Historically, coaching was used as a form of encouragement and training - predominantly in sport - to get the best out of players and competitors. However, it didn’t take long for people to realise that coaching could be also used to improve performance in other areas. Like a business.

Today, my personal approach to coaching is one of “poacher turned gamekeeper”. I first heard about coaching whilst I was completing my masters in Organisational Behaviour. A bit of a cynic at that time, I considered it to be nothing more than a management fad and refused to engage, confident that it would disappear as quickly as it had appeared.

Ten years later - with an established consulting career and a successful direct sales business - I decided to sign up for a year-long development programme, which included a quarterly coaching session. After my first session, I was hooked and knew that I wanted to experience more! Within one session (huge thanks to Rama Yaffe of White Tiger) my eyes were opened to the power of coaching, and I could see the enormous benefits it could offer me, both personally and professionally.

Over a series of blogs, I’ll be exploring the sphere of coaching, looking at some of the most common coaching myths and helping you to identify whether or not you are getting good coaching. In a field that is not yet regulated in any way (currently anyone, anywhere can call themselves a coach), it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff and ensure that the coach you are working with is competent, capable and suitably experienced and trained. In this blog, I’d like to start by considering what coaching really means for you and your organisation, and addressing the five key questions to ask before entering into a coaching relationship.

What value would it bring if your emerging leaders were working with coaches?

Coaching should be part of your organisation’s core management strategy, as it’s a useful way of determining who the leaders of today and tomorrow are, and how to get the most out of them. You need to make clear what you are offering to your group of leaders, but they also need to be given space to grow. For example, you could offer them a specific development programme involving both internal mentoring and external secondments, or provide coaching to help them maximise their learning and development and, in turn, apply it to the workplace. 

Coaching provides emerging leaders with the opportunity to work on aspects of their development which they may not feel comfortable tackling in any other way. Firefly clients often tell me things about themselves that they haven’t told anyone else; for example their attitudes to conflict, self-esteem and self-confidence. Once out in the open, this knowledge can often be used to improve their performance in the workplace.

How could coaching help you to tackle employee engagement challenges?

In the current climate, many organisations are faced with the challenge of how best to improve employee engagement, without the need to invest large sums of money. Coaching is arguably one of the best ways to do this. At Firefly we work with key individuals and help them to improve the engagement in their part of the organisation, for example by focusing on absence management and motivating their staff. It’s important to understand that if your leaders are struggling to cope with the pace of change and the current economic climate, it is unlikely that they will be able to lead successfully.

Businesses which invest in coaching for their leaders are making a smart investment; not only will those individual leaders be more motivated, but their increased motivation will, in turn, impact other employees in the organisation.

Where are you using training and development interventions and not seeing the full results?

Without coaching, even the best training and development programmes will not realise their full potential, because they cannot take account of what happens in real life on a day-to-day basis. Providing an external, suitably trained pair of eyes and ears who can partner with your leaders will help to increase their performance and the performance of your organisation - now and in the future.

Whilst independent research into the effectiveness of coaching is limited, I have seen first-hand, on multiple occasions, the way in which coaching increases the ROI of training and development initiatives - before, during and after the “formal” development programme is implemented.

How do you support leaders in transition to maximise the value they bring to the organisation?

Times of transition can be tough, even for the most successful leaders, and research by Harvard University has shown that the first 90 days are critical for reaching the “break-even point” (the point at which an organisation starts to benefit from having an individual in a new role). Even when the transition takes place within the same organisation, there are always challenges associated with taking on a new role, such as establishing credibility, building alliances, meeting expectations and delivering value.

Working with a coach can help to accelerate the break-even point, through preparation and thematic focus. Which is why, at Firefly, we offer a dedicated coaching programme for the first 90 days, as well as a self-study learning package with optional coaching for leaders in transition.

Is coaching the only answer?

Let's be clear, coaching is not a magic cure-all, or the answer to every potential issue. It cannot fix every problem, so whilst it can form a useful part of all organisational development strategies, it is not necessarily the backbone.

I firmly believe in the importance of formal training and development, mentoring, self-study programmes, action learning and facilitated thinking sessions. I also believe that if you’re serious about the people in your organisation - and want to develop them for the sake of improved business performance - then you should be asking yourself what role coaching will play in your strategy. You need to be clear exactly what you expect from a coaching relationship and who it’s for, so that you can identify the right coaches for the right individuals. You also need to know how much you are willing to spend in order to achieve the results you’re looking for, and how you’ll measure return on investment.

Coaching is not simply something that’s “nice to have”; it’s an essential element of leadership development and change management in any business. However, it is only effective when used in the right way and fully integrated with the rest of your organisational development strategy.

If you are thinking about introducing coaching in your organisation, here are some important questions to consider:

• What is it worth in your organisation - what value would it add?

• What results do you want to see?

• Are you already using mentoring in situations which might yield better results from coaching?

• Are you currently using coaching in situations where mentoring might be more appropriate?

• How does coaching fit into your wider talent management strategy?

At Firefly, we’re experienced in the management of organisational culture change and leadership development. We offer a range of services to help you get the most out of your people, from executive coaching to leadership development programmes, mentoring, strategic facilitation and beyond. If you’d like to find out more about what we can do, then get in touch.