Special Supplement _ Volume 03 _ Issue 03 2009

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www.efmd.org Special supplement | Volume 03 | Issue 03 2009

EFMD

Special supplement

Findings from acollaboration betweenEFMD and EMCC

The role of corporatecoaching in business



Special supplement | Global Focus Vol 03 | Issue 03 2009

Corporate coaching: the importanceof mentoring and coaching

Welcome to this spe cial iss ue of Global Focus oncorporate coaching. It is part of a wider collaboration

between EFMD and EMCC, the European Mentoringand Coaching Council, in understanding and

disseminating good practice in this powerfularea of people development.

Akey element in this publication is the results from a joint survey

establishing how and to what extent European companies are using

internal resources for coaching and mentoring. The set of expert

articles gives an additional insight into more specific areas such as executive

coaching, coaching strategies and team coaching.

For many years, EFMD has been working on corporate coaching through surveys, case

writing, dedicated task forces and advisory seminars, and it will continue to do so.

The importance of coaching and mentoring for managers, leaders and organisations

will continue to grow and while organisations have put much more thought and effort

into the management of mentoring and coaching, there is still room for improvement

in harnessing the power of both approaches effectively.

Eric Cornuel

EFMD Director General

1www.efmd.org/globalfocus



EFMD Global Focus | Volume 03 | Issue 03 2009

There is still room forimprovement in harnessingthe power of managementcoaching and mentoring

in-company coaching:

a development process that focuses

on the management of performance

in-company mentoring:

a one-to-one developmental process that

focuses on the development of capability

and effective career management



www.efmg.org/globalfocus


The use of internal resourcesfor coaching and mentoring

David Clutterbuck reports on the results of an EFMD/European Mentoring and Coaching Council survey intohow companies use coaching and mentoring

In-company coaching and mentoring have become part of the fabric of organisational

development in recent years. But what are companies using them for and how

effective are they? EFMD and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council

have co-operated in a survey to nd out.

Based on responses from 173 HR professionals responsible for managing coaching and

mentoring, the survey data suggest that while organisations are experiencing substantial

benets from their investments in this area, in-company coaching and mentoring is still

a “work in progress”.

For the purposes of the survey, we used denitions that were acceptable to a panel of

advisers in the specic context of internal company provision. This allowed us to avoid

confusion over terms such as career coaching.

Our denitions were:

· in-company coaching: a development process that focuses on the management

of performance

· in-company mentoring: a one-to-one developmental process that focuses on the

development of capability and effective career management

We also asked respondents for their own denitions of the differences between

developmental coaching and developmental mentoring.

While there was a rich and wide variety of opinion, the most commonly mentioned

distinctions are that there is a higher level of challenge expected in the coaching relationship

and that mentoring tends to be longer term and involve a partnership between a more junior

and a more senior employee. The overall impression is nonetheless one of lack of clarity

about where and how the two approaches co-exist.

Although they have much in common, coaching and mentoring seem to be managed

as separate activities in most organisations. They are also at different stages in terms of

how well they are managed. Our survey suggests that coaching and mentoring are only

just emerging from an ad hoc , reactive phase into more systematic approaches.

So what did we nd?

Both coaching and mentoring are provided for a wide range of employees, from the shop

oor to the executive suite. But the concentration of in-company coaching is heavily on

middle managers and executives, followed at a much lower level by the talent pool and professional staff.

www.efmd.org/globalfocus





173...HR professionals took part in the EFMD

and EMCC survey

80%...of respondents saw coaching as effective

or very effective for executives, middle managers,

junior managers and the t alent p ool

50%... nearly half of respondents said their

organisations directed mentoring programmes

at female employees and junior managers

However, there was a much more even perception of the effectiveness of coaching.

Over 80% of respondents to this question saw it as effective or very effective for

executives, middle managers, junior managers and the talent pool.

Mentoring is most commonly targeted at new recruits, followed by middle managers

and professional specialists. Nearly half of respondents said their organisations directed

mentoring programmes at female employees and junior managers. The talent pool,surprisingly, came sixth out of the 10 options although it was seen as the most effective

application, equal with new recruits.

