Google “executive coaching” and you’ll find nearly half a million hits. No wonder the Harvard Business Review has referred to the market as the Wild West of coaching. “It’s worryingly easy to do a short course and set yourself up as an executive coach, and even though there are a number of accreditation bodies, they have varying reputations,” says Kevin Bright, director of business psychologists YSC. “Couple this with the fact that there is currently very little trust between suppliers of coaches and organisations, and you can see why so many firms are deciding to run their own assessment processes.”
With the coaching market estimated to be worth £150 million in the UK and £1 billion worldwide, according to research by coaching supplier Acuity Coaching, organisations wanting value for money are understandably keen to put an end to executives choosing their coach at a cocktail party or HR professionals taking on coaches without a thorough investigation into their individual background and techniques.
“Coaching today is like recruitment was in the 1980s, organisations are being approached by coaches charging up to £1,500 per hour, with no means of telling good from bad,” reports Simon Coops, chief executive of Acuity Coaching. By introducing a careful selection procedure, organisations hope to find the right fit, have more central control over who is being coached and by whom, and above all ensure return on investment.
So who is ahead of the game when it comes to selection? What are they looking for? And how are they going about it? The general consensus is that no one sector is taking the issue more seriously than another, although the pharmaceutical and financial services industries are fast building a reputation for best practice. Bright points out that some companies you might expect to be leading the way are “strangely off pace”. “I can think of one retail organisation that is streets ahead in many areas but in the dark ages when it comes to coach selection,” he says.
Coach selection is time-consuming, challenging and expensive but payback is assured, insists Bright. Indeed, costs are minimal compared with the money spent on coaches themselves and the potential damage the wrong choice could do to an organisation. He claims the best starting point is to know what you are looking for: “It sounds obvious, but an amazing number of companies don’t begin with strict criteria.” He says this is the main reason why many organisations call on the help of coaching consultancies, who can help companies to define what they need and help them find it.
Stage 1: choose your coaches
Once an organisation has developed a desired profile for its coaching requirements, perhaps a team of coaches to upskill line managers or a handful of coaches to work on particular strategy issues with the top executive team, they are ready to begin looking for their pool of coaches.
While some arrive at a list of preferred suppliers from which individual coaches can be sought at a later date, it is generally recognised as best practice to select individual coaches from the outset. To this end, organisations are advised to ask preferred suppliers to put forward only coaches they feel would be suitable for the organisation’s objective.
Most prefer a tendering process, but some, such as publications wholesaler Smiths News, favour personal recommendation. “Coaching is all about relationships and I seem to be able to find out far more about a coach this way than if they tender for business,” says Gill Doolin, training and organisation development manager at Smiths. She adds: “For me, coach selection should be a bit like an employee referral scheme. All the research says that people who get a job through a friend stay longer. The issue for me is that there are now so many personal recommendations, that’s why the selection process is so important.”
Paul Barker, director of coaching at IT services company LogicaCMG, agrees. “Coaching is relationship driven so we use word of mouth a lot. We also depend on links we have built up with organisations such as the International Coach Federation, its networks can prove very useful.”
Almost all organisations that invest in an assessment process already have a number of coaches working for them. “It can take courage to accept that the coaching practice in your organisation may not be up to scratch, but getting rid of the dead wood is a key part of any selection process,” says Tim Martin, head of public-sector programmes at coaching consultancy Clutterbuck Associates. “Ideally, existing coaches need to be put through hoops just as rigorously as any potential newcomers.”
In some cases, assessment is entirely focused on existing coaches. Denise Cording, head of talent management at Carphone Warehouse, says: “I’ve realised we manage coaches differently in different parts of the business, so while we have some really good practice in places, elsewhere there are coaches that I don’t feel so confident about. So our work on assessment, which we are doing with Acuity Coaching, is purely about checking if the 15 coaches we have identified are the best we can expect.”
Stage 2: the shortlist
Once organisations have compiled their list of potential and existing coaches, they are ready for stage two: producing a shortlist from individual CVs and an application form. The key areas that tend to be examined at this point are training and experience, preferred frameworks of coaching and “fit” with the organisational culture and objective. How much emphasis is placed on each of these things varies widely, as the experience versus qualifications debate shows.
Nick Allsopp, group leadership development manager at property advisers DTZ, says: “The one thing that is more useful to us than anything else is experience, particularly with blue-chip companies and at board level. That’s not to belittle qualifications, but there are quite a few around whose validity is questionable.”
But Wayne Mullen, head of learning and development at Standard Bank, says: “A coaching qualification from a recognised school is very important to us. We want to know this person has invested in themselves as a coach and that they treat it as a profession. In terms of experience, we think 18 months is adequate.”
