Content:: coaching in business benefits, organizations benefits, coaching case study, business coaching, executive coaching, study, executive coaching, coaching benefits, business coaching studies, executive coaching studies, organizational coaching, business coaching article, executive coaching article, business coaching study, executive coaching study, coaching managers, organization coaching benefits, coaching organization,
Introductory
Coaching Notes:
Benefits of
Business Coaching and some case
studies
©
(Includes Extracts from coaching text book 'The Coaching at
Work Toolkit' by
Zeus and Skiffington - published by McGraw-Hill. 2003)
When were the benefits of business coaching first researched / published?
Here are just a few example research papers on business coaching published from the 1930's through to the 1980's...
coaches to
discussed the benefits of sales coaching. In 1951 Mold reported on the benefits of the manager-as-coach and Mahler (1964) observed the difficulty in getting
managers to be effective coaches. In 1967 Gershman produced his doctoral research thesis on how supervisors were trained to be successful coaches to
improve employees' attitude and job performance.
1970’s
Ponzo, Z. (1980). "Management development roles: Coach, sponsor and mentor." Personnel
Journal
Tyson, L. and H. Birnbrauer (1983). "Coaching:
A tool for success."
Training & Development Journal
Duffy, E. M. (1984). "A feedback-coaching
intervention and selected predictors in outplacement." Dissertation
Abstracts
Sergio, J. P. (1987). "Behavioral coaching
as an intervention
to reduce production costs through a decrease in
output."
Stowell, S. J. (1987). "Leadership
and the coaching process in
organizations."
Orth, C. D., H. E. Wilkinson, et al. (1987). "The manager's
role as coach
and mentor." Organizational Dynamics
Thompson, A. D., Jr (1987). "A formative evaluation of an
individualized coaching program for business managers and professionals."
Coaching Today:
-Some Types of
Organizational Coaching
Cultural Change Coaching
The culture of an
organisation reflects the values and behaviours of its members. Coaches
who specialize in cultural change, conduct cultural audits through
surveys, interviews and/or focus group methods etc. They can analyse
results and propose and conduct interventions to better identify
and articulate an organization's culture or they can help
develop and introduce positive, sustainable corporate values and
new behaviours or assist members to be in alignment with
the organization's culture etc.
Coaching for Senior Management, Directors and Boards
When an organisation needs to change, leadership and
inspiration must come from the top. When an organization's senior
management or/and leadership group is under
pressure to successfully change operational procedures, effective
communication is critical. Management Coaches have extensive
knowledge of organisational change and business strategy to the Director
level. Using a combination of their own experience and proven
coaching models, processes and tools they:
- Provide a confidential and objective “space and time” enabling self-awareness and self-reflection.
- Evaluate behavioural patterns affecting decision-making -ensuring that these are aligned to business goals and driving them forward.
- Challenge thinking, problem-solving etc focusing on making the right strategic moves.
- Further develop communication methods and style -ensuring clear, effective and constant communication.
-Management/Leadership Coaching
The behavior of a company's leaders is crucial to the
entire organization. The behavior of leaders set examples
that communicate more than anything else. A leader's greatest tool
in leading others is the combination of their personality and behavior.
While a leader's greatest contribution is how well they
communicate ideas, influence those around them, demonstrate the
behavior they talk about, and inspire others to join together in
accomplishing a common goal. It is fact that, the further up the
ladder a leader moves, the greater the risk of loss of constructive
feedback. Giving constructive feedback to anyone is difficult at best
for most people. Coaching helps to fill this gap. When done well,
coaching accelerates the development of managers and leaders.
The attraction, retention and development of qualified staff are also key concerns as organisations adapt to an ever changing and challenging world around them. Executive Coaches work with leaders to develop leadership skills -encouraging them to lead by example and how to best support their teams to engage in ongoing professional and personal skill learning programs, be motivated and committed.
Some
Direct Benefits:
It is increasingly recognized that Individuals and groups perform better
with coaching and this performance translates into business results. Some
of the specific ways in which coaching is beneficial include the
following:
-
Coaching for leadership impacts companies through increased productivity, improved communication, increased staff commitment and loyalty and decreased levels of stress and tension.
-
Coaching assists individuals to remain loyal and committed to the company in the face of demanding global business hours, language barriers, differing work ethics and economic fluctuations.
-
Coaching can help prevent executive derailment, which, as some studies suggest, can be as high as thirty-three per cent for senior executives.