The least targeted group for mentoring was employees from black and minority ethnic

(BME) groups. Given that case study evidence suggests that mentoring has its greatest

impact in retaining and growing talent and in BME employees, it seems that many

organisations lack awareness of the benets coaching and mentoring can bring beyond

short-term performance management and knowledge transfer.

This conclusion is supported by responses to our question about the benets observed

from coaching and mentoring, with improved performance and employee motivation

being faraway the highest responses.

It is probable that the low scores for impact on retention reect inadequacies in how

companies measure the impact of coaching and mentoring.

A relatively low score for impact of mentoring on diversity management (only 40% of

respondents recorded this) correlates with the relatively low usage of mentoring and

coaching to support diversity policies. Reverse mentoring (where the mentor is more

junior than the mentee) is closely associated with diversity management, so it is not

surprising that very few organisations had this kind of programme.

The organisations in our survey used a variety of methods to measure the impact of

coaching – from feedback from the coachee’s manager to satisfaction surveys - and

none were dissatised with their measurement processes. (My own observation is that

most current measurement processes are actually rather naïve and prone to giving false positive results.)

However, very few organisations measure the impact of mentoring and those that do

primarily use informal methods. The international standards for mentoring appear to

have made very little headway.

The type of coaching provided shows an unexpected emphasis on behavioural

coaching (personal change benecial both within and beyond the current job role –

83%) followed closely by performance coaching (application of skills and knowledge to

achieve results in a current job role – 81%).

Only 60% provide skills coaching and only 36% encourage peer coaching. Executive

coaching is more frequently resourced externally than internally but by a much smaller

margin than predicted (76% versus 47%). This suggests that companies are investing in




The use of internal resources for coaching and mentoring

developing “home-grown” coaches to replace more expensive external providers.

This shift of emphasis towards internal resources (potentially bad news for professional

executive coaches) may be assisted by a higher level of condence in the ability of line

managers to coach than much of the coaching literature would suggest.

It is common for coaching pundits to say that line managers, because they have other jobs

to do and because of the dynamics of the boss-subordinate relationship, cannot be coaches

– they can simply use some coaching behaviours.

The majority of our survey respondents, by contrast, believe that line managers can be effective

skills coaches and performance coaches to their direct reports (62% and 60% respectively)

and 10% in each case believe they can be very effective in these roles.

The majority of organisations (78%) aspire to become coaching cultures but two-thirds

are still at the very early stages of doing so. Only 11% of organisations say that they have

embedded coaching into their culture and that coaching is integrated into their day-to-day

systems and behaviours.

An indication that so many are at an early stage of the journey to a coaching culture is that

less than two-fths of organisations have an individual or dedicated team responsible forco-ordinating coaching across the business. (The actual proportion may be much smaller

– only 84 responses were recorded for this question.)

Another indicator is the low use of supervision for internal coaches at any level. However,

a signicant proportion of respondents said that they are looking at supervision for

their internal coaches.

When asked how they approached increasing the competency of in-company coaches,

only just over half of the respondents answered. Of these, only slightly more than half

trained line managers as coaches although nearly a third trained some coaches to be

“coaches to the coaches”.

Only 15% trained employees to be coached and only 26% had a process to accredit

different levels of coaching competence and experience. Once again, a signicant

proportion of respondents said this was a project under development.

Only a handful of companies had any kind of approach to preventing line managers who

had been trained slipping back into their old behaviours. Those that did relied on

supervision to manage the problem.

The picture with regard to mentoring is slightly more positive with 79% of responding

organisations providing mentor training. However, less than half trained mentees as

well (a basic requirement for programme and relationship quality) and only a third had

trained staff managing the mentoring programme.

We also asked what problems respondents faced in making coaching and mentoring

work in their organisations. For coaching, the primary issues were lack of organisationalsupport, lack of understanding of coaching and poor coaching skills.

78%...of organisations aspire to become coaching

cultures but two-thirds are still at the very early

stages of doing so

11%... of organisations say that they have embedded

coaching into their culture and that coaching

is integrated into their day-to-day systems and

behaviours.




