At present, employees are the fundamental resource of a firm and they are responsible for the success of a company. However, updating their knowledge and equipping them with new skills and qualifications is constantly needed to fully utilise the human capital. Some of the methods that may be used in this process are mentoring and coaching. The aim of the paper is to present these two ways of training employees and to assess their advantages with regards to using them in the process of succession in family businesses. The article argues that those methods suit the characteristics of family businesses perfectly.