Source: theHRDIRECTOR
Date: March 2006

The introduction of a coach to enhance staff performance can greatly benefit an organisation. However, coaches should be chosen with extreme care – the wrong one could have a more detrimental effect on a business than none at all.

The popularity of coaching is indisputable with the CIPD recording 88% of organisations using the technique in one form or another in their ‘Training and Development’ survey 2005. However, when it comes to one-to-one executive coaching, it appears enthusiasm for the technique is not matched by keenness to monitor results. A global survey carried out by Brunel University among 15,000 respondents on behalf of Performance Coaching International, found 38% of coaches were being given free reign when they worked for companies.

“There is always the danger that a rogue coach will infiltrate one line of the business and drive their own agenda rather than that of the business,” says Kevin McAlpin, managing director of Performance Coaching International. “They can take their coachee and, in extreme cases, whole areas of the business in a different direction, developing a strategy or leadership style which may not be in line with the rest of the organisation.”

The problem lies in the confidentiality required by coaching relationships. Coaches act as an independent sounding board, asking informed questions of the coachee and challenging their behaviour in order to inspire improved performance. To be effective, the coach and coachee must be able to discuss anything and everything pertinent to that performance, or real sustained improvements could be compromised. If the coachee believes their discussions are being relayed to the organisation they may feel vulnerable and censor their own input. But while confidentiality is unavoidable, there are techniques organisations can follow which enable coaching outcomes to be established, controlled and measured.

"If you’re paying an executive coach to contribute to your organisation’s success you should not worry about the individual actions they make on your behalf”

“We take the approach of ‘Behavioural Contracting’,” says Gladeana McMahon, head of coaching at consultants, Fairplace. “We get clear guidance from the corporate sponsor about what they want to get out of the coaching relationship, we find out what the client wants and what’s important for the organisation
as well.” This ‘Four Cornered Contract’ – as the CIPD’s guide to coaching describes it – between coach, coachee, organisation sponsor and organisation, ensures each party understands every aspect of the intervention. “From these discussions you get a set of coaching objectives, outcomes and the measures by which you will know if you have achieved what you set out to achieve,” says McMahon.

Each party affected by the coaching event is likely to be looking for different results. The organisation may seek increased efficiency while the line manager may be looking for a less confrontational management style. Both these outcomes may be dependent on the coachee themselves finding a new way of dealing with situations of conflict. “The contract can set private and public goals,” says Shaun Lincoln, head of coaching and mentoring at the Centre for Excellence in
Leadership, “goals shared with the sponsor and organisation, and goals that remain private between the coach and coachee. This, in turn, creates an understanding of what is and isn’t confidential.”

Creating a ‘Four Cornered Contract’ can be more of a challenge for executive coaching where a client sponsor – usually the individual’s line manager – is not immediately apparent. “You need to identify the client’s prime stakeholder,” says Steve Wigzell, partner at executive coach company Praesta. “That stakeholder might be inside or outside the organisation. Wherever they are, we commission them to do a feedback exercise so we know what success looks like.”

Having established outcomes, Wigzell believes organisations do not need to be concerned with the minutiae of what happens within the coaching sessions. Emphasis should remain on recording the outcomes rather than monitoring the techniques used: “If you’re paying an executive coach to contribute to your organisation’s success you should not worry about the individual actions they make on your behalf,” he says. “You should only be concerned that the expectations of all involved parties are understood and that the end performance is measured and discussed.”

Gladeana McMahon puts it more bluntly: “At the end of the day it’s all about outcomes,” she says. “I’ve said to my coaches I don’t care how you get to Rome – do it however you can. As long as the client gets the benefit and the organisation gets the benefit, who cares how we got there?”

But the argument is far from cut and dried. As Kevin McAlpin notes, there are many different kinds of coaches – those with sports backgrounds, those who approach with a psychotherapy bias, others who are more business consultant orientated. Without carefully selecting coaches – and co-ordinating them if more than one is present in an organisation – there could be significant and damaging splits in organisation leadership and even culture.

"HR can be confident that their investment in coaching will produce clear results in line with organisational goals"

Sara Brewer, training manager at Société Générale Corporate Investment Bank (SGCIB), notes all 12 external coaches used among their staff are business executive coaches rather than psychology based experts: “We are very clear about what coaching can and cannot do,” she says. “The role of the coach is to facilitate change in the individual. If a coach is leading an individual or telling them what to do, they are not coaching.”

Effective coaches do not teach; they work with what is already present in the individual. It is up to the individual to make their own learning and find their own effective behaviours. Brewer accepts there may be cases where coaching leads to an individual leaving their current job, but if they do so it will be because a pre-existing issue has come to light rather than something the coach introduced.

Her confidence in the coaches given access to SGCIB staff is founded on an extensive due diligence exercise which ensures every coach is experienced and professionally qualified to do the job. “The contracting stage is the most important,” says Brewer, “But sadly for some organisations it’s the stage that attracts the least amount of effort.”

When Kevin McAlpin brought coaches to the HR team at the London Borough of Redbridge, time was spent ensuring each coach matched the coachee. “We discussed the programme so we were clear it would meet the needs of each individual,” explains Dawn Wilkinson, head of organisational development at Redbridge, “The matching exercise was important because if someone is uncomfortable with a coach the exercise might not work.”

Wilkinson introduced coaches to the HR department mid- 2005 following a survey which identified a perceived lack of focus and failure to satisfy customers in the department. Eight HR managers were given coaching once a month.

Results were recorded in a number of ways. After three months the coachees were asked if they felt they were benefiting from the exercise. Seven felt it was having a positive impact and wished to continue while the eighth decided they’d received what they needed from the programme and could now make performance improvements on their own.

A survey after eight months of coaching recorded 86% of HR’s customers either satisfied or very satisfied by the service they were receiving. Wilkinson admits the result cannot be traced wholly to the coaching initiative, but since this was one area where they were doing things differently it could not be ignored.

Finally, Wilkinson applied the Kirkpatrick four-level evaluation model to measure the impact of coaching within the organisation. “It isn’t the easiest of models to apply to coaching,” she admits, “but when I came to look at evaluation there was nothing around. I thought there must be something because coaching is so popular but, the fact is, most people don’t evaluate it.”

“A good coach will review a coaching relationship and identify what has worked for that particular client”

“You can put a monetary value on the benefits of coaching,” says Shaun Lincoln. He cites an example of someone who is coached to improve their time management and as a result ‘gains’ an extra day’s work every week. That extra day could be measured in terms of the individual’s salary or by measuring what they contribute to the business in that extra time. “How coaching is measured depends on who is paying and what they want to get out of it,” he says.

For some organisations success can be recorded by running coaching in one part of the business and comparing performance to that of a non-coached part of the business. But however it is done, measuring results in itself means positive benefits are more likely to be sustained beyond the lifetime of the coaching event.

“A good coach will review a coaching relationship and identify what has worked for that particular client,” explains Charles Jones, head of coaching at RightCoutts. “That means the client understands what they need to do in the future, thereby increasing the sustainability of changes they have made. The client effectively becomes their own coach.”

It is clear that some aspects of coaching must remain confidential and that in engaging an external coach, the HR department acknowledges that this is a personal and idiosyncratic method of development. But while the central process may remain in shadows, clarity must exist at both ends of the relationship. A clear and understood agenda for the intervention must be established at the start, closely linked with a pragmatic assessment of outcomes and results – both for the organisation and the individual. With these structures in place, HR can be confident that their investment in coaching will produce clear results in line with organisational goals.