Personalbusinesscoach’s Weblog

The times when you should necessarily have recourse to an external coach are rare.

Effectively, in our view, the greatest benefits are instead to be gained from installing a coaching culture broadly across your business and equipping all those who manage others with the necessary skills.

The option of employing an external coach should only be considered for key individuals at critical stages in their career. If such coaching is then appropriately targeted and care is taken in selecting the right coach, the payback can be enormous.

So who is most likely to benefit from an external coach?

External executive coaching should be provided only for successful people from whom you are looking to leverage superior performance. Clearly, the expected financial return on the marginal performance improvement obtained through employing an external coach should be considerably greater than the sum invested.

In our experience, this normally means that executive coaching should be a development option considered for:

o Business leaders
o Those newly promoted to key roles
o Identified high potentials

This means that you should think about providing an external coach only for those individuals whose performance has a critical impact on the profitability or otherwise of the organisation and for key individuals going through a period of transition.

In such situations the more pertinent question to ask is often: What will be the cost to the organisation of not employing an external coach to provide critical support and challenge for this person?

Executive coaching will not give you the required return on investment unless it is part of a broader, strategic approach to people and organisation development

The employment of an executive coach must be part of a broader strategic development approach, involving the identification and development of key individuals and populations. A strategic development approach requires that you first identify the people resources and capabilities you require to deliver your organisation’s vision, and then invest in turning those people into a cadre of key individuals and teams who are capable of being the engine of the desired future growth.

For further information on the broad and important topic of strategic development consult the following articles:

o An introduction to strategic development: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news16.html
o Strategic development: delivering superior returns http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news17.html
o Delivering superior business results through strategic development: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news19.html

What is the difference in nature between the support and challenge provided by an external coach relative to an internal coach?

At Inspire development and coaching, we identify three levels of coaching:

o Skills coaching – targeted one to one training in a critical knowledge skill of behaviour.
o Performance coaching – coaching for optimum performance in the current role.
o Development coaching – providing an environment for strategic thinking, reflection and challenge in order to deliver action and change.

There is no absolute division, but we would argue that the further down the list you go, the more likely you are to benefit from employing an external coach.

Development coaching is our distinctive area of competence and here the level of the coach’s experience, skills and credibility are essential. It is about working with key individuals to deliver both personal and organisational growth and this means being able to engage with executives on live business issues. The process helps clients develop a detailed understanding of their situation and roles, to articulate a personal business strategy, and to apply the actions arising from this over the next two to three years in the context of their overall career.

What does an external coach bring to such a situation that an internal coach can not deliver?

You must expect an external coach to bring a great deal in terms of experience and expertise. If they are not evidently capable of adding considerable value to your business, you should not even consider employing them.

A top level external coach who is capable of delivering development coaching will have a depth of experience and expertise that they bring form a variety of other organisations and contexts. Along with this invaluable external view, they must also bring a strong business focus, energy and rigour, and a toolkit of coaching and consulting skills and techniques.

The coach needs credibility, presence, backbone and heart. An executive working with a coach needs answers to the following questions: “”How quickly can you get on board with me?”, “Do you get what I am talking about?”, “Are you practical, effective?”, “Do you have some depth to your experience?”

So what should you look for when choosing an executive coach?

This is a broad topic, worthy of an article in its own right.

For most commercial organisations, we would suggest that you consider at least the following criteria:

o Someone who has spent a number of years working in a commercial organisation at a senior executive level – they need to have been there and got the tee-shirt. Executives are very good at sniffing out and dismissing those that have not

o A track record of successfully working on organisation and people development within major organisations

o Appropriate training – just because you have the business experience does not mean you can coach. The skills, knowledge and appropriate behaviours required of a senior executive and a coach are different, and an effective executive coach must have both. This means, therefore, that they should have undertaken a significant period of study with a recognised and accredited organisation. For example, a major business school. Beware of those who have undertaken web based or distance learning programmes, coaching is an intensely practical interpersonal skill set.

o Accreditation – you do need to be a little careful here. It is often mediocre coaches who seek to improve their marketability by obtaining accreditation. There are numerous accreditation bodies and for many the entry level is not that high or rigorous. It is not unreasonable to expect that your coach should have gone through some sort of accreditation process, ideally recognised, by the EMCC or ICF, but you should not rely on this as a guarantee of quality.

o Undertaking regular supervision – any serious executive coach should be submitting their skills to regular scrutiny by appropriately experienced and trained peers. The minimum we would expect here is that the coach undertakes at least six full days of peer supervision an year. Our personal standard is twelve days a year.

Finally, there is an intangible but critical factor. When you first meet a prospective executive coach, you should take time to assure yourself that they are articulate and intellectually robust about their distinctive approach to coaching. You also need to ask yourself: What is it going to do for my personal credibility to put this person in front of one of our senior executives?