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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.

This is the time that management coaches come in. One of the most important resources human resources can provide is the kind of management coaching that turns a mediocre manager into the leader of a all-star team. There's a reason that top CEO's of Fortune 500 companies spend a combined total of millions in one to one training with the world's most elite coaches. That reason is that even someone with as many successes as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs knows that he doesn't know it all.

An analogy can be drawn with 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?

Of course, one has to ask: where do you draw the line? Does everyone in a supervisory position need management coaching? Does a project leader? Lead engineer? Merely "senior" engineer, managing only themselves? The answer to each of these is a clear "yes."

Anyone making 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 work force.

Expert management coaching ensures that an angry lapse will never destroy a team, that a bad day doesn't mean a bad month, and that teams are led, and not just managed. Raising leaders doesn't happen without investing in them, and management coaches are the most proactive way of doing that -- for a Fortune 500 CEO, and for your management team too.