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Many companies fall into the mistake of hiring someone who has managed people before, and assuming that, since they're an experienced manager, they don't need any more help. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that managers are human beings too, and just as cooking at home for a few years doesn't leave someone completely qualified to be a good chef (although it might well be a good start), being a good manager consists of more than having experience managing some people for a while.

Management coaches enter at this point. Human resources are most beneficial to companies when they provide management coaching to help turn mediocre or poor managers into world-class leaders. Fortune 500 corporations will spend millions of dollars to train their employees with the best coaches the world has to offer. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't know everything either. They know this, which is why they're willing to spend so much money to train their people.

A similarity may be found in the field of music - George Gershwin took lessons in harmony from other composers, at a time when he was the most famous and well-paid living composer in the world! If the leaders of the world take personal coaching, isn't that a good indication that management coaching is an important part of bringing out the best in your management team?

So when you have decided that your company could use management coaching, the question is who should be coached. We would answer that anyone in a position of responsibility in your company regardless of division or number of people managed should be coached.

Everyone who makes management decisions needs coaching, and the reason is that no one is perfect. We all had to learn things somewhere, but changes in the world (especially increases in business efficiency) require us to adapt and stay ahead of the curve. Like the kid's saying "you snooze, you lose", managers who receive no training "lose". They lose their edge, their team's advantage, and, if they are particularly bad managers, they might even lose their workforce.

An angry lapse will never destroy a team, a bad day will never mean a bad month, and teams are led, not just managed, when they are the focus of competent management coaching. For your management team as much as for any Fortune 500 CEO, raising leaders doesn't happen without investing in them, and management coaches are by far the most proactive way of doing that.