Advanced Project Manager Coaching and Mentorship Practice Intensive Course

Course Introduction

Advanced Project Manager Coaching and Mentorship Practice Intensive Course is designed to strengthen the ability of experienced project managers, programme leaders, PMO professionals, and organizational development specialists to coach and mentor project management talent effectively. Successful project delivery depends not only on technical expertise, methodologies, and governance structures but also on the ability of project leaders to develop people, build confidence, strengthen judgment, and guide teams through complex professional challenges. This course provides a structured approach to coaching and mentoring that helps project professionals improve leadership capability, develop future project managers, and create stronger project management cultures within their organizations.

Project managers regularly face demanding situations involving competing priorities, stakeholder disagreements, schedule pressures, resource constraints, team conflict, uncertainty, and accountability for delivery outcomes. Coaching helps individuals examine these challenges, improve self-awareness, identify practical solutions, and develop independent decision-making skills. Mentorship complements this process by drawing on professional experience, lessons learned, career guidance, and organizational knowledge to support long-term development. Participants will explore the differences between coaching, mentoring, consulting, training, supervision, and performance management, learning when each approach is appropriate and how to combine them without undermining the learner's ownership of decisions.

Effective project management coaching requires more than asking questions or providing advice. Coaches must establish trust, clarify development goals, listen actively, challenge assumptions constructively, recognize behavioral patterns, and help individuals translate insights into measurable improvements. The course introduces practical coaching frameworks, structured conversations, reflective questioning, goal-setting methods, feedback techniques, and action-planning tools tailored to project environments. Participants will learn how to coach project managers on stakeholder engagement, risk management, conflict resolution, decision-making, delegation, team motivation, governance, and delivery performance while maintaining appropriate professional boundaries and confidentiality.

Mentorship requires a complementary set of capabilities focused on professional growth, career progression, leadership maturity, institutional knowledge, and the development of sound project management judgment. Experienced mentors must balance sharing lessons from their own careers with encouraging mentees to think independently, test alternatives, and develop their own leadership styles. Participants will examine mentor–mentee relationship design, expectation setting, development planning, professional networking, sponsorship boundaries, constructive challenge, and the management of difficult mentoring situations. Particular attention will be given to avoiding dependency, unconscious bias, favoritism, and the assumption that one person's career pathway or project experience is universally applicable.

Modern project management environments also require coaching and mentoring practices that respond to hybrid teams, remote collaboration, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, multicultural stakeholder environments, and rapidly changing professional expectations. This course explores how digital coaching platforms, virtual mentoring, reflective journals, development dashboards, skills assessments, and AI-supported learning tools can strengthen development activities when used responsibly. Participants will also examine psychological safety, emotional intelligence, inclusion, cultural awareness, ethical conduct, and the importance of distinguishing developmental conversations from formal performance evaluations or sensitive employee relations processes.

By completing Advanced Project Manager Coaching and Mentorship Practice Intensive Course, participants will be equipped to design and deliver structured coaching and mentoring engagements that improve individual capability, strengthen leadership behaviors, and support organizational project management maturity. They will develop practical skills in diagnostic assessment, coaching conversations, mentoring relationship management, professional development planning, feedback, progress evaluation, and continuous improvement. Through role-play, case studies, peer practice, and a capstone development assignment, participants will build a repeatable approach for helping project managers become more confident, reflective, collaborative, and effective leaders who can deliver results while developing the capabilities of others.

Duration

10 days

Who Should Attend

• Senior project managers seeking to develop coaching and mentoring capabilities to support emerging project leaders and strengthen team performance.

• Programme managers responsible for developing project managers across complex programmes, portfolios, and multi-disciplinary delivery environments.

• PMO directors and managers establishing project management capability frameworks, leadership development initiatives, and internal mentoring programmes.

• Project directors and portfolio leaders responsible for succession planning, talent development, leadership readiness, and organizational project delivery maturity.

• Experienced project professionals transitioning into formal coaching, mentoring, facilitation, or project leadership development roles.

• Project management consultants supporting clients with leadership development, project team effectiveness, organizational change, and capability improvement.

