Liz Hall
External coaches will set themselves apart in coaching sponsors’ eyes if they stop treating them the same and understand their context, needs and interests, according to a working group of sponsors including KPMG, Fujitsu, Ernst & Young and Diageo.
“It goes back to really understanding the organisation the coach is working with..if they can’t specify what they want to see, be prepared to walk away,” said Simon Dennis, who heads up coaching at IT business Fujitsu.
He was speaking as part of a sponsors’ panel at the European Mentoring & Coaching Council’s annual conference on 17-19 November in Paris.
“It’s a call for people to ask more about the client organisation and agenda,” said Louise Buckle, lead coach at KPMG.
Dennis said Fujtisu had invested just over £250,000 in training 110 employees in coaching skills through Henley Management College. However when he took over to head up coaching (check): “There was no (measurement of) ROI and I was told to deliver some business value.”
“Page after page of process decisions had been created, with flow chart sand forms to complete. Until the end of last year, to get coaching, you were either clever or you knew me. Our model became like the Holy Grail, there were coaches there but you couldn’t touch them. There were no records of what coaching we were doing apart for about six of the coaches.”
Fujitsu has now simplified its coaching model to three levels, which is ‘bearing fruit,’ said Dennis.
Sponsors need to be clear what their role is- are they a provider of coaching services for individuals or are they there to act as a change enabler in the organisation? The roles coach sponsors take varies widely and can include coach broker, recruiter of externals, budget holder, gatekeeper, standard-setter, advocate, fixer and strategy developer.
Getting together with other sponsors is helpful, the working group participants included. The group also included Jeremy Ridge, chair of (APECS), who chaired the group. Other working groups are planned.