TOOLS
Mentoring and Coaching in Police Services
Types of Coaching
This initiative was funded by the Government of Canada’s Sector Council Program
This is a living document. Last updated July 2009
© POLICE SECTOR COUNCIL
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Types of Coaching
Coaches vary in their areas of focus and their coaching methods. The following coaching types
are available to support leadership development programs:
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Executive and leadership coaching
Conflict coaching
Career coaching
Skills coaching
Other types of coaching
Executive and leadership coaching
Executive and leadership coaching focuses on a broad range of senior executive and managerial
and organizational concerns. This is the most appropriate type of coaching for leadership
development. They provide guidance to participants to enable them to:
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Set and achieve organizational goals
Become more effective leaders
Effect culture change
Manage work/life balance issues
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Build teams
Manage a broad range of issues
including profitability, defining
corporate legacy and succession
management.
Their services related to leadership development frequently include:
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Conducting needs analyses of an executive, a team of executives, or section of an
organization
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Conducting and reporting via a range of assessments (personality, interests, values,
multiple-source feedback and interviews with key organizational stakeholders) to provide
the executive/leader with candid and honest feedback on their relative effectiveness,
their strengths and needs areas for development or improvement.
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Acting as facilitators and guides in exploring new executive and leadership practices and
behaviours, helping leadership program participants put in place new performance
standards for themselves, and monitoring and tracking results.
The coach may or may not be a graduate of an executive leadership coach training program but
is likely to be well educated in business and/or hold degrees in organizational psychology.
Executive and leadership coaches are well versed in leadership and management issues, systems
thinking, human relations, psychology, team building, conflict resolution, and process
reengineering. They talk and coach in a language that senior executives understand.
Conflict coaching
Conflict coaching is a process in which a coach and participant work together for the purpose of
developing the participants’ understanding of conflict, interaction strategies, and interaction
skills.1 The coaching may involve different kinds of conflict conversations, such as ways of making
sense of conflict, making plans for actively managing the conflict, and exploring specific
communication behaviours for the participant to practice and apply.
Conflict coaching has grown out of two areas: executive coaching and conflict resolution. Coping
with conflict is an integral part of executive and managerial roles. The ability to effectively work
through conflict is a well recognized and documented leadership skill.
Conflict coaching can be used to:
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Develop leadership competency in this area
Support an individual who is confronting conflict
Integrate new groups or individuals into an organizational setting or group
Support an individual or team in interacting effectively with others.
The coach’s role is predominately facilitative. Coaches share theory and research on conflict for
the participant to consider. They use active listening, open-ended questions and other methods
to support participants in developing their own ways to understand and address conflict.
Most conflict coaches are also executive or leadership coaches and have specialized training and
certification in conflict resolution and/or conflict coaching.
Career coaching
Career coaches help participants gain clarity about what they want from their next career move.
They do not provide job search services, resume writing or offer career management advice.
They do have coaching conversations with their participants to help them analyze and determine
their next steps and explore career choices. They typically offer assistance to their participants in
designing job search strategies, setting priorities and pursuing strategic action towards their
career goals, learning networking and interviewing skills, preparing for promotion, managing job
stress and removing barriers to career progress, negotiating and impression management skills.
Career coaches use assessment tools to advance participant understanding and find a valid
career fit. Their participants tend to be from three groups: those between jobs, those employed
but seeking to advance to the next level, and those seeking a different career path altogether.
Career coaches tend to have training and certification in coaching, career development, career
planning or related fields of human behaviour and development and/or psychology.
1
Brinkert, 2006
Skills coaching
Skills coaches are experts in a specific skill, such as communication, media relations, or writing.
These experts are part teacher and part coach. Skills coaches have good communication and
listening skills and are keen motivators focused on achieving results for their participants.
The use of skills coaches in the police services organizations would be largely determined by the
expertise they offer in addressing a specific developmental need.
Other coaching types
Types of coaching that are less useful for leadership development and career related functioning
in the police service organizations include: life coaching, wellness coaching, creativity,
relationship and spiritual coaching, as well as a host of other known coaching modalities.