When you bring in a coach from the outside to assist your own coaching efforts, you must first make absolutely certain that you have a very specific, clearly defined reason for doing so. The objectives that you want the external coach to achieve must be clearly spelled out to him or her. Likewise, the employee or employees who will be working with this adjunct coach should also be fully briefed.

Preparing Your Employees

Don't ever dump an external coach on an employee or entire staff without explaining to them precisely what you have in mind. These kinds of surprises are not appreciated by team members and violate some basic tenets of coaching and mentoring — open communication, employee involvement, and so on. Such a unilateral path reduces the chances of a fruitful relationship ever developing between an outside coach and your people.

On the other hand, fully apprising employees of just what these ancillary relationships will entail increases the possibility that any added coaching they receive will bear fruit. Prepare, prepare, prepare. And do keep work-related surprises to a minimum.

Getting Your Employees on Board

Listen, too, to what your employees have to say about a prospective relationship with an external coach. If your employees are dead set against the setup, you might want to reconsider going through with it. External coaches, remember, aren't philanthropists working free of charge. If you feel that your employees' resistance to this brand of tutorship is as hard as a diamond, then you are confronted with three choices:

1. No external coaching.

2. Convince employees to give the relationship the “old college try.”

3. Tell your employees that they are getting the extra coaching — end of story (not a coach thing to do, by the way).