Pathway

Coaching is about creating positive directed change. It is about helping people to develop their potential. You can use coaching to enhance and increase the performance of individuals and teams.

The Soft Data
Coaching is generally recognised as an incredibly useful development tool

• Coaching can result in improvement in many areas including increased productivity and work performance, better teamwork, increased job satisfaction, and decreased employee turnover.
• Coaching has been shown to help leaders develop a clearer understanding of their own roles and responsibilities. When leaders are more confident about what they need to do, they are better able to motivate other employees and mobilise them for action.
• Often missing from even the most comprehensive corporate development programmes is the opportunity to reflect on and articulate the learning that has been acquired through formal programs and rotating job assignments. Especially when the skills of people management are being addressed, the need to tailor the learning - to explore its implications for an individual leader’s personality and psychological makeup - is paramount. The coaching relationship serves as a trustworthy arena in which this kind of personalisation can take place.
• A coaching relationship can help leaders hone the skills that are crucial in today’s economy, for example, the ability to exert influence across organisational boundaries, to manage conflicts and to create and articulate a vision. But perhaps even more important, coaching can help new leaders deal with the aspects of the transition and change.
• Coaching is becoming common for senior employees who use external coaches as sounding boards and confidential advisors helping to prepare for business issues, and how to handle and communicate issues with their teams or managers.
• Within the context of a growing war for talent coaching is becoming an integral part of organisational efforts to attract and retain intellectual capital.
• Coaching is helping young and/or a technically savvy workforce develop their management and people skills.

The Hard Data

• Coaching is used by a majority of organisations (63% - CIPD, 2007)
• A study by MetrixGlobal LLC for a Fortune 500 firm found that coaching produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business. Including the financial benefits from employee retention boosted the overall ROI to 788%.
• Public Personnel Management reported a study comparing training alone to coaching combined with training. Training alone increased productivity by 22% while training plus coaching increased productivity by 88% (Winter 97, Vol. 26 Issue 4, p. 461, International Personnel Management Association)
• The Manchester Review reported research that companies that invested in executive coaching received an average 500%+ return on investment (2001, Vol. 6, No. 1).
• 94% of million dollar earners use a coach (Simply business, February/march, 2005).
• Research from the Weatherhead School of Management shows that the impact of coaching-like training can last seven years. For how long can the impact of conventional training be felt in the workplace?
• Triad Performance Technology reported that a six month coaching intervention at a well known global Telecom Company resulted in more than $2 million positive and immediate impact to its bottom lines.