How to Ensure Coaching Has Impact

In today’s business environment, strategies can change quickly. Global enterprises need to show sensitivity to local conditions while maintaining organizational alignment. Leaders are under enormous pressure to be agile while executing on the strategic intent of their operations. Coaching can make or break leadership performance in these volatile business conditions. When supported by key stakeholders to ensure shared perspectives of desired business outcomes, coaching can deliver great value when implemented as an organizational process that drives systematic change.

Applying Organizational Context to Coaching
The one-to-one encounter between a coach and a leader remains fundamental to set the objectives of a coaching assignment. In addition, key stakeholders should also be involved. Stakeholders include:

• The leader’s manager, who not only helps define the expectations and deliverables of the coaching engagement but also takes responsibility for creating an enabling environment supporting the leader’s post-coaching development and success.

• Senior management and representatives of key functions such as human resources. Both share the responsibility for articulating the organization’s strategic objectives and provide input to the coaching effort to ensure that the coaching and strategy agendas are properly aligned.

Through this process, organizational context is made relevant. Informed by organizational strategy, as well as by the organization’s culture, values, processes and structure, coaching becomes a powerful mechanism for impacting organizational capability and business outcomes.

Using a Business Value Chain
A business value chain is a specific mechanism by which a coaching approach ensures that strategic objectives are translated into a practical focus for coaching and desired business outcomes. For example: