Coaching and mentoring are comprehensive managerial methodologies that apply across the board to each and every employee on the job. You can, of course, bring in external and personal coaches to work one-on-one with individuals for specific reasons or to solve certain problems beyond your ken. But day-to-day managing as a coach means that you are coaching everybody on your staff without exception.

Let's bring this point to the football field to further drive it home and kick a field goal. You wouldn't try out for a football team, make the cut, and then inform the coach you don't desire any of his coaching. If you did, he'd tell you where to go. You wouldn't tell him that you know all there is to know about the game and that you'd appreciate if he would leave you alone, refrain from telling you what to do, and just let you play. That's not how the football bounces. A football coach coaches a team of individuals. And a team is all about teamwork, where every single person's performance contributes to the final results. Ditto in the workplace. A coach on the football field or in the office doesn't wait for invitations to coach. He is expected to coach everybody on his team, whether they think they need coaching or not.

You want to get the best performance out of every one of your employees. And that means that you want to maximize the performances of the best performers just as much as you do the lesser performers. Coaching places no restrictions on performance or on the potential of individuals. This is precisely why every single person is a candidate for coaching. There isn't anybody alive who can't do better and move to the next level.

This discussion doesn't mean that each and every individual will respond well to coaching, or that everybody and anybody will respond the same way to it. But in most cases, coaching methodologies get more out of employees than do other managerial approaches. Coaching and its uniquely personal touch gets more out of people both in job performance and in job satisfaction. And that's a winning combination, most especially in this dog-eat-dog day and age.