Coaching
What this domain tests
Coaching tests structured, goal-focused conversations that improve a belt's or project leader's own capability. The exam distinguishes coaching from consulting: a coach builds the coachee's judgment and ownership rather than taking over the analysis or writing the deliverable.
Core rules
- Establish a coaching agreement: purpose, goals, confidentiality, meeting cadence, roles, and what will be shared with sponsors.
- Use a repeatable conversation structure such as GROW-goal, reality, options, will. Keep the coachee doing the thinking and committing to actions.
- Coach from observation and data: project charter, data collection plan, tollgate evidence, stakeholder map, and behavior in reviews. Avoid coaching from hearsay.
- Give feedback with situation-behavior-impact and a question. Separate the technical issue from the behavioral pattern.
- At DMAIC tollgates, ask decision questions: What problem are you solving? What evidence supports the root cause? What would falsify your conclusion? What is the control plan?
- Ask more than tell. Use open questions, summarize, and check commitment. Record actions and follow up.
- Respect boundaries: coaching is not therapy, discipline, or performance rating. Escalate safety, ethics, and competence concerns through proper channels.
Worked example
A Black Belt is stuck in Measure because the baseline keeps moving. The coach does not choose a sampling plan. Instead, the coach asks the belt to walk through the operational definition, the measurement system study, and the data collection log. The belt discovers that two shifts use different gauges and that the MSA excluded one of them. The coach asks what option the belt will test, what evidence will confirm it, and when to update the sponsor. The reasoning: the coach improved the belt's diagnostic discipline, not just the project schedule.
Traps that cost marks
- Solving the technical problem for the coachee and calling it coaching.
- Giving vague praise or criticism instead of observable feedback.
- Skipping the agreement, then surprising the coachee in a sponsor review.
- Coaching only tools while ignoring stakeholder and change leadership.
- Colluding with a weak root-cause story because the project is late.
- No follow-up, so commitments disappear.