ABSTRACT
When my father joined the workforce, the idea of hiring a coach to help him develop his job skills would have seemed utterly absurd. His boss would have regarded such a suggestion as beyond lunacy. Why spend a penny on one-on-one coaching? You either quickly learned on the job what was expected of you or you were fired. After WW II, both public and private sector organizations began to invest substantially in staff development. The ruling model was classroom training. New employees were shipped off to training programs and given thick three-ring binders to learn. On-the-job training continued to be the dominant staff development model for small organizations as it still is today.