The gradual maturing of organisations’ approaches to coaching

and mentoring and towards a coaching and mentoring culture

provides a substantial challenge


A similar picture emerged for mentoring but the most signicant problems were

difculty in attracting mentors, mentor and mentee skills, and unrealistic expectations

of mentors and/or mentees.

It is always tempting to read more into survey results than the data justify. However, we

can extrapolate a number of specic recommendations for both employer and provider

organisations.

For employers, there is a need to educate and train people to make more effective use of

coaching and mentoring and to support them in these behaviours. That suggests a

requirement for a coherent coaching and mentoring strategy – one that links the two

activities both with each other and with the strategic priorities of the business.

That in turn indicates a need for professional co-ordination of coaching and mentoring

at a corporate level and for the provision of supervision for coaches and mentors.

For providers, the gradual maturing of organisations’ approaches to coaching and

mentoring and towards a coaching and mentoring culture provides a substantial

challenge.

The other side of the coin is that there are also likely to be substantial opportunities,

particularly in supporting managers in becoming internal coaches and helpingorganisations integrate internal and external coaching provision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Clutterbuck is visiting professor in the coaching and mentoringfaculties of both Oxford Brookes and Shefeld Hallam Universities and

practice leader at Clutterbuck Associates, a division of GP (UK). His 14

books on coaching and mentoring include Coaching the Team at Work,Nicholas Brealey, London (2007)




Executive coaching strategiesfor leading in turbulent times

Coaching is in heavy demand but organisations areconstrained by the current nancial crisis. Erik de Haan examines the market and how the situation can be resolved

Executive coaching is establishing itself as an organisational and management

development intervention of choice. What was once very personal has now

become what is most relevant for p erformance in leade rship roles – witness

the growing interest in transformational and relationship theories of leadership and

the importance attached to emotional and spiritual intelligence.

Nowadays, leaders are required to be in touch with and able to express their deepest

personal wishes, feelings and doubts. Executive coaching is the strategy par excellence for

enabling and deepening this understanding. Furthermore, one-to-one conversations are

the only organisational or management development (OD/MD) interventions that have

demonstrated substantive effectiveness beyond doubt.

However, while executive coaching gains ever more credibility and popularity, no-one

can escape the fact that our society is embroiled in the deepest recession of our lifetimes

and that the coaching profession is one of the sectors worst affected. After all, executive

coaching is the most expensive of all OD/MD interventions, since the time of the coach

will be exclusively devoted to a single leader or, in rare cases, to a small leadership team.

There is increasing tension between the rising status of executive coaching and an

economic climate where executive development budgets are being slashed. More and

more leaders seek the experience of working with a coach, particularly in these anxious

and turbulent times, while their organisation cannot afford them that support.

In response to this dilemma a variety of creative solutions is being found. More people than

ever are preparing for the eventual “upturn” by applying themselves to serious coaching

development programmes such as our own Ashridge MSc in Executive Coaching.

Pricing pressure is also leading to the ourishing of internal coaching programmes with

external coaches being less frequently hired in their capacity as coach and more often

in a capacity of a “consultant” to develop a “coaching culture” that promotes coaching

styles internally or as a “supervisor” for a whole community of internal coaches.

Our own Ashridge Centre for Coaching has recently been asked by organisations as

diverse as consultancies, global professional services rms and government bodies to

help them supervise their internal coaches and we have noticed that a growing number

of internal coaches are becoming formally accredited and so are developing themselves

to the highest standards of professionalism.

What in my view has been less noticed but is highly pertinent here is the kind of helpthat the coaching profession can offer in times of turbulence, conict and uncertainty.





This help is essentially threefold in my view:

· First, coaches will be well trained to listen, summarise, support, offer

hypotheses and build condence – all the usual things that coaches are reputed

to do so well. They really help to prepare for, anticipate, understand and change

the increasingly challenging and confusing dilemmas of business leaders.

· Second, one would hope that coaches, through their training and experience

in conversation, have acquired a sophisticated expertise in working through

critical moments and conict as these happen.

· Third, the counselling and coaching professions have overcome decades

of divisions and rivalries between competing schools of thought and they

have now entered into an era of rapprochement among themselves. Rivalries

between schools are being transformed into curiosity about how others

conceptualise and work with those challenges that everyone recognises.

