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University of California, Davis · on Coursera

Coaching Conversations

Beginner English University CertificateFREE
SkillsCoachingOne-on-onesFeedbackPeople developmentManagement conversationsActive listening

Is this course right for you?

Our take
Veteran executive coach Kris Plachy's UC Davis course on a specific shift: managing by coaching people rather than simply directing them.

Good for: Managers who want to coach their people rather than just direct them.

Skip if: You want to become a professional certified coach, or you manage no one.

It hands you research-backed tools and models for running better one-on-ones and coaching conversations — practical enough to use in your next meeting. The framing sets its limits cleanly: it's for managers who want to develop their people, not a path to becoming a professionally certified coach, and it assumes you actually have people to coach.

Free to audit on Coursera; a certificate needs a subscription (about $49/month) or Coursera Plus, with financial aid available, and records the learning rather than a coaching credential. The move from telling to developing is a timeless management lesson (as of 2026).

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About this course

Coaching Conversations teaches managers how to coach rather than just direct. From UC Davis and veteran executive coach Kris Plachy, it shares research-backed tools and models for running more effective one-on-one conversations that help people solve their own problems and grow.

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Instructor

KP
Kris Plachy
Coursera instructor

Kris Plachy is a UC Davis instructor and founder of Leadership Coach, LLC, with 20+ years leading high-performing teams and a Certified Master Coach credential. She's published several books on coaching and managing people.

Frequently asked questions

No. From UC Davis, it teaches the skills of holding effective coaching conversations — asking good questions, listening, and guiding people toward their own solutions — but it is not a professional coaching certification like the ICF's. It gives you genuinely useful coaching-conversation skills, especially for managers, but it does not qualify you as an accredited professional coach, which requires separate, dedicated certification.

Yes. It focuses on the actual practice of coaching conversations — the techniques, questions, and listening skills you use in real interactions — rather than abstract coaching theory. The value is in applying these to genuine conversations with team members or others, so it is practically oriented. As with any interpersonal skill, real improvement comes from using the techniques, which the course prepares you to do.

Not necessarily, though managers benefit most. Coaching-conversation skills apply wherever you help others think through problems and grow — as a manager, mentor, colleague, or peer. It assumes no formal management role, so people in various positions can gain from it. If you do lead a team, the techniques are directly applicable to developing your people through better conversations.

Yes, you can audit it on Coursera and watch the lectures at no cost. The graded elements and the certificate require a subscription, with financial aid available if you apply. Since much of the value is understanding and practising the coaching-conversation techniques, auditing gives you the substance if you want the skills rather than the credential.

It typically runs a few weeks at a modest weekly pace as a focused course. It is skills- and practice-oriented rather than a hands-on build, so the time goes into learning the coaching-conversation techniques and, ideally, practising them — which is where the improvement actually happens, since coaching is a skill built by doing.
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