“I have no qualms about telling people I received coaching,” says Steve Barnes, head of infrastructure strategy at BT. “In fact, I recommended it to other people recently.” Bob Hughes, manager of Network Rail’s leadership and coaching programme, says Barnes is not alone in his views. “A lot more executives now see coaching as a positive intervention and not as a stigma,” he says. In the US, CEOs and senior executives will demand coaching as part of their package, and this attitude is moving across the Atlantic to the UK, says Hughes. “Executive coaching will bring up personal stuff, but this doesn’t mean that the company can’t reveal that it uses coaching. After all, you are not going to advertise what individuals discuss,” he says. “I can’t think of any good reason for an organisation to keep coaching under wraps.” Hughes points to BT as a UK company that promotes coaching and mentoring as a way of attracting talent.
Jacqueline Vigne, talent acquisition manager for BT Group confirms this. “BT regards mentoring as an important element of its graduate development programme, and believes it plays an increasingly influential role in attracting graduates to the company.” But unlike BT and Network Rail, some organisations choose not to shout about their coaching interventions. Jane Lucien-Scholle, a partner in human capital consulting at Deloitte, accepts the link between executive coaching and retention, but is cautious about the degree of openness required. “One-to-one coaching is not necessarily known about within the organisation, nor does it need to be,” she says. “If you have a performance appraisal, you don’t advertise development needs behind the scenes. It’s the same approach.” In some circumstances, she adds, being open can even be harmful. “If an individual’s development needs are highlighted too widely, then it makes it difficult for that person to surmount them. People may remember you as you were, even after you have worked past those difficulties.”
Nick Robinson, who coaches MBA graduates, agrees that there are instances where total transparency can be unhelpful to particular individuals. “I have done some coaching work that might be termed remedial, where there is an argument, if not for being opaque, at least for sensitivity,” he says. “But it is very difficult to keep secrets in an organisation, so I am of the view that going for transparency is best in almost all cases.”
Jessica Jarvis, CIPD adviser, learning, training and development, is also in favour of transparency when it comes to coaching. In the CIPD guide, Coaching and Buying Coaching Services, published in June 2004, she says: “A key problem for HR is when coaching happens behind closed doors, because senior-level employees bring in their own coaching and the activities aren’t co-ordinated by the HR function. This means there are no reporting structures and no accountability for the professional coaches. Organisations cannot learn from such engagements.”
An academic study by the Mentoring and Coaching Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University in 1994 also backs the case for transparency. “Transparency is essential. If coaching is a private arrangement, the relationship is open to speculation about favouritism. This is not good for either the coaching or the relationship,” says Bob Garvey, the study’s author. “As more and more successful people work with coaches, it is seen as a reflection that you are a sophisticated executive,” says John Drysdale, director of learning and development at City insurance broker Aon Group. According to Drysdale, even in the “quite conservative” world of insurance broking, executive coaching is increasingly being seen as a career development tool and as something that portrays an organisation as willing to invest in its people. This, in turn, can be beneficial to employers in terms of better staff retention, he argues.
But for some organisations, transparency can be difficult to achieve because something of the stigma of coaching as a remedial activity remains. This is the case at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), says its managing director/head of HR capital markets Andrew Pullman. Although coaching is an integral part of DrKW’s development programmes, Pullman admits that recipients don’t necessarily want to broadcast the fact in the staff canteen. “People are nervous about showing weakness,” he says.
Ultimately, it all depends on an organisation’s view of coaching and the context in which it is set, suggests Michelle Dingley, managing partner at TXG, a coach sourcing company. “We often see transparent coaching as part of a development programme with a clear strategic, organisational aim. We also see less openness, where behavioural issues are being addressed or where coaching is perceived as remedial,” she says.
Gladeana McMahon, head of external coaching at Fairplace, agrees that a key factor is whether coaching is perceived as remedial. But she says much depends on organisational culture and the position of those receiving coaching. A senior board member who is willing to endorse publicly that they are being coached can send a powerful message right through their entire organisation, she says. “Like most things,” McMahon concludes, “there is an 80/20 rule. In the majority of cases, transparency is an excellent thing. But in a minority of instances, it wouldn’t be in the interests of the individual and might be better kept off the radar.”