In particular, some 21st century approaches to coaching and counselling

can be credited with focusing on the commonalities between the schools

and on the “common factors” that underpin them all. This is what I would

call the “relational turn” exemplied by a range of integrative models of

executive coaching and also by the emergence of the European Mentoring

and Coaching Council as a platform for bringing together a very diverse

group of coaching practitioners.

The essence of this relational turn is that, just as in psychotherapy, there

is a good chance that any professional approach to executive coaching

works and that all work equally well although it matters to what extent

you yourself believe in your approach. In other words, “allegiance” is

much more important than “adherence”.Again, just as demonstrations

in psychotherapy have shown, various approaches and theories share all

the factors that really matter, such as time for conversation, interest and

warmth, rapport, a positive expectation and so on. A hugely important

factor is the quality of the relationship between client and coach. In fact,

it is the relationship while engaging in a coaching session that is the only

one of all these “common factors” that coaches can enhance and

improve from moment to moment and from session to session.

Most coaches recognise and agree upon the importance of the relationship in

coaching. This broad container called “relational coaching” is now energising,

inspiring and uniting a new generation of coaches who are nding a common

point of focus and a common route into their coaching conversations and

into the wonders that take place in them.

In my view the progress that has been made in reconciling professionals

from the counselling and coaching professions is hugely relevant for

leaders and HR professionals. The large organisations of today that nd

themselves in a siloed and competitive marketplace could do well to learn

not only from the direct experience of working with executive coaches

but from the mediating developments of the last decade that have brought

together so many executive coaching professionals.

In summary, I believe that the recent history of executive coaching teaches

business leaders a positive way to transform conicts:

· Inviting them to reect on the anxiety and turbulence they experience

from a range of perspectives

· Recognising that every viewpoint is of equal “value” and that no view

or position is intrinsically “better” than any other

· Valuing the common factors, such as allegiance, the conviction one often

experiences regarding one’s approach or point of view

· Teaching that common factors such as commitment and allegiance

can be explored and exploited further to make them stronger leaders

Essentially, this form of conict resolution is a bit like realising that anannoying or obstructive colleague is actually also a loving member of his

own family in his personal life, where he looks rather similar to ourselves.

What this means for our own attitude is that we are willing and able to

consider other ways of looking at the world. We can be opinionated, partisan,

even dogmatic – as I believe I have been with regard to relational coaching –

as long as we are willing and able to consider our convictions and beliefs

from entirely opposing perspectives. This can always be possible as long

as we can take a stance towards our own convictions which smiles at

them, mocks them... and transforms them into sources of compassion.

More people than ever are preparing for the eventual

“upturn” by applying themselves to serious coaching

development programmes

ABOUT THE AUTHORDr Erik de Haan is Director of Ashridge Centre for Coaching, UK.

We can be opinionated, partisan, evendogmatic as long as we are willing and

able to consider our convictions andbeliefs from entirely opposing perspectives




Coaching teamsin the workplace

Though still a relatively expensive option team coachinghas signicant advantages over one-to-one interventionssays David Clutterbuck

The research literature on coaching is still relatively sparse compared

with ot her a reas o f peop le deve lopme nt. It is even sparse r on the su bject

of team coaching.

What research on team coaching there is concentrates on coaching in sports. Yet the

analogy with the playing eld is potentially misleading, for teams at work and in sport have

very different dynamics. Work teams are less about win-lose than win-win. Moreover,

with a few exceptions such as e mergency services, they are paced arou nd consistent,

long-term good performance rather than a lot of practice leading to bursts of superlative

performance.

It is not surprising, then, that when people and organisations talk about team coaching,

they may mean very different things. In particular, when I was researching the topic for

a book, I found consultants using the term team coaching to describe team facilitation,

team building and one-to-one coaching for people who worked in the same team.

All these are very different from applying the principles of coaching to the collective

development of a team and its competencies. Our denition of team coaching, which

has been derived from research and from workshops with hundreds of practitioners,

is: “a learning intervention designed to increase collective capability and performance

of a group or team through application of the coaching principles of assisted reection,

analysis and motivation for change”. This is less hands-on (less directive) than some

other denitions.

