COACHING

When a company has a culture of coaching, learning is not confined to a classroom and performance improves. Andrea Handy, Director of Learning and Development at Freescale, is convinced that a culture of development will only happen through coaching (to see the video, click here). That kind of ubiquitous coaching starts at the executive level of a company and should be used at all levels to ensure that people are given the feedback they need to not only consistently move forward in their current roles, but also prepare them for increased responsibility.

When executives and other senior leaders have a coaching mindset, it pervades the entire company. In addition, the critical issue of the leadership pipeline is addressed as the company evolves into a “leaders as teachers” organization, with current leaders playing a crucial role in developing the next generation of leaders. Managers are often responsible for this kind of coaching, and companies are likely to provide training to those managers to improve their skills. That cascade is described by Gallup’s Chief Scientist, James Harter in another CorpU TV video. (Click here to access that video).

The CorpU Coaching Study

The CorpU Current State Assessment of Coaching Practices (the Study) was initially launched in response to CorpU member questions about setting up coaching programs and was quickly filled out by individuals from 200 companies. While coaching was considered an essential element of development at all levels in only 45% of the companies that responded to the Study, more than half of companies do consider it important for high potential development and as a performance tool for executives and high-level leaders (Figure 1).

Figure 1

A recent survey by consultancy Blessing-White found the same lack of commitment to company-wide coaching. In fact, they found the differences between beliefs about coaching and its practice so profound that they titled the study The Coaching Conundrum. They cited the fact that fewer than half of employees in their study are coached, though over 80% of managers say that they are expected to do so.

The CorpU study was designed to find out how companies were actually setting up coaching programs, so respondents were asked to describe their coaching programs at different corporate levels. We discovered our own conundrum in that, although more than half the companies believe that coaching is an important part of high potential development and performance improvement for executives and high-level leaders, the actual percentages at all levels are lower than that (Figure 2).

Figure 2

It’s Not That Easy…

There probably is a good reason for the disconnect between what people believe about coaching and how it is practiced. For coaching to really work, it has to be part of a culture of development. There has to be a level of corporate commitment that starts with executives not only supporting coaching with their words, but also modeling the behavior through the coaching they do with their direct reports. You can’t just train people in coaching skills and expect that coaching will “take hold” once everyone has completed that training.

This creates a dilemma for any group that is tasked to develop a coaching program and, according to the Study, that group is more likely to be L&D than any other group for all but the highest levels of management (Figure 3). HR takes more of the responsibility at those highest levels, and Organizational Development has responsibility for coaching in about 15% of companies at almost all but the lowest levels.

Figure 3

L&D groups are responding to the challenge. Freescale is training all new managers in coaching and adding coaching to the curriculum for existing managers, as well. It is trying to make sure that coaches realize that coaching should not be used just for remediation, but also to explain why something is praiseworthy.

Companies that filled out the survey are making some of the changes needed to establish a coaching mindset (Figure 4). They are increasing the number of people “eligible” for coaching (I would argue that everyone should be) and definitely increasing the coaching training that both internal coaches and managers receive.

Figure 4

…But It’s Worth Doing

Coaching is an important part of both development and performance improvement of individuals in a company. From the Study, it is clear that companies expect coaching to have a direct effect on people and the way they relate to each other and the company (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Establishing a coaching culture requires attention to more than just courses and processes, though both of those are key elements. It requires executive support and modeling, setting expectations that coaching will occur, establishing rewards for managers that coach, and creating strategies for measuring coaching outcomes. If improvement in the measurements shown above can be realized within a culture of development, the effort is well worth it.