I’m often asked for proof that coaching is worth investing in. Bersins and Associates offer the following statistics, which give a good business case:
- “Organizations in which senior leaders “very frequently” coach had 21 percent higher business results.
- Further, organizations with “excellent” cultural support for coaching had 13 percent stronger business results and 39 percent stronger employee results.
- Organizations highly effective at teaching managers to prepare for the coaching relationship were approximately 130 percent more likely to state they have strong business results. These same organizations also indicated that they were nearly 33 percent more effective at engaging employees than ineffective organizations.”
They also say that:
- “Managers’ inability to coach is the most severe performance management challenge.
- The coaching and development model of performance management is increasingly popular.
- Senior leaders frequently fail to model effective coaching.”
So it makes sense. This isn’t the only evidence out there; now that coaching is more mature, there are more and more research projects underway, showing the impact on the bottom line.
Blessing-White uses a picture to show that the work of the manager as coach is at the intersection of what the company needs from the employee and what the employee wants. Effective coaching allows the employee to work in the upper part of the X where they are maximising what they want for themselves and what the company needs from them.
Now we simply need to each get to grips with coaching, such that it becomes a daily activity, built into everything we do. Part of our DNA. I say simply….it’s not a simple matter really….I’ve been talking about the impact of coaching for years, and it’s taken a while for it to catch on. I know that those stats above will come true for any organization if coaching is put this into practice successfully.