Facilitation differs from team coaching in a number of ways but most importantly in the

stance of the facilitator, who leads the team through a conversation, in which he or she

has a more or less clear perception of where it is going.

By contrast, the conversation in team coaching is much more emergent, with the coach

helping the team with the quality of their thinking rather than trying to lead them to a

specic realisation.

Facilitation, too, tends to be composed of a few short interventions designed to solve

current problems of direction or behaviour. Coaching aims to help the team build its

longer-term skills and its capacity to manage new challenges from its own resources.

Team building differs from coaching in that its primary goal is to help people get along

with each other and strengthen collaboration. Team coaching places greater emphasis

on improving the underlying skills and processes, such as how the team communicates both internally and externally.




10 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 03 | Issue 03 2009

Conversation in teamcoaching is much more

emergent, with the coachhelping the team with thequality of their thinkingrather than trying to leadthem to a specific realisation

The arguments for coaching teams rather than (or as well

as) individuals include:

· Coaching an individual without attempting to inuence the

immediate human systems in which they operate reduces the

impact of the coaching intervention. Over the past three years,

I have been collecting anecdotal data about the effectivenessof “sheep-dip” training for line managers as coaches.

It seems that when these managers return from the training

course to the real world of their team, it takes very little time

for habituated behaviours to reassert themselves. Everyone

within the team system feels more comfortable with the

behaviours and practices they know rather than new ones

that may be more challenging. Teams develop habitual

behaviours and norms, which exert considerable entropic

energy to undermine individual and collective change. Their

mental model becomes rigid and less likely to be challenged

as circumstances change.· Like individuals, teams’ effectiveness can be undermined

by their quality of thinking. Addressing and improving

the quality of thinking – for both individual issues and

more broadly – is the core of team coaching.

Teams tend to develop collective norms about a wide

range of issues. For example, the amount of their thinking

time that is oriented towards the past, the present, the

near future or the far future tends to form a consistent

pattern. One of the key roles of a coach is to help the team

recognise these unconscious norms and question whether

they enhance or undermine the collective performance.

Team coaches help a team identify the potential for higher

performance and develop the skills and processes that will

help them achieve more. Among the critical elements here

are having a team development plan and having the ultimate

outcome of enabling the team to develop the self-sufciency

to coach itself.

The team development plan is the bridge between individual

developmental aspirations and the business plan for the

wider unit to which the team belongs. It relates dened

levels of higher collective performance to improvements

in collective behaviours and the systems the team applies toits key tasks.




Coaching teams in the workplace

Aiming for self-coaching reinforces the expectation that team coaches will aim to make

themselves obsolete as rapidly as possible by transferring to the team co -coaching skills

and the ability to engage in both focused reection and constructively challenging dialogue.

This means that team coaches themselves need to bring a substantially higher level

of competence to the role than would normally be the case in one-to-one coaching.

Executive coaches typically view their assignment as helping a client tackle one or morespecic issues. Their role does not normally involve transferring coaching capability to the

client. The team coach also has to manage complex issues of group dynamics, such as:

· Condentiality: even with a high degree of psychological safety, team members may

be reluctant to disclose to a group of colleagues or to admit weaknesses to their boss

· Pace of thinking and deciding: some members of the team may reach a conclusion

faster than others. Where the coach in a one-to-one relationship can adjust the pace to

the speed of a coachee’s mental processing, the team coach needs to be able to hold the

attention and interest of the vanguard while ensuring the rearguard are able to catch up

at their own pace

· Scope of topic: team coaching can only deal effectively with issues in which all the

team members have a stake. Sometimes this involves helping team members recognise

the mutual benets and value of supporting a colleague

· Building trust within the coaching relationship: while team members will vary in the

level of trust they place in the coach, progress can normally only be made when the

team as a whole is ready to trust both the coach and the process

· Nature of the team: There are several ways in which to classify team dynamics. One is by

the degree of interdependence between members – a eld sales force, where performance

is dependent on the individual efforts of each member, is not the same as a theatre team

in a hospital, where everyone relies upon everyone else throughout the operation

Another way is by the stability of task versus stability of membership. In a European

Community funded study of how teams managed their learning, I identied on this basissix different types of team, each of which had different advantages and disadvantages

in terms of offering a positive climate for learning. Understanding the type of team the

coach is dealing with is essential in helping the team understand itself.




