Executive and Leadership Coaching: Failures in Coaching and How to Prevent
Them
Executive and leadership coaching has the capacity to
fulfill objectives unmet by other business processes. Evidence supporting
this conclusion comes from participant evaluations, interviews with supervisors,
and a trend toward participants being disproportionately promoted into senior
executive ranks in a public sector coaching program. The program,
however, experienced coaching relationships that failed. When these
failures occurred, the individual and/or the organization were generally worse
off than if coaching had not been tried. The following information and
observations are presented to help others avoid some of these
pitfalls and to improve their coaching efforts.
Failure in a coaching program can be defined as when the
coachee, after a course of coaching, is not more prepared for increased
complexity, greater productivity, or challenges within the organization. A
failure also can occur when the organization spends resources that do not result
in increased productivity, preparedness, or organizational fit for an employee.
Internal program coordinators are important leverages in
effectively running coaching programs. They usually are responsible for
ongoing program elements, including signing up organizational units to
participate in programs, providing coaches, selecting candidates for coaching,
making matches with coaches, monitoring the progress of the coaching
relationships, communicating with internal clients and external or internal
coaches about the coaching program, and creating, collecting and tracking
program performance indicators.
From a program management perspective, failures can be
attributed to one of three basic weaknesses: not setting clear organizational
objectives for executive coaching, weak program design and execution, or issues
with the coaching relationships.
Unclear or Ill-Defined Objectives for Coaching
To begin with, a successful coaching program is one in
which the program manager forms strong partnerships with client organizations.
Managers then see coaching as a programmatic approach to building leaders in
their organizations. Whenever such partnerships are not formed, client
organizations are at risk for not providing adequate resources for the coaching
process. Second, it is important that program coordinators have clarity
about the reasons their units are signing up. Sometimes organizations
participate in coaching programs because they understand coaching to be a
Best Management Practice but fail to set specific strategic goals
for the use of coaching. These organizations may not see good results for
their efforts, partly because there is no way to measure success against
organizational requirements.
Without clear organizational goals for coaching potential
leaders in their organization, coaching tends to become peripheral to the
business mission, an add-on, or perk rather than a strategic tool. Many
employees cannot see a direct link to their mission, and therefore, do not
then request coaching services when they might otherwise benefit from these
services. Sometimes managers direct employees to get coaches and then these
employees sometimes perceive the activity as punitive or corrective, resulting
in not putting much effort into the coaching relationship. Subsequently,
coaching does not result in positive changes for the participant.
Anyone starting a coaching program should assist their
client organizations in setting specific goals derived from organizational
objectives. One can ask the client manager such questions as: What does
your organization need to see after your high potential employees are
coached? Why is your organization considering a coaching program
rather than a mentoring or education program? What are you willing
to provide your employee in coaching to support success? After some
failures in our program, only organizations that sat down with the program
director to articulate the business case for coaching and a metrics plan to
determine client ROI were enrolled.
Weak Program Design and Execution
Program design and execution can be impacted by the
candidate pool selection, the coach pool selection and the match between the
two.
The Candidate Pool
When managers do not support coaching for their
organizations or when organizations do not have a clear idea of what coaching
can, and cannot, accomplish, the best candidates often do not enroll for
coaching. For example, it is sometimes the case where employees are
directed into coaching to fix them. When this occurs, managers
might list changes they expect from an individual following coaching, but these
changes are seldom concrete or measurable. Invariably, these participants fail
to set personal, achievable goals, and do not make much progress. In some
cases, employers require changes as a condition of the next
assignment and thus next promotion. Yet, when these coaching relationships
fail, some organizations give the assignment anyway. This practice
decreases the credibility of coaching programs and make it less likely that an
individual will see a compelling reason to remedy observed deficits in the
future.
Three related problems can follow:
-
Some who come to coaching believe the process will
guarantee a promotion or coveted assignment,
-
The candidate pool can be restricted by lack of
understanding and support by senior managers, and
-
Good candidates may not enroll because of negative
perceptions of coaching as remedial for poor performers.
One way to avoid this problem is to accept only coaching
clients who are encouraged to set their own goals and make their own learning
contract with the coach. One also can mitigate selection problems by
implementing a good communication plan: brief appropriate audiences as often,
and in as many ways as possible is a good tactic.
Poor Coach Selection
Another important factor is coach selection. One way of
helping to ensure that coaches are good is to maintain clear, high standards of
education and experience and a good structured interview for selection of
coaches. Coaches should be rigorously examined to ensure they could
succeed in your unique organizational culture. It also is important to
ensure that coaches do not confuse coaching objectives with clinical
therapy.
Failures in the Matching Process
Issues of the Coaching Relationship
A final class of failures can come from the coaching
relationship itself. Even well trained and talented coaches fail to get
results from time to time, but there are ways to minimize these instances. In
particular, when coaches are rigorously vetted, a good program director can
provide the proper infrastructure for them to do their best work.
First, clients or coaches should be able to request a
new match without negative consequences. Second, coaches should provide to
the program manager a confidential monthly status report for each coaching
client. It might detail the coaching contract established, issues being
covered, and the current status of the work. The program director is then
able to intervene or advise if there are signs of a problem developing
especially when there is evidence that that the client and coach have not
set realistic, achievable goals. Addressing this situation upon
observation can help to ensure that failure does not occur. It also
is important that the coach does not take on too much responsibility for the
success of the relationship. Solid reporting can help to reveal whether
this is happening.
In summary, failures in coaching might be said to come from
forgetting a basic coaching principle: The coach is not in the business of
pleasing the client, but of serving him or her. This means the program
director does not give in to demands to provide coaching to fix an
employee nor does s/he provide a particular coach because the coachee requests
that match. Individual coaches are encouraged to hold clients accountable
for their homework. Even when failure is rare, paying attention to
the patterns of failure described above, can make them even rarer in your
coaching program.
Coaching Table
of Contents
Workplace
home page