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Successful Performance Management Practices employed by organizations to best manage
    the effects of the Global Recession.
A major US research firm has released two new studies during a time when most organizations are busily downsizing and focusing on the the bottom-line. The research demonstrates the important finding that effective employee management practices are different from those in the past and now focus on alignment, development, and measurement using coaching as a strategic platform. Nearly all user-organizations studied are seeing "demonstrable positive business impact from implementation".

A large US Talent Management Group in a nationwide survey of 750 organizations found that "coaching ranks at the top of 22 processes which consistently drive the highest business impact". The analysis confirmed that coaching generated "higher levels of engagement, leadership, flexibility and performance." Coaching was now being recognized as "a management style that proactively prevents problems instead of fixing issues after they occur ie; via performance evaluations."  In turbulent times, coaching was now viewed by a growing number of organizations as an invaluable tool that provided the requisite "knowledge and insight -the key for making the best decisions." -Sky Business Journal

One of the first published case studies (Glaser, 1958) on the effect of coaching was on individual sales performance enhancement. The case study involved the coach working with the Sales Training Director and included the sales staff receiving regular group coaching sessions focusing on team building. The program objectives of higher sales, greater team motivation and reduced staff turnover were all met.

"Formal training in leadership and interpersonal skills and follow-up behavioral coaching, has been shown to increase productivity by 30% in the first year, as related to that area of training. Continued improvement in performance is seen with feedback and behavioral coaching. Without such follow-up, the performance level is just slightly higher than before the training. 

Behavioral coaching has consistently been shown to result in the perception of enhanced leadership effectiveness by 99% of those observing the person. Also 99% of individuals who follow the prescribed program improve by at least one full point on a six-point scale as determined by their co-workers." -Personal Leadership Development Study - Michael Woods MD, Welyne Thomas PhD

"Impact of Behavioral Coaching in one of the world’s largest healthcare organizations. 
Following implementation of behavior-based coaching, individual and business unit performance improvement was achieved in the range of 20-250%. Leaders that focused on key behavioral change areas achieved long-term sustainable results. Some specific results included: All business units that implemented behavior-based coaching methods made substantial improvements. The group's sale division that used a behavior coaching approach was voted best division in the world-wide group for the past two years. One sales division went from being 52nd out of 55 in sales of a key product, to 1st. Managers evolved from critics to coaches; and subsequently, culture evolved from that of subordinating to supportive."  - NGP, Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry Magazine

"The use of executive coaching is widely reported to be growing rapidly...Organizations that have utilized coaching find it so valuable that they continually increase its usage...Ninety-five percent of organizations that use coaching have increased their utilization of coaching over the past five years."  -State of the Coaching Industry in Organizations Project

An independent Research Firm released a 321-page market study that found; "40,000 people in the U.S. are life or work coaches and this $2.4 billion market is growing at a fast-paced 18% per year." Marketdata also found that it's becoming a status symbol to have a personal coach. -Marketdata  Inc

"Fifty percent of all employees’ skills will become outdated within three to five years, so it’s no surprise that corporate America invests over $55 billion dollars in workforce development annually. Given that managers represent the cornerstone of employee productivity and company competitiveness, accelerating manager learning and increasing skill transfer through coaching programs translates into big savings." -Worldwide Learning and Performance Report

"Today, 20 percent of the United States 22 million small businesses use some sort of coaching. Latest research shows that it is expected to surge to 50 percent in the next few years." -Infinia Research. 

"In the December issue of Training and Development, corporate training expenditures were estimated to have reached $109.25 billion. Yet, much of these training dollars have failed to deliver a significant impact to the bottom line. Even with high technology and extensive educational research, traditional training still delivers a poor return on investment. Some estimates suggest that as high as 90% of all training dollars fail to achieve a positive return on investment (ROI). However, coaching appears to have reversed that trend. For example, Dell Computers has been tracking the positive returns on their investment for more than 5 years and have also noticed that those who have participated in the corporate coaching program tended to be promoted more often than those who did not."  -eBusiness News 

"Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at $1 billion." -Harvard Business Report

"Coaching, in personal and business capacities -Some (US) surveys indicate that half of all businesses now employ coaches." -DMNews

"Business coaching is a major growth industry. At least 10,000 coaches work for businesses today. And that figure is expected to exceed 50,000 in the next five years. Business coaching is also highly profitable; employers are now willing to pay fees ranging from $1,500 to $15,000 a day." -The Economics of Executive Coaching.  Harvard Business School Journal. 

" Corporate coaches are in such demand that they can charge from $600 to $2,000 a month for three or four 30- to 60-minute conversations. Executive Coaches are everywhere these days. Companies hire them to shore up executives or, in some cases, to ship them out. Division heads hire them as change agents. Businesses are enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their management performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about everything from personnel to strategy. "- TIME Business News

"Demand for executive coaching has been booming as more company executives and small business owners seek the service. Many consulting and training firms state that within the past year, the number of requests they have received for executive coaching has increased by 60 to 80 percent. A recent study showed that coaching now accounts for around 20 percent of their business, when two years ago it was 5 percent...More executives are beginning to request the service for themselves.. as the negative connotation of coaching as a form of punishment for poor performance is replaced by the growing perception that coaching can help an individual or group to build sustainable professional and personal skills, better learn, overcome challenges, reach stretch goals and integrate leadership training." -US Careers Journal.

