UPFRONT Why call a coach?

Coaching is fast-growing business in New Zealand. The questions, however, are whether business is making use of it and what benefits do individuals get?
That’s what corporate coach Leslie Hamilton, Futurescape, and colleague Robyn Horsfall, Coaching for Success, set out to discover by surveying local users. While Hamilton emphasises that the results are anecdotal and the 16-organisation sample is small, some interesting themes emerged – including the variety of experience.
“Every company came to it in different way. The range went from one organisation with full-time on-staff coach available to almost everyone in the organisation, to what we call ‘spot’ coaching – bringing someone in to deal with specific individual’s coaching need.
“Some introduced coaching on drip-feed basis, but the majority use it in conjunction with other initiatives like leadership development or management training programmes.”
At least two larger organisations structured the coaching process to build cross-organisation communications between divisions.
There was little formal measurement of outcomes but the benefits cited were: enhanced leadership effectiveness, improved productivity, improved team performance and improved business performance.
“But companies also reported an increase in the individual’s self awareness and improved communications across the organisation.”
Advice from those who have introduced the process includes:
* Keep to the culture – start where everyone is at and move them forward in the process;
* Just do it – number of managers started with ‘drip’ approach to the process until they were able to demonstrate sufficient results to gain senior management sponsorship; but…
* Get top-level sponsor as soon as possible so the process gets the resources to continue;
* Structure is important – it helps if everyone understands their role, responsibility and what’s expected from the process.
The survey shows that no one-size-fits-all model exists for an organisational coaching programme.
“That was the most common theme. It is matter of companies finding what works for them,” says Hamilton. “Even people who looked at specific models couldn’t find one to fit perfectly and had to work it to suit themselves.”