• Human resources and learning and development professionals responsible for project management career pathways, coaching programmes, and professional development initiatives.

• Agile coaches and delivery coaches seeking to expand their capabilities into traditional, hybrid, programme, and portfolio management environments.

• Functional managers supervising project managers and seeking practical approaches to developing decision-making, stakeholder management, and leadership competence.

• Project management trainers and facilitators who want to integrate coaching and mentoring methods into professional learning programmes.

• Team leaders and workstream managers responsible for developing emerging project leaders and improving collaboration across delivery teams.

• Organizational development specialists supporting leadership effectiveness, succession planning, talent retention, and knowledge transfer.

• Programme and project sponsors who want to strengthen leadership capability, accountability, and constructive reflection among project management teams.

• Professionals responsible for graduate development, early-career project management pathways, and structured mentoring for emerging talent.

• Consultants and advisers establishing internal or external coaching and mentoring services for project management professionals.

Course Objectives

• Develop an advanced understanding of coaching and mentoring principles and distinguish their purposes, methods, boundaries, and applications within project management environments.

• Assess project managers' development needs using structured conversations, competency frameworks, reflective exercises, behavioral observations, and appropriate assessment tools.

• Apply established coaching frameworks to help project managers clarify objectives, explore challenges, generate options, make decisions, and commit to practical actions.

• Strengthen active listening, powerful questioning, constructive challenge, emotional intelligence, and feedback skills for effective developmental conversations.

• Design mentoring relationships that establish clear expectations, appropriate boundaries, confidentiality arrangements, meeting structures, and measurable development outcomes.

• Coach project managers through practical challenges involving stakeholder conflict, risk decisions, resource allocation, delegation, communication, and delivery pressures.

• Develop personalized leadership development plans aligned with project management competencies, career aspirations, organizational requirements, and measurable performance indicators.

• Apply mentoring techniques that transfer professional knowledge, encourage independent judgment, support career progression, and strengthen leadership confidence without creating dependency.

• Manage difficult coaching and mentoring situations involving resistance, unrealistic expectations, low confidence, interpersonal tension, ethical concerns, and limited progress.

• Integrate coaching and mentoring into PMO capability development, succession planning, talent management, project governance, and continuous professional learning.

• Evaluate coaching and mentoring effectiveness using agreed goals, behavioral indicators, participant feedback, observed changes, and appropriate organizational outcomes.

• Establish an ethical, inclusive, and sustainable coaching and mentoring practice that supports confidentiality, cultural awareness, psychological safety, professional accountability, and continuous improvement.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations of Project Management Coaching and Mentorship

• Define coaching and mentoring in project management and examine how each approach supports leadership development, professional judgment, team effectiveness, and delivery performance.

• Distinguish coaching, mentoring, consulting, training, supervision, sponsorship, and performance management by purpose, relationship, level of direction, and expected outcomes.

• Examine the responsibilities of coaches and mentors when supporting project managers across predictive, agile, hybrid, programme, and portfolio environments.

• Identify organizational conditions that influence development relationships, including trust, workload, leadership culture, project complexity, organizational maturity, and access to support.

Module 2: Project Manager Competency Assessment and Development Diagnosis

• Examine project management competency areas covering leadership, communication, stakeholder engagement, planning, risk, governance, commercial awareness, and delivery control.

• Use structured interviews, self-assessments, competency matrices, reflective questionnaires, and relevant feedback to identify development strengths and priorities.

• Distinguish knowledge gaps, skill gaps, behavioral challenges, confidence issues, organizational barriers, and performance problems requiring different interventions.

• Translate assessment findings into focused development objectives that are realistic, measurable, relevant to the project context, and agreed with the participant.

Module 3: Coaching Models and Structured Development Conversations

• Apply structured coaching frameworks, such as GROW, to clarify goals, examine current reality, generate options, and establish specific commitments for action.

• Design coaching conversations that move from problem description to deeper exploration, decision-making, action planning, and review of learning.