Understanding the type of team the coach is dealing with

is essential in helping the team understand itself


Figure 1:

A comparison of the four levels of coaching maturity in coaching conversation

Coaching approach Style Critical questions

Models-based Control How do I take them where I think they need to go?

How do I adapt my technique or model to this circumstance?

Process-based Contain How do I give enough control to the client and still retain a purposeful conversation?

What is the best way to apply my process in this instance?

Philosophy-based Facilitate What can I do to help the client do this for themselves?

How do I contextualise the client’s issue within the perspective of my philosophy

or discipline?

Managed eclectic Enable Are we both relaxed enough to allow the issue and the solution to emerge in whatever

way they will?

Do I need to apply any techniques or processes at all? If I do, what does the client context

tell me about how to select from the wide choice available to me?

Reproduced with permission from Megginson, D and Clutterbuck, D (2009) Techniques in Coaching and Mentoring, Volume 2, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford

Team members will vary inthe level of trust they place inthe coach, progress can normallyonly be made when the teamas a whole is ready to trustboth the coach and the process




Coaching teams in the workplace

What team coaches do

The range of issues team coaches assist with is enormous. I have found it helpful to categorise

them into:

· interpersonal dynamics – issues such as recognising and managing conict, increasing

collective emotional intelligence, and building and sustaining an appropriate coaching climate

· temporal issues – for example, how the team balances its emphasis on past, present and

future; and time management

· managing key processes – goal setting and management, functional analysis, innovation,

decision-making and communication

Even so, it means that the team coach requires a breadth of experience and approach that

combines a deep knowledge of team processes with strategic thinking and process known-

how. In some of the recent ruminations for a new volume on the use of techniques and

tools in coaching, my co-author David Megginson and I dene four levels of coaching

maturity, shown in Figure 1 (on previous page).

The effective team coach, I suspect, needs to have evolved his or her practice to the level

of managed eclectic in order to have the exibility, resilience and degree of relaxed insightnecessary to work with the complexity of the team conversation rather than to try to

control or direct it.

The effective team coach needs to have evolved their practice to the level of managed eclectic in order tohave the flexibility, resilience and degree of relaxed

insight necessary to work with the complexity of theteam conversation




The biggest barrier to widespread use of team coaching is

that it relies for the most part on relatively expensive externally

resourced expertise


Making best use of team coaching

The actual use of team coaching in the workplace appears to be quite narrow. The vast

majority of examples we have been able to gather relate to:

· Helping senior executive groups become teams rather than groups of people who

share responsibilities.

Case study examples include heads of function or heads of country who are used to

running their own efdoms but need to work together to achieve the next level of

collective performance; and teams where performance was undermined by ongoing

conict, either relational conict or conict of objectives.

· Helping newly formed teams (project teams in particular) hit the ground running.

Well-timed team coaching interventions can speed up the process of forming, storming

and norming. They can also ensure that learning acquired by the project team is captured

and absorbed by the wider organisation.

The potential to make wider use of team coaching is high, however. Given how much

importance companies attach to team effectiveness, there is a case for coaching interventions

whenever a team at any level goes through a major transition in role or membership, wheneverit encounters signicant problems, where an external perspective might lead to better quality

reection and decision-making, and whenever a major shift in behaviour is required.

The biggest barrier to such widespread use of team coaching is that it relies for the most

part on relatively expensive externally resourced expertise. That situation will change as

organisations equip some of the most competent coaches from their internal coaching

pools with the additional skills of team coaching.

Credible sources of such training are only now emerging, as we develop a clearer understanding

of what team coaching is and the complexity of the required competencies. The result should

be a major boost to the creation of sustainable coaching cultures, as teams across organisations

become accustomed to thinking together in a coaching manner.