-
Coaching helps managers develop better interpersonal skills. Some common reasons for interpersonal conflict include executives being too abrasive, too controlling and too isolated. Coaches work with executives to explore these behaviours, to recognize and regulate their self-defeating beliefs, assumptions and actions.
-
Coaching helps leaders to think and plan more strategically, to manage risk more effectively, to create and communicate vision and mission.
-
Coaching aids in developing a culture of trust, commitment and personal responsibility both internally and with the external world of clients and customers.
-
Coaching enables the executive or manager to leverage his or her personal power more effectively.
-
Coaching can develop those leadership qualities that have been empirically proven to be associated with success. These include: cognitive capacity, social capacities, personality style, motivation, knowledge and expertise.
The
breadth of executive coaching makes it impossible to nominate all areas
the coach and coachee can explore. However, the following is a list of
some of the major intervention areas of executive coaching:
· When there is a change in structure and an individual executive needs new skills for a new position
·
The high potential manager being groomed for promotion
·
High performing executives whose personality style impacts negatively on
his or her relationship with peers, staff and clients
·
Executives wishing to develop their career paths and prospects
·
As a follow-on to 360-degree performance appraisals
·
Increasing the individuals’ capacity to manage an organization –
planning, organizing, controlling, visioning, developing others etc.
·
Increasing the executive’s psychological and social mastery skills, such
as self-awareness, recognition of “blind spots” and defences,
limiting thoughts and emotional
effectiveness
·
Improving the executive’s balance between work and life demands.
·
Leadership, management and team building skills
·
Working more effectively within a changing organizational
structure
·
Working with a leader to coach others in transition
Types of Executive Coaching:
As noted in the book, 'The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work', the authors (Skiffington and Zeus) have found Witherspoon’s typology of executive coaching to be useful:
Coaching for skills helps the executive learn specific skills, abilities and perspectives over a period of several weeks or months. The skills to be learned are usually clear at the outset and are typically related to skills associated with an executive assuming new or different responsibilities.
Coaching for performance focuses on the executive’s effectiveness in his or her current position. Frequently it involves coaching for one or more management or leadership competencies, such as communicating vision, team building or delegation.
Coaching for development refers to coaching interventions that explore and enhance the executive’s competencies and characteristics required for a future job or role. It can be associated with outplacements, restructuring and reengineering in the organization.
Coaching for the executive’s agenda generally entails working with an executive on any personal or organizational concerns he or she may have. It can focus on issues surrounding the executive, such as change and company downsizing. Personal issues are more likely to arise in this type of coaching.
Executive coaches can also work with training managers to formalize coaching in their leadership roles and become "manager as coach".
Note:
Only behavioral change is real change.
-The need to create
sustainable behaviours (what we do or say)!
Improving business performance often focuses on clearly articulated strategies, definite goals and structural change. However, even the best laid plans for change often fail to address that performance is inseparable from how an organization does what it does. For only if the people in a system behave as they should will the system work as it should. Most systems have the same failing--human behavior. Improved performance is impossible without changing behaviors. If we want to change and improve systems, we have to change human behavior. But human behavior is not so easily changed and most behavioral change efforts fail
Two
types of Change:
1.
Process/Procedural
Change:
The
main success factor to the introduction of a new initiative,
new process or the creation of new structures or teams, is the effective
long-term change of people’s behaviors.
2.
Personal and/or Organizational
Performance or Developmental Change:
The central critical
success factor for any personal, group or cultural change initiative
is the effective long-term change of people’s behaviors.
Some Coaching Case Studies:
CASE STUDY 1.- TRAIN THE INTERNAL ORG. COACH PROGRAM
This Coaching Program was developed to address a Defence Forces Training Department's specific needs.
The Trainers
teach over a thousand personnel a year. The focus of the
program was to certify the trainers as coaches and thereby:
increase the effectiveness of their training methods by
enhancing the delivery and retention of the subject
matter - be it soft skills or technical information, improve their
ability to establish rapport, trust and credibility and improve
their ability to adapt their teaching style to the students
learning styles thus enabling their students to easily apply the
newly learnt information.
All the participants were assessed
giving them an understanding of their own unique learning,
communication, problem-solving and teaching styles (which was used
as a basis for them to develop even more flexible teaching
styles).
