The Association for Coaching (AC)’s new coach evaluation and feedback tool has been met with a mixed response, but the AC believes it will help raise coaching standards and promote its coaches.

The tool, CoachBack, is the brainchild of Gladeana McMahon, chair of the AC UK, and has been developed by Diana Hogbin-Mills. It includes a client survey and is designed so individual coaches and organisations using coaches will be able to track performance.

Hogbin-Mills said: “Coaches had a bit of a wobble so we do have to manage that conversation.”

However, she said the AC hopes the tool will help raise coaching standards and promote its coaches, as well as help them and the AC capture useful but anonymous data on areas such as client expectations.

“We have an amazing group of individuals and we want to build a body of anonymous data over time which we can use to promote our coaches,” said Hogbin-Mills, who is a member of the AC’s strategic team and director of talent management consultancy Talentmax.

CoachBack is divided into three stages: gathering information about client expectations and checking client coachability at the beginning of the coaching; providing input in between sessions on client assessment of the coaching’s effectiveness, and assessing client satisfaction at the end.

“I think checking with the individual whether they think the coaching is working is a great aspect to the tool because sometimes [for the coach] it’s hard to step back and the client can feel uncomfortable [saying anything]. Also, it gives the coach some warning so they can mull over questions to ask,” said Hogbin-Mills.

Questions include: What prompted you to seek a coach? What have you learnt to do differently? What did your coach do or say which you found effective? What did your coach do or say which you found ineffective?

Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 2