Traits and Training of Human Performance Coaches

Do your employees have someone they can talk to?

Aduro’s accredited health and well-being coaching program offer a whole team of coaches to support your employee’s health, well-being, and mental health. Our Human Performance Coaches are responsible for eliciting new thinking, supporting people in discovering what motivates them, and facilitating powerful transformations. Aduro’s expert coaches are accredited by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching. Our coaching philosophy is based on the science of intrinsic motivation and behavioral psychology.

Aduro coaches meet people where they are and work to understand what inspires them to make a change. We call this the ‘Ignite Moment’ – the pivotal point for meaningful change. This is what drives action and produces results that matter to the individual.


Dive deeper into our approach to employee well-being in our eBook – Bringing Humanity Back to the Workplace.


Successful traits of a Human Performance Coach

The success of our Human Performance Coaching program starts with finding the right people to join our coaching team. We have found that the right combination of traits and training allows for our coaches to be effective and have true impact on those they interact with every day.

Below are the five traits that enable our coaches to make a lasting impact on the lives of our members:

  1. Relationship building: Our coaches are often trusted with intimate information from their clients in moments of vulnerability and awareness. It’s important that our coaches are able to build rapport quickly and communicate effectively. They must be high in empathy and optimism and have the ability to quickly connect with people in a meaningful way.
  2. Active listening: Effective coaches spend 80% of their time listening to their clients and the other 20% asking powerful questions. They have the ability to be present and to hear and pick up on subtle nuances both in-person and telephonically. They need to be mindful of the things that are not being said, the pauses, and the energy that someone has around what they are saying.
  3. Resiliency: Resilience is the speed at which one bounces back from adversity and the willingness to move forward. Our Human Performance Coaches must have the ability to hear hard and discouraging things and be able to stay optimistic. They regard each human being as capable, creative, and complete, and values the individual’s thinking about their lives as more important than the coach’s thinking about the individual.
  4. Coachable: Giving and receiving feedback is critical to the success of any coaching program. We find that our coaches must have a high tolerance for receiving constructive feedback and for turning that feedback into opportunities for growth.
  5. Fueled by growth and development: Our coaches are driven by an intense curiosity and genuine desire to help people develop and find the underlying obstacles that may be holding them back from their own potential. We find that our coaches also possess that same desire for their own growth and development. Excellence is a moving target, and it takes constant growth and an openness to new thinking and learning.

In the process of listening and identifying patterns, and being able to interrupt those patterns, the goal of a coach and the skill that we’re developing is the coach’s ability to support the client through powerful questioning that elicits new thinking.”

– Dr. Toni Best, Chief Human Performance Officer

Developing strong coaches through feedback and training

Our coaches know that in order to be effective coaches they themselves have to continue to grow and be coached. At Aduro, we make sure that our Human Performance Coaches have access to the best training and resources.

Here are a few of the ways that we continually strive to be a leader in setting the standard in health and wellness coaching:

  • Focusing on strengths. Everyone has unique strengths and success is all about focusing and putting those strengths to work. Focusing on strengths versus weaknesses provides the opportunity to grow and develop in a meaningful and impactful way. We believe that your talents are the best representation of yourself and your best opportunity to perform.
  • Creating a culture of meaningful feedback. We have several ways that we create meaningful feedback loops for our coaches. One form of feedback is the data from our coaching dashboard – connection rates, client satisfaction rates, completion of programs, etc. From day one, our coaches work alongside a senior coach mentor who guides them through live coaching including in-the-moment feedback, call evaluations, specific skill training, and proficiency measurements. Our method of continuous feedback ensures that our coaches are always working with the right skill and the right methodology at the right time. 
  • Providing resources for continual growth and development. Our team has access to the latest and most innovative coaching resources through the Institute of Coaching, McLean Hospital Harvard Medical School Affiliate. Additionally, we have an extensive library of thought-leadership books and science-based articles that are always available to our Human Performance Coaches.
  • Initial intensive and ongoing training. The National Board Certification of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBC-HWC) is based on extensive research and allows proficient coaches to stand apart from coaches who have not received adequate coach training or assessment of their coaching skills and knowledge. Aduro’s proprietary Human Performance Training Program™ is an NBC-HWC approved training program. Each of our Human Performance and Mental Health coaches undergoes this training.

Aduro’s Human Performance Training Program

The Aduro Coach Training Program is a national board-approved training program by the NBHWC. It is all-encompassing, focusing on equipping coaches with tools to evaluate readiness to change, trigger new thinking and create behavior change to effect long-term transformative change. Our initial training consists of a 90-day proprietary course, six-months of weekly training, and ongoing mentorship, required call evaluations and continued call auditing. Aduro’s training program develops, prepares and assists our coaches to apply and complete a board exam that would certify them as independent professional coaches. Additionally, Aduro provides specific coach development paths within mental health coaching along with continuous mentorship and monitoring with all our coach roles.

Our Human Performance Coaches have one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs at Aduro. Their coaching is what taps into an individual’s intrinsic motivation and helps them identify the limiting beliefs that are holding them back from reaching their goals. Our coaches help to change people’s lives by focusing on possibilities and potential and we’re proud to give them the resources and tools they need to be successful.


Coaching Success Story

Hear directly from one of our members about the impact coaching has had on their life.

“I signed up for Aduro coaching because my manager mentioned it was a free benefit and it would help me better support our customers and my coworkers. After the first session, I was blown away by Coach Erika’s genuine and calming yet encouraging nature. Throughout all our sessions she challenged me with intentional questions, validated whatever I shared or wanted to work on, and helped me establish new tools.

I entered into the coaching thinking I’d like to focus on nutrition and fitness, and I started by making a goal to move every day and to keep a food log. This log lasted for a couple of weeks when I realized it wasn’t sustainable. Coach Erika asked me to think about it from a bigger perspective, “Why did I want to work on these topics?” We were able to talk through the Why behind the desires I have to eat better and move more, which was a really cool process.

Overall, I can see why it’s called Human Performance coaching and not something more specific. You might have one area you hope to work with a coach on, and I’m sure that works for some people, but I found that throughout my coaching journey, I experienced an evolution in my thinking and my goals. I was able to thread the different desires and goals I was making through a greater purpose, a human purpose.

Now I can feel confident when I have a goal or desire because I can work to the root or why it exists. I can also effectively use the tool of breaking it down – identifying realistic and tangible steps to getting somewhere. I worked on steps for owning my own fitness studio, to working through difficult projects at my job, and event to preparing for my home renovation.

I’m so grateful to have been paired with Coach Erika, and I look forward to perhaps connecting with her again in the future. She was always a bright light in my day, and I truly understand the value working with a coach can bring. Thank you!”


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