Now that we´ve had a brief overview of the executive coaching industry I´d like to briefly define executive coaching, and address the question of how best to use executive coaching for the greatest impact.
This forum is dedicated to executive coaching, rather than life coaching or even career coaching. Executive coaching is coaching leaders to better understand how their actions, communications and patterns of thinking affect others in their organization. And according to my own personal bias, executive coaching is not just "warm and fuzzy". When done well it is always transformational, but should also be actionable and have practical, bottom-line business results for the organization.
Business Results: In business, when you spend money you need to show what benefit was gleaned as a result. Executive coaching is no different. In order for the executive coaching industry to have staying power, coaches and coaching companiesmust be able to demonstrate business results. Whether those results are specific business results, or higher assessment scores or better team retention, coaching will only be a respected professional service if we look at it in terms of ROI.
High-Performers & Newly Promoted: Though in the recent past coaching was often used as a last attempt to bring a struggling leader into alignment with the organization, today coaching is most often used as a reward for high-level executives looking to deliver even more, or as a leg-up for newly promoted and other high-performing managers.
Diversity: As we strive to make the workplace more diverse, coaching can be used to support high-performing women and minorities who have the potential for promotion. Coaching can help them develop the skills they need to succeed on their own terms and can help them uncover the hidden "rules of the game" that are often held closely by those in positions of power.
Making Feedback Actionable: Large investments are made each year in 360-degree feedback inventories or other yearly employee performance appraisals hoping to give leaders tools to improve their leadership skills. However without professionally delivered 360-feedback, most executives will not take action on this emotionally charged, but invaluable data. In fact, it's common for executives to feel confused by their 360 degree feedback, focusing on the negative, dismissing the positive and remaining unclear about what action to take. Coaches who specialize in making feedback actionable can be a great way to bring to life what would otherwise be flat, employee performance appraisal data and transform it into an actionable, meaningful tool for growth and change. In this way your organization can ensure that your investment in employee performance appraisals is leveraged to improve individual performance, and therefore business results.
HR as Strategic Partner: A trend among HR organizations that I have experienced recently is HR using coaching for top HR executives to support their ability to align with business strategy and line leader´s initiatives. In this way, HR becomes a strategic partner to the business units and can more easily gain funding for its programs (see my last blog posted on 12/12/05).
Engagement: Engagement as a measure of a company´s health is another hot topic in corporate circles of late since National Australia Bank´s stock was devalued largely on the basis of weak employee engagement last fall. My coaching experience clearly shows that a coached employee is a more engaged employee and that the improvements in engagement trickle down to others on the coachee´s team making coaching a great way to impact employee engagement. Since Hewitt estimates that each engaged employee will drive an additional $5,000 in profit, companies can easily see a return on investment for coaching of individuals who have a wide scope of influence in their company on the basis of engagement alone.
How would your organization feel about an additional $5,000 profit per employee? Write to me and let me know your thoughts and feelings.