There’s been a lot of confusion around the roles of training, coaching, and managing. People often believe these terms are interchangeable, thinking that if you’re a good coach, you can also handle training, or that managing is simply another form of coaching. This confusion arises because, on the surface, the processes within each role can look quite similar—they might involve giving feedback, observing performance, or guiding someone through their work. From a topographical standpoint, training, coaching, and managing often look alike. But when you dig deeper, the real differences come into focus.
The titles “trainer,” “coach,” and “manager” are often seen as static nouns—labels that define someone’s role. However, just having the title of trainer, coach, or manager doesn’t automatically mean that person is engaging in the actual behaviors of training, coaching, or managing. In fact, anyone holding those titles should be actively participating in all three processes. A trainer should also coach and manage, just as a coach might train and manage, and a manager should engage in coaching and training. The title is just the label; the function is what truly drives performance.
Many people have worked in labs or classrooms, conducting research on human performance. My "lab" has been the boxing and MMA gyms. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of hours honing these approaches, helping individuals become competent in skills only to watch them perform poorly in the fight. That’s where the real challenge lies—not just birthing skills but helping them "grow up" to function in the real world under high-stakes pressure. Training, coaching, and managing all play distinct roles in this process, and they’re not interchangeable.
I’ve used these methods to produce local, state, national, and even world champions. The lessons learned in the fight gym are not just applicable to athletes—they are generalizable to any organization. The same principles I’ve written about in my book Positional Authority Ain’t Leadership (2024) apply to improving performance in any field, whether it’s education, business, or sports.
The critical point to understand is that while these processes might appear to overlap, they each serve entirely different functions. What training accomplishes is not what coaching does, and what managing ensures cannot be achieved solely through coaching or training. Recognizing these differences is crucial for anyone serious about driving sustained performance in any domain. Failing to distinguish between them often leads to ineffective leadership and wasted effort.
Training: Where the Journey Begins
Training is where most skill development journeys begin. Whether you're onboarding new employees, teaching teachers classroom management strategies, or training athletes on foundational techniques, training functions primarily for skill acquisition. It’s about learning something new—acquiring the necessary knowledge and competencies to perform a specific task. Typically, training occurs in structured, controlled environments like workshops, seminars, or professional development sessions. The topography of training is familiar: a set curriculum, clear objectives, and measurable outcomes, with an endpoint that focuses on mastering a specific skill or body of knowledge.
For example, if a teacher attends a training session on how to implement effective questioning techniques in the classroom, the trainer provides a structured learning experience. The teacher is taught the theory behind the strategy, shown examples, and given opportunities to practice with feedback. The topography of training involves explaining, demonstrating, and assessing whether the teacher can reproduce the skills being taught.
Training can even happen in an in-vivo setting, meaning the training takes place in the natural environment where the skills will be used. However, even in-vivo training doesn’t guarantee that the skills learned will generalize effectively across different situations or conditions within the real world. Just because training occurs where the behavior will eventually be performed doesn’t mean that those skills will consistently be applied when real-world complexities arise. This is where coaching becomes critical—bridging the gap between skill acquisition and real-world application. While training imparts the “how-to,” coaching ensures that the skills learned during training are effectively generalized and adapted to the demands of the natural environment (Gavoni & Weatherly, 2024).
Coaching: Bridging the Gap Between Training and Application
Coaching is often confused with training because both processes aim to improve performance. However, while training builds the foundation by developing skills, coaching functions to generalize those learned skills into the natural environment. This means that coaching ensures skills acquired during training are not just theoretically understood and demonstrated but applied effectively in real-world settings, where variables are more unpredictable and nuanced.
Even in cases where training occurs in-vivo—directly in the environment where the skills will be used—it doesn’t guarantee that the performer will effectively adapt or generalize those skills across all real-world situations. Training largely revolves around telling and instructing. It helps individuals acquire the skills they need, but that doesn’t mean those skills will be used effectively or consistently once the complexities of everyday practice come into play. Coaching fills this gap by guiding individuals in applying what they’ve learned, ensuring they can adapt and respond to the dynamic conditions of their environment.
Unlike training, which is focused on instruction, coaching is about asking. Most people are poor observers of their own behavior, poor observers of the impact of their behavior on their environment or poor observers of the impact the environment on their behavior. Coaching works by connecting behavior to results, helping individuals see the direct impact of their actions and enabling them to make real-time adjustments. Coaching guides individuals to recognize how their behavior affects the outcomes they’re experiencing, fostering self-awareness and adaptability.