John McGurk, CIPD adviser, learning, training and development, says that regardless of your opinion, it is important to get an overview of what kind of organisations, and at what level, each coach has worked in for which testimonials can be particularly useful. “Specifically, ask how many hours of coaching they have delivered and how many assignments they have delivered on, including what kinds of issues. If they don’t have a coaching logbook then it could be that they’ve been trained but never practised, which is as useful as a teacher who’s never taught in a classroom. Equally, find out what training and qualifications they have and if you’re not familiar with them, follow them up.”
McGurk adds: “Find out if they are a member of a professional body, and at what level. In other words, have they joined on the web and paid a tenner, or does their membership mean signing up to things such as continuing professional development or a code of conduct? You should also ask coaches to describe any development activities they’ve undertaken.”
Other areas that assessors should ask about at this stage include details of supervision and how the coach maintains objectivity and perspective during assignments, says Siobhain O’Riordan, past chair of the British Psychological Society’s special group in coaching psychology. “I’d also advise always following up references.”
Stage 3: the interview
The next stage is where the models start to differ more extensively. While most companies invite coaches to an interview, there are variations, notably in who sits on the interview panel, how structured the interview is and which criteria come under the spotlight. But there are commonalities too. For instance, no companies appear to use psychometric testing. “There is no real evidence that a particular personality type makes a better coach,” explains David Cluttberbuck, senior partner at Clutterbuck Associates.
Perhaps the biggest area of disparity between organisations is whether they observe coaches in action. Jonathan Perks, managing director of leadership development and coaching at consultancy Penna, is among those who believe it is critical. “The way we work is that the individual coaches one of the interview panellists on a particular issue for an hour, while another of the panellists observes. It provides an opportunity for live feedback, although a more formal, rigorous feedback session after the final decision has been made is equally important.”
Meanwhile, some organisations, such as the Foreign Office, require applicants to coach two people in this case, for 45 minutes each. Sceptics criticise the practice as artificial, while advocates say it’s the best you can do to see if a coach is all that they say they are.
Perks believes that once the process is over, it’s crucial to strike while the iron’s hot and while everyone is present. “In my opinion, the best interview panels are made up of people from different parts of the company, perhaps even different countries, so it makes sense to debrief and think about decisions there and then, particularly as everything is fresh in your mind.
“We take a couple of hours to go through the assessment day in a consensual way, perhaps even with votes, and we ask everyone to score each coach. In cases where, say, 12 people have been assessed, we’ve asked the panel to name four people they’d like to become coaches, another four who they would consider when the time is right or when they have more experience or qualifications, and another four who didn’t quite work but where certain things were still valued.”
Assessment daze
While some coaches find in-depth assessment processes valuable, others are not keen. Mullen at Standard Bank reports: “Most say that the effort they’ve had to put into it has forced them to really think about what they do, which is a good thing, and most people benefit from the detailed feedback. But there have been some negative reactions along the lines of: ‘Given that there are lots of accrediting organisations, why do coaches have to go through another assessment process?’”
Robin Linnecar, partner at coaching provider Praesta, says: “It’s a hell of an investment in time, especially when you consider most take at least half a day. It’s not as if chartered accountants have to go through how they’d act in an acquisition deal every time they get shortlisted.” He believes the solution lies in centralisation, “whereby organisations club together and do joint assessment processes or at least use one of them as a tickbox. I’ve come across five recently that are very slight variations on a theme. Imagine having to go through all of them.”
Donna Gent, national training manager at pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, disagrees. “What we look for in our coaches are very specific qualities, not just in terms of how good they are but what they will bring to our particular coaching team. I don’t think you can get that from a written report.”
She adds: “Centralisation would also remove opportunity for feedback. I’ve found that feedback isn’t only beneficial for coaches themselves, but for us too. The dialogue we have around feedback with our applicants is a big part of helping us to get to know them better and deciding whether they are right for us. One of our coaches is particularly spiritual. Our initial conversations with her were very business-oriented, but after a while, in the feedback sessions, it emerged that spirituality informed her work. She said: ‘I don’t usually tell big corporations,’ but actually it works well in some situations.”
Caroline Horner, director of coach training body i-coach academy, who has worked with Unilever and Standard Bank on their assessment processes, disagrees. “It would be no good simply to use another organisation’s assessment as a deciding factor, no matter how good it is; because you might need a completely different type of coach to them. The whole point of assessing is to ensure a 100 per cent philosophy fit. You are basically using it as a mechanism to say, ‘Is the way this coach thinks congruent and useful to the way we think?’”
Who shares wins
Everyone agrees that assessment procedures have a long way to go, with most still remaining primitive. “But they are far more sophisticated than five years ago,” Horner says. “At that time Unilever stood out for having any kind of assessment process. Today, most organisations have some form of process and although it may not be as good as it should be in some places, most of them have moved on from, ‘I’ll take you out to lunch and, if we like you, you can be in our coaching pool.’”
