Professor Peter Hawkins
In tough times, coaching buyers expect fast results. But how can we get them to appreciate the long-term benefits?
Coaching has established itself as a growing industry worldwide. The 2007 International Coach Federation coaching survey estimated that the industry generated US$1.5bn in revenue and Carr (2005) estimated the number of coaches to be approaching 30,000.
Coaching has become a significant part of leadership development activities (Corporate Leadership Council, 2003). Zenger and Stinnett (2006) estimated that 70 per cent of organisations with formal leadership development initiatives were using coaching as a key ingredient.
Yet, in today’s tough economic environment, organisations employing coaches are increasingly asking about their return on investment. It’s an important question, but foremost I often ask chief executives and HR directors: “How does your organisation learn from the thousands of coaching conversations that take place in it?”
Most struggle to find an answer, but it leads to a fruitful dialogue on how to develop a better strategy and create links between coaching and organisational learning and performance.
When training individuals, team coaches and supervisors, I will often ask the question the Knight Parsifal failed to ask on his arrival at the Grail Castle: “Whom and what does your coaching serve?” Many will talk about the need to serve both the individual or team client and the organisation. I will then ask how it creates value for the organisation. Many coaches struggle to articulate the links.
In my forthcoming coaching book, Creating a Coaching Culture (OUP/McGraw Hill, April 2012), I look at what more than 30 organisations have done to develop an integrated coaching strategy that links their coaching inputs to the organisational learning and development outputs, to the outcome of increased ‘shared value’ for the organisation and its stakeholders (see Porter and Kramer, Harvard Business Review, January 2011). I show how an organisation can review its coaching activities and build a more successful strategy, linked to the mission, vision and strategy of the organisation, and offer a roadmap of seven important steps in creating a coaching culture:
- 1. Developing an effective panel of external coaches.
- 2. Developing the internal coaching and mentoring capacity.
- 3. The organisation’s leaders actively support coaching endeavours and align them with the organisational culture change.
- 4. Coaching moves beyond individual formal sessions to team coaching and organisational learning.
- 5. Coaching becomes embedded in the HR and performance management processes of the organisation.
- 6. Coaching becomes the predominant style for managing throughout the organisation.
- 7. Coaching becomes how an organisation does business with all its stakeholders.
Nevertheless, a good business-linked coaching strategy, plus these seven steps, are not sufficient in themselves: good quality review processes, including supervision, evaluation and research, also underpin a high-performing organisation supported by a coaching culture.
In these straitened economic times, there is increasing pressure for coaching to demonstrate its return on investment and increase its capacity not only to develop leaders in a cost-effective manner, but to play its part in effectively developing the organisation to better succeed in a volatile and fast-changing world.
Coaching must create a stronger and clearer link to organisational benefit if it is to weather economic recessions.
Professor Peter Hawkins is emeritus chairman of the Bath Consultancy Group and professor of leadership, Henley Business School.
peter.hawkins@bathconsultancygroup.com
How does your organisation learn from the thousands of coaching conversations that take place?
Coaching at Work, Volume 7, Issue 1