• Use open-ended questions, reflective prompts, summarizing, reframing, and constructive challenge to help project managers examine assumptions and identify alternatives.

• Adapt coaching structure to the complexity, urgency, sensitivity, and developmental maturity of the project manager without turning every conversation into a rigid checklist.

Module 4: Active Listening, Emotional Intelligence, and Trust Building

• Develop active listening skills by recognizing verbal content, emotional cues, unspoken concerns, recurring themes, and differences between stated problems and underlying issues.

• Apply emotional intelligence to recognize personal reactions, manage assumptions, regulate responses, and remain constructive during difficult coaching conversations.

• Establish trust through consistent behavior, clear expectations, respectful challenge, confidentiality, and appropriate acknowledgment of professional and personal boundaries.

• Recognize communication differences, power dynamics, cultural influences, and psychological safety considerations that affect openness and participation in developmental discussions.

Module 5: Advanced Mentoring Practice and Relationship Management

• Design mentoring arrangements with defined purposes, roles, expectations, meeting frequency, communication methods, confidentiality boundaries, and review points.

• Balance sharing experience and professional insight with asking questions that encourage mentees to develop their own analysis, judgment, and leadership approach.

• Apply mentoring techniques for career planning, professional networking, leadership confidence, organizational navigation, and transfer of institutional knowledge.

• Manage mismatched expectations, declining engagement, dependency, conflicts of interest, boundary challenges, and the appropriate conclusion or transition of mentoring relationships.

Module 6: Coaching Project Leadership and Decision-Making

• Coach project managers through decisions involving scope trade-offs, schedule recovery, budget pressures, resource allocation, risk exposure, and changing stakeholder expectations.

• Help project managers evaluate alternatives, clarify assumptions, assess consequences, and distinguish immediate operational pressures from longer-term strategic considerations.

• Apply reflective questioning to strengthen delegation, accountability, prioritization, conflict resolution, meeting effectiveness, and communication with senior stakeholders.

• Use project scenarios to practice coaching conversations that encourage independent judgment while respecting governance requirements, delegated authority, and professional accountability.

Module 7: Stakeholder Management, Conflict, and Difficult Conversations

• Coach project managers to map stakeholder interests, understand influence patterns, manage expectations, and develop communication strategies for complex project relationships.

• Apply constructive challenge and conflict coaching techniques to examine disagreement, identify underlying interests, reduce defensiveness, and develop workable responses.

• Prepare project managers for difficult conversations involving missed commitments, performance concerns, scope disputes, resource conflicts, and stakeholder dissatisfaction.

• Establish appropriate escalation boundaries when issues involve formal grievances, safeguarding concerns, serious misconduct, legal exposure, or matters requiring specialist intervention.

Module 8: Performance Feedback, Reflection, and Behavioral Change

• Deliver specific, evidence-based feedback that describes observed behavior, its impact, and practical opportunities for improvement without relying on personal judgments.

• Help project managers interpret feedback from colleagues, team members, sponsors, and stakeholders while distinguishing useful patterns from isolated or biased observations.

• Use reflective journals, after-action reviews, lessons-learned sessions, and project retrospectives to convert experience into transferable professional learning.

• Develop behavioral experiments and action commitments that allow project managers to test new leadership approaches, evaluate results, and sustain positive changes.

Module 9: Leadership Development Plans and Career Mentorship

• Create individualized development plans linking current competency levels, professional aspirations, target roles, development activities, and measurable progress indicators.

• Identify appropriate learning methods, including stretch assignments, shadowing, peer learning, formal training, coaching sessions, mentoring conversations, and practical project leadership experience.

• Support career progression by exploring professional identity, leadership strengths, development priorities, networking, organizational opportunities, and realistic readiness requirements.

• Review development plans periodically and adjust priorities based on new responsibilities, project outcomes, feedback, changing organizational needs, and the participant's evolving goals.

Module 10: Coaching Project Delivery, Risk, and Resilience

• Coach project managers to identify early warning signals, evaluate delivery risks, strengthen mitigation planning, and communicate emerging issues without unnecessary delay.

