Professor Harald Geissler of the Helmut-Schmidt University inspired students and staff at Sydney Business School with his enlightening talk on virtual and blended coaching.

Virtual coaching takes place when the coach and person coached are not in the same location and use media such as telephone and computers to interact. Blended coaching is a mixture of virtual coaching and traditional face to face coaching. 

Students in large and widely dispersed organisations were very interested in Professor Geissler’s findings that implementing an online coaching program after delivery of a training module, increased the effectiveness of the training (defined as implementing training in the workplace) from <20% to between 40% and 60%, allowing organisations to make much better use of limited training budgets.  Professor Geissler also illustrated his talk with examples of his virtual leadership coaching program. 

In the current economic climate, when organisations are focused on controlling costs, virtual and blended coaching offer tremendous possibilities for achieving the benefits of coaching for lower costs than traditional face to face coaching.

Last reviewed: 31 March, 2009