Implementing large-scale coaching programmes for key managers and organisational leaders is now an intervention of choice for a whole range of transformational agendas: creating a learning community; improving stakeholder relations; and attracting and retaining valuable staff. Yet these programmes are still set in educational frameworks, with their emphasis on the development of individuals, rather than in organisational change arenas, with their focus on building organisational capability.
So how would an organisational change framework make things different? Think of systems with stakeholders rather than individuals as key players. Change professionals concentrate on how change happens, what supports it, and what gets in the way. They will have views on the political and personal choices that change demands, and the structures and processes that even the best of ideas need in order to take hold. Looking at coaching as an organisational intervention rather than an individualised activity will shift attention away from individuals as key players to systems of stakeholders managing crucial issues and tasks. Most important, in working through a process of change and development, coaching becomes just one element in a whole spectrum that identifies which particular needs of the organisation coaching is set to address, creating opportunities to maximise and embed learning across the organisation as a whole.
How might this look in practice? Coaching literature describes key players in terms of roles – the coach, the individual, the HR professional or sponsor and the line manager – all working in relation to each other, though not necessarily connected around the same issues. Working in and as systems, rather than as individuals, may not look very different in terms of who populates those systems, but it does change the nature of the work they might do together.
Advocate three inter-connected systems:
- A contracting system that identifies the organisational imperative for change, works with potential participants and provider organisations (including internal coaches) to fit around an ethos of development and the technologies that coaches can bring to the work. It works on creating the best conditions for learning in…
- A coaching system – bringing together the coach and the individual participant, but also open to others within the participant’s immediate network who influence the way things are done. Beyond the negotiated agenda, the system has the capacity to generate new ways of thinking and new perceptions, which feed into…
- An organisational learning system – where data emerging from the coaching systems can be reflected on and made sense of by a cross-section of stakeholders with an investment in new thinking and the authority to champion its way into strategy and practice. Such a system is not out of place in an organisational change initiative and is the stuff of conversations to be had with internal change professionals
Coaches may not yet be accustomed to this level of investment in process and application. They are, however, asked to make the case for inclusion as a legitimate business activity. Creating structures and systems to support coaching as a transformational process has the capacity to bring coaching out from behind closed doors to become a visible and acknowledged intervention, capable of being appreciated and evaluated, and ultimately laying down its own culture for change.
Karen Izod is an independent organisational consultant specialising in how organisations and individuals can identify and create structures and positions to work to best effect. She also works in association with the Tavistock Institute, where she co-leads the executive coaching and development programme, and is a faculty member for its MA and qualification in advanced organisational consultation. Email: karenizod@lineone.net