• Explore techniques for developing resilience, maintaining perspective under pressure, managing competing demands, and responding constructively to setbacks and uncertainty.

• Help project managers reflect on failed assumptions, schedule slippage, cost overruns, stakeholder dissatisfaction, and other delivery challenges without encouraging blame or avoiding accountability.

• Use scenario-based coaching to strengthen adaptive leadership, ethical judgment, escalation decisions, and learning from difficult project experiences.

Module 11: Coaching and Mentoring Agile, Hybrid, and Distributed Teams

• Adapt coaching and mentoring methods to agile, predictive, and hybrid project environments, recognizing differences in planning cycles, team autonomy, governance, and delivery rhythms.

• Coach project managers on facilitation, iterative planning, team empowerment, retrospectives, dependency management, and collaboration across delivery workstreams.

• Establish effective virtual mentoring arrangements using structured agendas, digital collaboration tools, reflective exercises, and clear communication agreements.

• Address challenges involving remote participation, time-zone differences, digital fatigue, reduced informal interaction, and the development of trust across geographically distributed teams.

Module 12: Ethics, Confidentiality, Inclusion, and Professional Boundaries

• Establish ethical principles for coaching and mentoring covering informed participation, confidentiality, honesty, respect, professional competence, and clear agreements.

• Recognize conflicts of interest, dual relationships, power imbalances, favoritism, unconscious bias, and situations where developmental conversations may overlap with formal performance processes.

• Apply inclusive coaching practices that respect different communication styles, cultural contexts, professional backgrounds, accessibility needs, and individual development preferences.

• Determine when to maintain confidentiality, when contractual or organizational duties require escalation, and when specialist support is needed for sensitive or high-risk matters.

Module 13: Measuring Coaching and Mentoring Effectiveness

• Establish measurable development outcomes using competency indicators, behavioral objectives, feedback, progress reviews, and agreed measures of professional growth.

• Evaluate coaching effectiveness through goal attainment, changes in leadership behavior, decision quality, stakeholder feedback, and relevant project performance indicators.

• Assess mentoring programme effectiveness using participation, engagement, relationship quality, career development, knowledge transfer, and participant feedback.

• Distinguish individual development outcomes from wider organizational or project results and avoid attributing complex delivery improvements to coaching alone without supporting evidence.

Module 14: Organizational Coaching Culture and Mentorship Programme Design

• Design internal coaching and mentoring programmes with clear eligibility criteria, matching processes, role definitions, training requirements, confidentiality rules, and governance arrangements.

• Develop mentor selection and preparation processes that consider professional experience, interpersonal capability, credibility, availability, inclusion, and potential conflicts of interest.

• Integrate coaching and mentoring into PMO capability frameworks, leadership development pathways, succession planning, onboarding, and lessons-learned processes.

• Establish programme review mechanisms covering participation, quality assurance, resource requirements, participant experience, organizational alignment, and continuous improvement.

Module 15: Digital Coaching Tools, AI, and Development Analytics

• Examine digital platforms for scheduling sessions, recording agreed actions, tracking development objectives, managing mentor relationships, and supporting remote collaboration.

• Explore responsible applications of AI-assisted reflection prompts, competency analysis, learning recommendations, and development summaries while retaining human oversight.

• Establish privacy, confidentiality, data retention, consent, access control, and information security requirements for coaching notes and mentoring programme records.

• Use development dashboards and aggregated indicators to identify programme participation, progress patterns, unmet needs, and opportunities for improvement without exposing confidential individual discussions.

Module 16: Integrated Coaching and Mentorship Practice Capstone

• Conduct a structured competency assessment and development conversation with a simulated project manager facing realistic leadership, stakeholder, or delivery challenges.

• Demonstrate an integrated coaching session using active listening, questioning, reframing, constructive challenge, goal setting, and a documented action plan.

• Design a mentoring plan that includes relationship objectives, professional development priorities, meeting arrangements, progress indicators, and ethical boundaries.

• Present a coaching and mentorship development portfolio containing session reflections, feedback, competency observations, improvement commitments, and an evaluation approach for continued professional practice.

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.