Coaching is a vital part for anyone to succeed in their field of interest because with training comes knowledge and with knowledge comes confidence. With an aim to provide the best coaching solutions to the leaders and other members, Incoaching was established in the year 2003 that provides customized coaching solutions for each job type and position by utilizing the coaching data accumulated over a long period of time through the R&D center. Under the leadership of Jae Eun Kim, the company is on the journey of building a coaching organizational culture where both leaders and members are happy.

Jae Eun Kim has completed her undergraduate in Communication Art from Sejong University. She has also completed her master's in international development from the American University and international studies from Korea University. She started her professional career as a Producer & Anchor with LG Corporation and went on to become the CEO of Incoaching. Today, she is conducting coaching projects for big MNCs and helping them navigate a fast-changing and multicultural corporate environment. Her vision as a CEO of a coaching company is to support people to be happy and healthy in the workplace and make them aware of their true potential. Let’s hear from her.

Introduce us to Incoaching. How does the firm intend to empower organizations, leaders, and individuals through its coaching services?

Incoaching was founded 20 years ago even before the Korea Coach Association was established. So, we have the longest history in business coaching in Korea. Our company helped and supported more than 2,500 organizations during the period of Korea’s economic boom by providing coaching to the leaders and other employees. In Korea, we have so many different sectors and it is a small country with a huge population which makes them work closely with each other. So, their relationship becomes a very important issue to deal with to create a healthy and happy working environment. At Incoaching, we have hired psychologists and people doing Ph.D. in business management for doing R&D and coming up with exact and customized coaching solutions for our clients. Today, everyone in the top, middle, and bottom management wants to learn communication skills and leadership skills because of the changing work culture.

"When the leaders are happy, confident, and take their role well then, the people who are looking up to them would become ambitious to be a leader like their leader"

We always take a different approach for different industries and try to find out the biggest issue they are facing. We find out the needs of the companies as well as the top management and then provide the best solu­tion which they can adopt and sustain. We have also created a Woman Leadership Program to empower the women of Korea and help them to take top positions in companies.

Enumerate the most critical challenges you encounter as a leader of coaching company. How do you overcome the roadblocks that you face?

As a leader in the coaching company, I face high expectations of my employees to be the best coach at all times. To overcome this challenge, we try to create an environment where the leaders have the confidence to become better leaders by providing coach training for every employee. Incoaching internally provides one-on-one coaching services to everyone so that employees can understand and benefit from the impact of leadership coaching. So, when the leaders are happy, confident, and take their role well then, the people who are looking up to them would become ambitious to be a leader like their leader. At Incoaching, we have the most amazing coaches who go the extra mile to help and support leaders to transform their lives.

What's your vision for Incoaching in the years to come and what’s the future roadmap for the company's next growth phase?

Right now, the whole economic value chain is changing and the leaders are concerned about the future and their roles. So, our vision is to give more resources to the leaders to motivate themselves after they are all burned out doing hard work. This creates huge health issues both physical as well as mental health and no room is left in the leaders for welcoming other people. We try to support and help them to make space for themselves and recognize self-understanding, and self-intelligence, and enhance emotion-managing capability. Along with that, right now we are trying to build the right system, and in the future, we will try to make big data that will help the HR team in recruitment, placement, and leadership development. Practicing coaching every day is my main purpose today and it will be in the future as well. I want leaders to continue to empower themselves and aspire to practice what they have learned.

"My advice for all women is to be confident and try as many things as possible to find out what they really want."

Tell us about the top three milestones you have achieved throughout your professional journey.

My first milestone is my book titled Positive Employees vs Negative Employees: Group Coaching to Enhance Effectiveness as a Team Leader. Let me include here also writing my second book titled Talk, Act, Learn, and Change. In this book, I have tried to analyze and find out the most relevant topics in coaching in Korea. I have invited many clients and coaches to write in different chapters and thanks to this, leaders will get to know how Korean coaching best practices were developed and changed. This book has helped many HR and other leaders in the industry to learn how to coach and what to coach to increase the effectiveness of their people.

My second milestone is developing a Human- Centered Coaching Guidebook in which I have tried to write a more detailed questionnaire and which questions to ask in different situations. Since many Korean leaders who grew up in a hierarchical system did not have well-structured coaching experience from their bosses, it is crucial for them to experience and prepare well before conducting coaching to their members. This book prepares the leader before coaching and helps them to motivate and solve relationship crises amongst the employees. I have also mentioned the best coaching practices conducted by various leaders for easy understanding. The leaders use our guidebook before going to coach their team members and we have gotten excellent feedback for how it helped them.

The third milestone could be focusing more on the B2B industry like having clients from MNCs, International companies, and mid-size companies because the owner of these companies stays for a long time unlike in government sectors. Incoaching developed special programs for the Manufacturing sector, R&D sector, Sales sector, and IT sector. This customized coaching solution for different industries and job positions gives us the opportunity to develop one-on-one coaching guides, group coaching guides, and various workshops that are very effective. We have also signed an international partnership with SuccessFinder allowing us to utilize a most accurate and scientifically validated assessment for our clients and coaches for strategic coaching.

What advice would you give to the aspiring women leaders?

My advice for all women is to be confident and try as many things as possible to find out what they really want. I want them to make wise choices because that will make a difference in their professional as well as personal lives. I want women leaders to take on the challenge, experience it and grow throughout their lives.