Developing an effectivecoaching strategy

Peter Hawkins sets out how a coaching strategyshould be designed to develop both the individualmanager and the organisation as a whole

Many chief executives and HR Directors are tremendously proud at the

growth of coaching in their organisations. They are, however, concerned

about the organisational benet, sustaining the offering and evaluating

the return on investment.

To address these concerns I rst ask them: “How many coaching conversations do you

think happen every month in your organisation?” Very few have a clear idea but most

will estimate that it is in the thousands, particularly if you include coaching conversations

by line managers and not just external and internal coaching.

Then follows a simple but challenging question: “How does your organisation learn from

these thousands of coaching conversations?” They are usually puzzled but curious abouthow coaching can lead to organisational learning and demonstrable organisational benets.

Having been involved in both coaching and organisational change for over 30 years as a

practitioner, writer and teacher, I have witnessed enormous growth in the eld of individual

coaching.

There has, though, been an over-focus on the needs of the individual client that has

under-served the organisational client. This is supported by coaching conferences,

which themselves focus on coaching process skills with little attention given to the

organisational benet.

In my teaching at Bath Consultancy Group and Oxford Brookes University, I stress that one of

the key distinguishers of coaching that separates it from counselling or psychotherapy at work

is that coaching always has three clients: the individual; the organisation; and the relationship

between the two. Coaches, coach trainers and supervisors, the coaching professional bodies

and the employing organisations are responsible for addressing this balance.

In this article I demonstrate what organisations are doing and can do to develop a more

effective coaching strategy that delivers usable and measurable organisational benet.

There are four main pillars to helping organisations create an effective coaching strategy:

· Start with the end in mind. Identify the organisational outcomes that the business is

trying to achieve to which coaching can contribute

· Design the right mix of internal and external resources to deliver the desired outcomes

· Create a coaching culture where coaching is part of how things are done internally and with stakeholders

4... there are four main pillars

to helping organisations create

an effective coaching strategy





There has been an over-focus on the needs of the individual

client that has under-served the organisational client




Developing an effective coaching strategy

· Have a process to harvest the organisational learning from the thousands of coaching

conversations

Start with the end in mind

When helping organisations develop their coaching strategy, before even discussing

what coaching they might develop, I explore the organisation’s strategic ambitions and

what it wants to achieve over the next three to ve years. This leads naturally to thechallenges in realising these ambitions, both externally and internally, and how the

organisation’s culture needs to change.

To paraphrase the great Mahatma Ghandi, leaders need to be the change they want

to see or “l eaders get the culture they behave”. Careful exploration of this provides

a foundational line of sight that links the individual and team development required

to lead and manage the organisation with the necessary changes in the culture to meet

the organisation’s agreed outcomes.

Design the coaching provision

After establishing the goals that coaching is there to serve, we work with key internal

executives, HR, and learning and development specialists to design the right mix of

coaching provision. This normally takes place in a coaching strategy workshop where

we work through a number of key questions:

· What coaching can be done as part of line performance management and what is the

level of coaching skill among the managers and leaders of the organisation? How might

the coaching capacity of the managers and leaders be developed?

· What coaching can be done by trained internal coaches? Do they have an internal

coaching community? If so, how might the capacity and impact of this resource be

developed and better targeted? What supervision and on-going development help is

provided to internal coaches?

· Where can external coaches add most value? How are they selected and assessed? How

does the organisation work with its external coaches to ensure they are updated on theorganisational strategy and challenges to continuously serve organisational development?

· How is coaching integrated with other leadership and management development

processes? How is it linked to the performance and development objectives of individuals?

· How is coaching linked to organisational development activities? Is coaching used to

support leadership teams in transforming the business? How are key change leaders

supported to effectively lead strategic change project teams?

· What is the right mix of individual coaching and team coaching to support leadership

development? How is team coaching contracted to grow the collective capacity of the

team to more effectively engage with all their stakeholders?

· How will the totality and the various elements of the coaching provision be evaluated?This is not just in terms of the quality of the inputs but also the quality of the outputs





To paraphrase the great Mahatma Ghandi, leaders

need to be the change they want to see

(individual and team performance change) and the outcomes (contribution to the

change in the organisational performance and achievement of strategic objectives).

How can we design an evaluation process, with both lead and lag indicators, that traces

the inuence along the strategic line of sight mapped out in stage one?

