching session for a 3-month engagement or after your 6th session for a 6-month engagement)

➔ Session 3: At the end of your coaching engagement

Manager Session #1 (before your first session with your coach)

Come to the session with:

● Thoughts on what areas you may want to work on based on past feedback or reviews

● An open mind about what your manager might have to say

● A solutions-oriented perspective about aligning on 1–2 topics to share progress on

● A place to take notes

Conversation thought-starter:

“As you know, I’m about to start my coaching engagement, which I’m really excited by. I’ve given some thought to topics I might want to cover. I want to use this time to share these with you, get your feedback and input, and agree on 1–2 topics I’ll work on with my coach that I’ll share progress on with you.”

Manager Session #2 (after your 4th coaching session for a 3-month engagement or after your 6th session for a 6-month engagement)

Come to the session with:

● An overview of how the coaching engagement is going

● An update on your work in progress on the aligned topic(s)

● What areas you still need to focus/work on for those 1–2 topics

● Readiness to answer questions and receive feedback from your manager

Conversation thought-starter:

“I’ve completed three of my coaching sessions and feel now is a good time to connect on how I’m progressing on the topic(s) we aligned on. I’d like your feedback and thoughts during the conversation. Here are three things I feel like I’m improving well on. Here are three things I’m going to continue working on when it comes to this topic/these topics.”

Keep in mind that sometimes the topic(s) that you aligned on with your manager may change due to the coaching approach. This is common and we encourage you to investigate how this new area may impact the original topic(s) you aligned on with your manager. If your topics do shift, here are some conversation thought-starters:

“I began my coaching engagement talking about the topic we aligned on and surprisingly, through talking it out with my coach, I came to the conclusion that this topic (insert topic), is a much bigger challenge for me. I’d like to report back to you on this topic because it ultimately impacts the topic we originally aligned on. What do you think?”

Manager Session #3 (at the end of your coaching engagement)

Come to the session with:

An assessment of your coaching experience overall
Your self-assessment of your progress on your aligned topic(s)
Your commitments (agreed with your coach) about how you’ll continue to work on your aligned topic(s)
Readiness to answer questions and receive feedback from your manager

Conversation thought starter:

“Now that my coaching engagement is completed, I’d like to fully debrief on where I’m at with our aligned topic(s). It would be great to get your feedback as well so that, as I continue to grow in this area, I’m taking your thoughts into account.”