"The number of UK organisations using coaching between 1998 and 2003 has risen from 85% to 96%, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)." -University of Bristol Newsletter "Call it professional coaching, executive coaching or corporate coaching. Whatever the name, this phenomenon is the hottest service in corporate America today."- says David A. Thomas, Fitzhugh professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. THE BUSINESS JOURNAL.

"Business Coaching is needed today more than ever as a critical tool for organizational change...Change is essential for an organization to grow and adapt to today's rapidly shifting marketplace...In changing from old hierarchical models to relational models for leading and influencing, businesses are creating coaching cultures that encourage organizational learning. Coaching has emerged as the best way to help individuals learn to think and work together more effectively."- Georgetown University, Center for Professional Development.

"If ever stressed-out corporate America needs coaching, it's now. Trust in big companies is at an all-time low. Baby-boomers have been burned and Gen Xers aren't expecting the Corporation to take care of them." - says Karen Cates, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

"With the aggressive marketing of executive coaching by consultants, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain an objective view about what it is." This report has found "the reasons for the phenomenal growth in the use of executive coaching by employing organisations seem to include: a) the knock-on effects of the downsizing of the 1990s, resulting in ‘lonely’ and isolated senior managers who welcome support and challenge from someone external to their immediate work environment. b) The increasing demand by organisations for senior managers with key ‘soft skills’. Many business schools and in-company standard development programmes have failed to embed the kinds of feedback-based approaches necessary for self-insight and the acquisition of soft skills, for managers when they were more junior. c) Some senior managers consider they have ‘made it’ and worry that being seen to undergo development may be perceived by others as admitting they have a weakness. The nature of the executive coaching relationship is private and avoids that public gaze. d) Attendance on whole-day courses or regular learning sets can seem an imposition into an already busy schedule. Sessions with executive coaches can be fitted around other diary commitments." -IES Research (a group of 30 of the UK’s leading employers) Report 379. 

Who qualifies as an executive coach? At the moment, just about anybody. "I wonder about the vulgarization of coaching,"  "I'm concerned about unlicensed people doing this." - says Warren Bennis of USC's business school.

The demand for Executive Coaches has skyrocketed over the past 5 years.... today’s executive coach (EC) is intended to help leaders and potential leaders across the rocky, wild, and challenging road of organizational growth in today’s dynamic and unstable work environment....As with most emerging professions, the rules and guidelines for how to make executive coaching work have been scanty at best. This gap has been felt by executives seeking help, their organizations, and the scores of people putting up shingles as EC’s. At the same time, a cadre of other types of coaches is trying to catch the coattails of the popularity of executive coaching." - The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - American Psychological Association

Booz, Allen & Hamilton's Ed Cohen, Director for Professional Excellence says; "We hire outside certified coaches to help our executives fill in minor gaps that may not have shown up earlier in the person's career because those skills may not have been the ones that were needed to help them rise to their present level." - The Edge

"The Australian Institute of Management says 70% of its member companies hire coaches. They can cost around $5,000 for middle to senior level executives and for CEO's the bill quickly gets to $12,000 and higher if the relationship remains open ended. But the cost of not doing it can be far greater." -Inside Business. Channel 2.

"We've done lots of research over the past three years, and we've found that leaders who have the best coaching skills have better business results."  V.P. of Global Executive & Organizational Development at IBM.

 “Behavioral Coaching is the only cost-effective way to reinforce new behaviors and skills until a learner is through the dangerous results dip.  Once through the dip, when the new skills bring results, they will become self-reinforcing." Training and Development Journal.

"Corporations believe that coaching helps keep valuable employees and that the dollar investment in it is far less than the cost of replacing an employee."  Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School  -TIME Magazine Article 

COACHING SURVEY
 According to this latest survey, senior-level managers need to pay more attention to, and focus more closely on, their people skills as companies decrease managerial levels and increase the number of employees each manager manages. The survey found the senior-level executives' top five management behavioral issues — or, problems with how they manage people — are:

1. Poor communications skills — both written and verbal, which 41% of survey respondents selected as the main top-level management problem in their organizations

2. Failure to develop subordinates — chosen by 32% of human resource managers as the main issue

3. Rigid and inflexible management behavior — 29%

4. Indecisive and/or nonassertive management behavior — 20%

5. Not being a team player — 18%

The top employee relations problems that senior-level executives most need to correct in order to work more effectively with others are:

1. Poor interpersonal skills, selected by 48% of survey respondents as the No. 1 top-level employee relations problem in their organizations

2. Disorganization — 31%

3. Attitude — 21%

The survey concludes that progressive organizations are increasingly utilizing executive coaches for their managers and enrolling them in interpersonal skills-building courses. These methods have enhanced both the executive performance and team effectiveness of the organizations. - Manchester Executive Coaching Survey