The tailored program, conducted over 3 months, used a combination of distance-learning modules, including pre-study of course manual and set reading material, followed by 4 two-day Intensive Group Workshops and individual follow-up coaching sessions.
CASE STUDY 2. - EXECUTIVE COACHING
A Coaching
program was developed to address a Senior Management
Team's specific needs to: be more 'Transformational', 'Emotionally
Intelligent' in their leadership style, to improve their behavioral
flexibility and improve their cross functional effectiveness. The
program was delivered through team workshops addressing
common workplace issues and one to one personal developmental
coaching sessions focusing on under-performance issues. Results
were benchmarked and linked to measurable changes in behavior.
The Assessment
instruments provided information on the coachees: Leadership style,
Problem-Solving style, Stress levels, and their Emotional Aspects
- their strengths and developmental areas.
The program was over a twelve month period starting with a number of one-to-one sessions. The team workshops were followed by one-to-one coaching driven by the needs of the individual coachees.
CASE STUDY 3. - BUSINESS COACHING
A Customized Development Program for Managers, Senior Doctors and Nurse Managers in a Private Hospital Group.
The program had to take into the account the acute lack of time staff have for position development and an expanding network of new hospitals. The staff identified a need to be more effective in the management and utilization of change, more 'Transformational' in their leadership style and more confident and assertive in their handling of conflict. Emphasis was also placed on the values and culture of the organization as well as skills.
A mix of team workshops, one-to-one coaching and action learning projects were developed. It was agreed that no one within the group should have access to an individual's assessment report. The feedback was facilitated only to the coachee and a self development plan/coaching cycle was agreed to.
Some objectives were to: improve cross functional effectiveness - as a team and individually, develop an awareness of their behavioral style and address areas which may cause them to under-perform, understand the nature of Change and Transition and be able to anticipate and manage both elements proactively and to design a competency framework which reflected the values and ethos of the organization.
A recent study concluded that high performing organizations all have strong communication practices based on well-defined communication development programs.
The program framework included three phases: assessment, coaching, and evaluation. The assessment phase helped personnel to clarify dominant communication styles. A variety of assessment tools including Social Styles, Competing Values, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was employed. In the coaching phase, personnel learnt the strengths and weaknesses of their dominant communication styles, as well as strategies for communicating effectively with others who have conflicting styles. Finally, the evaluation phase helped personnel to monitor the effectiveness of their communication styles and strategies and to develop action plans for continuous improvement. During this phase personnel have numerous opportunities to make presentations and receive detailed feedback from their coach and peers on the substance and delivery of their improved message/presentation skills.
Sears
learned that when their managers fully value and develop their employees
(i.e., using the Manager as Coach approach), they could confidently predict future
revenue growth in a particular district. When
employee satisfaction increased 5%, revenue growth in a particular store
increased by 5.5%. - Harvard Business
Review -CDG
Harvard
Business Review article - Benefits of Manager as Coach in Sears:
...They set up rigorous measurements for (among other things)
employee attitude and satisfaction. Their statistics showed that
consistently as the quality of management improved, so did employee
attitudes, and then customer satisfaction. The
numbers showed that “a 5 point improvement in employee attitudes will
drive a 1.3 point improvement in customer satisfaction, which in turn will
drive a 0.5% improvement in revenue growth.”
In a billion dollar company, 0.5% increase in revenue is
substantial.
(for
In-house and external Trainers, Consultants, Coaches etc)
- For more information on how graduates can license the industry-proven Workshop
Course Manual
Onsite, customized coach training for your Organization!
By customizing on-site coach training to meet your
needs, Dr Skiffington's Coach Training Institute can ensure that
everyone in your coaching team is on the
same page and using the same accountable coaching methodologies and
sharing the same
knowledge about the latest coaching technologies and practice
trends etc.
The customized, fast-tracked, 4 Day Certified Master Coach
training course is delivered in
a format that best meets the
needs of your organization, whether that's week
days or weekends. Dr Skiffington (the
course facilitator) has the
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most challenging issues and is able to facilitate hands-on
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that relate to your specific organizational and
cultural needs.
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-HR News
2005
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Content::
coaching in organizations benefits, coaching case study, business coaching, executive
coaching, study, executive coaching, coaching benefits, business coaching
studies, executive coaching studies, organizational coaching, business coaching article,
organization coaching benefits, executive
coaching article, business coaching study, executive coaching study,
coaching managers, coaching organization