For example, after a teacher has been trained on questioning techniques, coaching ensures that the teacher uses these techniques effectively in the classroom, the in-vivo setting. Coaching might involve observing the teacher in action, providing feedback, and asking reflective questions that help the teacher recognize how their questioning affects student engagement and learning. Coaching doesn’t just involve feedback—it facilitates the process of self-discovery, helping individuals connect their behaviors to real-world outcomes.
A key role of coaching is to help people perform well enough and long enough for them to experience naturally occurring reinforcement. For example, as the teacher sees students become more engaged, behave better, or achieve more as a result of effective questioning, these positive outcomes reinforce their behaviors. Over time, this natural reinforcement sustains the behavior without the need for external support. Coaching ensures this process by helping the individual reach a point where the results of their behavior provide their own rewards.
Coaching can take many forms—one-on-one sessions, video feedback, real-time corrections, or written guidance—but it always serves to help individuals generalize and refine their skills in the real world. While coaching may share some topographical similarities with training, its function is distinct: coaching ensures that learned behaviors stick, adapt, and evolve under the complex conditions of real-world environments.
Managing: Maintaining Performance Over Time
Then we have managing. Managing is perhaps the most misunderstood of the three because it’s often seen as less exciting or dynamic than coaching or training. However, managing plays a critical role in ensuring that the skills acquired through training and refined through coaching don’t fall apart over time. Managing is all about maintenance, ensuring that once a behavior or skill has been learned and applied, it continues to be used effectively and doesn’t drift (Gavoni, 2024).
From a topographical standpoint, managing might involve similar activities to coaching—observing, providing feedback, setting expectations—but its function is distinct. Managing is about leveraging the existing contingencies within an organization to sustain learned behaviors over the long term. Without proper management, even the best training and coaching efforts may eventually unravel.
Managing might include regular performance reviews, aligning rewards with desired behaviors, or setting up feedback loops to monitor performance. It’s about creating systems that reinforce and maintain behaviors, preventing the drift that can happen when initial enthusiasm fades or when conditions in the environment change. For example, after a teacher has been trained and coached on effective questioning techniques, managing ensures that they continue using those techniques consistently over time. This might involve the school principal regularly observing classrooms, linking teacher evaluations to performance, or setting up peer observations to maintain a culture of continuous improvement.
Why It’s Critical to Distinguish Between Them
At first glance, it’s easy to see why training, coaching, and managing can be confused. All three can involve similar processes—providing feedback, observing performance, and making adjustments. But their functions couldn’t be more different, and these differences are critical to ensuring sustained performance.
Training is the starting point, focusing on acquiring new skills and knowledge in a structured environment.
Coaching helps apply and generalize those skills in the real world, making adjustments to ensure the performer succeeds in dynamic, unpredictable environments.
Managing ensures those skills are maintained and prevents behavioral drift, using organizational systems to sustain performance over time.
Each serves its own unique purpose, and neglecting any one of them can lead to failure. Training without coaching can result in skills that never get used effectively. Coaching without managing can lead to performance gains that disappear once the coaching stops. And managing without initial training and coaching is like trying to maintain behaviors that were never properly established in the first place. This can lead to coercive approaches as the performer has not behaved well enough and long enough to produce valued outcomes.
Final Thoughts
Understanding the functional distinctions between training, coaching, and managing is vital to achieving long-term success in any organization. Each plays a critical role, and when they work together, they form a cohesive strategy for developing, refining, and sustaining performance. Training builds the foundation, coaching bridges the gap to real-world application, and managing ensures that performance remains consistent over time.
Leaders who fail to understand these differences often find themselves frustrated when their teams don’t improve, or when gains that were made during training or coaching quickly fade. But leaders who master the art of moving seamlessly between training, coaching, and managing will find that they are able to drive not just short-term gains, but long-term success.
References
Gavoni, P., (2024). Positional authority ain't leadership: Behavioral science for navigating bull$hit, optimizing performance, and avoiding a$$ clownery. Spanish Edition. Heart & Science, LLC.
Gavoni, P., & Weatherly, N. (2024). Deliberate coaching: A toolbox for accelerating teacher performance in education. 2nd Edition. Melbourne, Florida: Keypress Publishing.
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