Launching Coaching Capabilities
To establish performance coaching capabilities in an organization, here is a general process description1.
Link performance coaching to the business strategy
The performance coaching program should support strategic, performance, and/or development goals of the business. Without this, the coaching program will not get traction and won't be sustainable. The performance coaching program should have goals that support business metrics that matter, or it will be impossible to justify investing the time, money, and energy on creating and using it.
Determine the behaviors that consistently lead to better performance
Before designing a program and providing coaching, it's important to determine the model of action that delivers better performance. By analyzing the behaviors of the individuals and teams that perform best in your organization and environment, a model of performance improvement clarifies the intent of the program and coaching: to guide individuals and teams to take the actions that produce better performance.
Identify a pool of potential coaches
Finding coaches may not be difficult, but finding experienced with the skills to help in the areas you need may be more difficult. Sometimes the goal is to create a culture of a coaching approach, that is, to help managers and leaders use a coaching approach to develop employees and improve engagement and performance. There may be external or internal coaches or both, depending on many factors.
Screen potential coaches
Determine which coaches are suitable for your organization in terms of style, skills, characteristics, etc. Even if the idea is to have managers provide a coaching approach or to create internal roles for coaches, external coaching or consulting may be helpful to get the screening criteria right for your organization.
Bring coaches up to speed
This is an orientation for coaches so they understand the organization's situation, goals, and expectations of coaches.
Match individuals to coaches
By knowing coaches well (their strengths, skills, perspectives, personalities, niches, etc.) and the individuals who will be coached, the matching process is more effective. Then the coach, coachee, and relevant stakeholders (manager and/or HR manager or others) jointly develop learning plan.
Keep coaching engagement (for each coach-coachee partnership) on track
There may be check-ins during the coaching process.
Measure results and send feedback into continuous improvement
It is difficult to determine exactly what effect coaching has on business performance because a variety of factors contribute to overall performance. A good methodology measures behavior changes, the relationship to results, and finally to business performance outcomes, but this approach can be quite expensive to be accurate. The most cost-effective and useful measurements feed information into a continuous improvement process so that improvements and corrections ensure that the goals and targets are met.
1 Adapted from Fitzgerald, C., & Berger, J. G. (2002). Executive Coaching: Practices and Perspectives. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. (ISBN 0-89106-161-4)
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