Katharine St John-Brooks
Internal coaches face a dearth of clients because of poor process management. The good news is that it’s easy to put right.
Do internal coaches have enough to do? In the course of researching my new book on internal coaching, I came across an unexpected phenomenon – frustrated internal coaches who were ‘all dressed up with nowhere to go’. They had completed their training and were fired up, ready to start work with coaching clients – except they had none. Or, they had had a few when the scheme started, but demand had petered out.
I first became aware of this concern when interviewing supervisors. I was curious to know whether the issues raised with them by internal coaches were any different from those raised by external coaches. I was not expecting to hear them report that a common issue was a dearth of clients.
Most internal coaches are pretty upbeat by nature – virtually none of my internal coach interviewees had spontaneously mentioned a lack of clients as a problem – but when I played this viewpoint back to them I found that the situation was quite widespread.
The impact on the coaches of insufficient clients can be severe, particularly at the outset of their coaching career. A common consequence is a loss of confidence and a feeling of being deskilled. I am sure we’re all familiar with the idea of ‘use it or lose it’.
I had a sense of frustration from knowing that coaches’ organisations will have invested considerable sums in training their internal coaches – only to be wasting a fabulous resource.
So why does it happen? The most common reasons are connected with: a) lack of clarity about what and who the scheme is for; b) inadequate publicity about the scheme, and c) a ‘hands-off’ approach by scheme managers.
I heard that some scheme managers are nervous about stoking up demand for coaching, which they then cannot fulfil, so they take a low-key approach to marketing – which backfires.
Also, where there is no managed matching process – commonly where the client simply selects a coach from a register of internal coaches – inexperienced coaches can be consistently overlooked.
So can scheme managers balance supply and demand better? One approach is to manage your coaches more actively. Notice if a coach is under-employed and point a client their way.
Be imaginative about how you promote your scheme: what about having a videoclip on your intranet of your CEO extolling the value of coaching? Or holding a lunchtime ‘speed-dating’ type event when people can come along and have 15 minutes of coaching to get a feel for it?
Don’t be afraid of a waiting list if there is a high level of demand. You could also think about whether you need to relaunch or refresh your scheme, making sure it is clearly supporting the business objectives.
And if your coaches are not getting enough practice to keep their skills fresh, organise some CPD, provide some opportunities for them to coach each other in triads and, my particular beef, make sure they are receiving some variety of supervision to support them. It doesn’t have to be expensive. n
Katharine St John-Brooks is a coach and internal coaching consultant. www.work-solutions.co.uk
Twitter @KatharineStJB
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Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 6