David Lane, professor at the International Centre for the Study of Coaching at Middlesex University, adds that more and more organisations are sharing good practice; for example, through the Global Convention on Coaching. “I think this will have an impact on the quality of assessment processes in the long run,” he says.
Paul Ellis, assistant director at the Defence Leadership and Management Centre, Defence Academy of the UK, has just completed some research on coach selection across central government departments. He also selects coaches to work with strategic leaders in the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces, and points to the overall poverty of research in this area. “There is hardly any rigorous research on what constitutes a thorough selection process,” he says. “So if someone says they have the best methodology for coach selection, what evidence is that based on?”
Key factors when selecting coaches
Percentage of organisations who look for particular skills in their coaches
| External coaches |
Internal coaches |
Line managers |
|
| Coaching experience | 36 | 28 | 20 |
| Specialist qualifications in coaching |
24 | 7 | 2 |
| Evidence of continuing professional development |
12 | 22 | 17 |
| Evidence of using supervision | 8 | 19 | 29 |
| Understanding of your business or profession |
26 | 36 | 38 |
| Understanding of leadership and management |
27 | 31 | 35 |
Source: CIPD Learning and Development 2007 survey (number surveyed: 416)
Case study: less is more at the NHS
The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHSIII) employed 35 coaches but was finding it difficult to manage relationships with so many people. It needed to downsize and improve on the quality of the coaching.
“The coaching market is crowded, qualifications are varied, and there is no real benchmark to say, ‘Yes, this person is a good coach’. That’s why we decided to manage the assessment process ourselves,” says Gillian Surr, associate; leadership at the NHSIII. The institute wanted around 12 coaches but wound up with 19. Surr approached Clutterbuck Associates to help the NHSIII manage the process. “First, it has a great reputation and second, other providers were likely to want to have people on their books applying to our register. Clutterbuck didn’t,” she says.
Minimal bias
Together, they designed a process that began with advertisements. Respondents filled in application forms. “A lot of coaches hadn’t experienced this before, and some were put off, particularly as it was a lengthy application form with about 10 free-text questions,” Surr says.
These questions focused on issues such as ethics, supervision and personal development. Applicants were also asked for three detailed coaching case studies and what they’d put back into the coaching fraternity. “We were referring to things such as writing books and running group supervision for people in the voluntary sector,” explains Tim Martin, head of public-sector programmes at Clutterbuck Associates.
“The application forms were scored against criteria to minimise any bias,” he says, adding that those who reached their “pass mark”; a score of 48; made it to the assessment centre. It didn’t go entirely smoothly, he confesses. “Some people were superb, but had only given four words, when others who were not so good gave 100 words. We gave detailed feedback to help such people move forward.”
Self-reflection
One of the highlights for Surr was observing a real coaching session via video. “It was fantastic because the presence of an observer can put coaches off, particularly if their expressions give away their opinions,” she says. Candidates were then asked to go away and write 1,000 words self-reflecting on the session. “We were looking for whether they picked up the same strengths and weaknesses as the observers. There were no set criteria because each session was so different.”
Following a one-to-one interview exploring each coach’s psychology and motivation, they were invited to attend a panel interview with someone they might coach in the future, a member of the NHSIII team in charge of board-level development and a member of Clutterbuck. “Questions covered their views on coaching evaluation and their awareness of issues facing the directors they would be coaching,” Surr says.
All the coaches came out with an individual score. “We found that there wasn’t a direct correlation between each of the areas. So if someone was excellent on the panel, they weren’t necessarily excellent on the observation. That reassured us that all elements of the assessment added value.”
There were clear “no’s” and “yes’s”. “With the ones in the middle, we had a long late-night discussion,” she says. Feedback was provided in writing to each individual coach and they had the option for a half-hour telephone conversation. “Even the coaches that didn’t make it said the process was beneficial because it gave them areas to improve on,” she adds.
The do’s and don’ts of selection
Do:
- Dig deep in your questioning methods. You’re trying to understand what the coach brings to their practice and how that fits with your objectives
- Ensure the coach has a clear understanding of the purpose of coaching within the context of your organisation
- Think carefully when taking on coaches who insist on using their own coaching assessment tools, they should be able to adapt to an organisation’s own tools.
Don’t:
- Consider coaches who can’t outline what they can achieve
- Take on coaches who can name individuals they have worked with but can’t name any clients
- Assume experience counts for everything, if a coach has been in the same role for 10 years, they may not be good at their job
- Accept qualifications at face value. Some reputable-sounding organisations hand out coaching diplomas for three-day courses
- Employ a coach who takes full credit for past results; they may see coaching as a power trip
- Consider any coach who does not undertake regular, formal and independent supervision.
The CIPD runs qualifications in coaching and mentoring. The certificate is for those aspiring to be highly effective coach-mentors and the advanced certificate is for those who want to develop their skills at a higher level. For details visit www.cipd.co.uk/training/certificates/coaching or call 020 8612 6202.
Volume 3, Issue 2