Casting a Critical Eye on Coaching

When companies evaluate the broad array of management development tools and resources available, they turn increasingly to coaching for its flexible and highly personalized approach to enhancing leaders’ performance. Yet, despite growing popularity and broad acceptance of coaching, uncertainty persists with respect to its objectives, delivery and effectiveness.

First, there is some ambiguity about the differences between coaching, executive coaching and counseling. Adding to the confusion, coaching frequently suffers from a lack of transparency, organizational support and clear objectives, along with inadequate measurement, which impedes organizations’ ability to evaluate its effectiveness.

Further, different types of coaching will have different outcomes. General performance-based coaching is what managers and peers provide to individuals at any level on an ongoing basis. This type of coaching is tactical and is sometimes combined with counseling to fix a problem or improve a specific skill.

Executive coaching, on the other hand, is directly linked to a senior leader’s strategic growth achievement. It focuses on changing behavior to improve performance and to help senior leaders execute strategies that will deliver a specific result, as well as the organizational impact if the result is not achieved. The link between the two is that each aims to change behavior.

The essence of coaching is establishing a committed partnership between all stakeholders — the manager, the coachee, coach and HR — to deliver desired results.

Coaching for Leaders
Talent management adviser AMA Enterprise (Editor’s note: The author works for AMA Enterprise) conducted a national survey of more than 230 respondents in August to explore the policies and practices associated with executive coaching and its perceived value. The survey population consisted primarily of senior-level business, human resources and management professionals.

The survey, “Casting a Critical Eye on Coaching,” found that coaching is widely used. Forty-two percent of respondents provide coaching to anyone at any level in the organization, depending on need. However, individuals at mid- to senior levels are most likely (41 percent) to receive coaching. Seventeen percent of respondents only provide coaching to senior-level staff. Leadership development is the main purpose for executive coaching (Figure 1).