Develop a coaching cultureThere is a danger for many organisations that once they have designed and established

their coaching provision they believe the job is done and move on to other initiatives.

Our experience suggests that to realise the full return on their investment the coaching

provision needs to be built into a sustained programme of developing a coaching

culture. At Bath Consultancy Group we have developed, in partnership with our broad

mix of client organisations, a model of the stages to developing a coaching culture.

This model (see Figure 1, above) rst charts the most common developmental stages of

coaching provision and approach and then links the outputs and the outcomes that

each stage creates. This demonstrates how organisations that only focus on the supply

side of their coaching endeavours, such as having a panel of external coaches or creating

a cadre of trained internal coaches, are unlikely to realise the real potential outcomesthat coaching can produce for their organisation.

Our experience suggests thatto realise the full return ontheir investment the coaching

provision needs to be built intoa sustained programme ofdeveloping a coaching culture

1.External coaching

provision

2.Developing internalcoaching capacity

3. Actively supportingcoachingendeavours

4.Coaching becomesthe norm forindividuals

and teams

5.Embedded in HRand performancemanagement

processes

6.Coaching becomesthe dominant styleof managemnet

and leading

7.Coaching becomeshow we do business

with all our

stakeholders

Higherperformingorganisation

Higher valuecreation for allstakeholders

Figure 1: Developing a coaching culture – Outcomes

Increase inindividualleadershipcapacity

Increase indistributedleadership

Develops anincrease inorganisationallearning

Higherengagement withall stakeholders



1 0 5 0Br u s s el sB el gi um

Em ail:inf o @ efm d . or g


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Hawkins is joint founder (1986) and Chairman of Bath Consultancy Group, is a leading consultant, writerand researcher in organisational strategy, culture, leadership and executive coaching. Specialising in managingcomplex change and development he has worked with many leading companies throughout the world, co-designing and facilitating major change and organisational transformation projects and developing seniorexecutives and board members. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Bath and Oxford Brookes University,

both in the UK. Professor Hawkins is co-author of Coaching , Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy:Supervision and Development , Maidenhead, Open University Press (2 006), “Transformational Coaching”


Developing an effective coaching strategy

Harvest the learning

Once an organisation has built its community of internal and external coaches committed

to organisational learning as well as individual development, we then assist in harvesting

the organisational learning from the many coaching conversations that take place.

First, we ensure that coaching relationships start with three-way contracting: the coach,

the coachee, and someone more senior to the coachee who represents the organisationalclient and takes responsibility for how the organisation is going to benet and learn

through this coaching relationship. Each is responsible for insuring their part of a successful

outcome. This might commonly involve a review meeting part way through the coaching

process and also a nal review at the end.

At the same time we assist the harvesting of collective organisational learning by:

· Bringing together, at regular intervals, the community of internal and external coaches

to hear the challenges the organisation is experiencing, providing a forum for questions

about the organisation’s people/culture and development

· Facilitating supervision trios on key coaching relationships with managed condentiality

· Working with coaches on structured systemic pattern identication to identify the key patterns that will enable or block the organisation in meeting its objectives.

· Facilitating dialogue with senior executives and coaches on emerging key themes and

how coaching can contribute more to the next stages of the organisation’s development

This process requires facilitation from a consultant who is not only an experienced coach

and skilled coaching supervisor but also one who understands organisational strategy,

culture change, systemic dynamics and organisational development. Most importantly, this

facilitator needs to translate between the language of senior leadership and the language of

the coaching conversations. Currently, there is still a shortage of people who can connect the

strategic with the personal, commercial and value-based domains within organisations.

Conclusion

In this time of recession and restricted credit lines, it is inevitable that every line of cost

will be regularly reviewed. There will be increasing pressure for coaching to demonstrate

its return on investment and increase its capacity not only to develop leaders in a cost-

effective manner but to be part of effectively developing the organisation to better

succeed in a volatile and fast-changing world.

Currently, there is still a shortage of people who can

connect the strategic withthe personal, commercialand value-based domainswithin organisations

Special Supplement _ Volume 03 _ Issue 03 2009

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