|
|
Coaching Excellence
|
Coaching challenges in a time of cutbacks |
|
Coaching initiatives are now particularly vulnerable at a time of
cutbacks and reorganisation. Yet coaching is a vital part of what an
organisation needs when consolidating and is particularly important for those who
remain in the organisation as it allows them to adjust quickly to new roles and
conditions.
So, in a time of economic scarcity, how can HR professionals
sustain, grow and harvest the return on coaching investment in their
organisations?
Bath
Consultancy Group has been working with public and private sector organisations
to develop coaching strategy and practice. In the private sector this includes
Unilever, HSBC, and Ernst and Young. In the public sector we have worked with
the NHS, local and central government, as well as the Armed Forces.
Our
engagement has been at global, institutional and regional levels, including
those umbrella agencies who have a strategic role to develop best practice such
as the NHS Institute and the West Midlands Local Government Association. With
this range of client experience we have a unique vantage point to see the
common challenges faced by those who have developed coaching initiatives (see
right hand panel).
The challenge and what to do about it
Our
experience suggests that whilst individual organisations may be excelling at
one aspect of coaching strategy they rarely encompass all the elements that
need to be in place if they are to maximise their return on investment.
Key areas to address
We've
put together the following key challenges and examples of organisations that
have put these successfully into practice.
- Embedding coaching within
a specific and compelling service challenge which saves costs. For example, Yorkshire and Humberside NHS is focussing coaching on
managers who are leading system wide changes. In Ernst & Young, the
coaching strategy focused on increasing revenues and market share, and resulted
in them being better placed to weather the recession than their competitors in
the Big 4.
- Focus an intensive
coaching investment on a geographical site, led by the top, and build in
evaluation of the difference it makes. In Her
Majesty's Prison Service, the Governors of two prisons, Bullingdon and Layhill
are explicitly adopting a coaching style supported by action learning to solve
problems and shift culture.
- Identify line manager
champions, or those who could become champions and agree specific goals with
them. Work out who is best positioned to influence
the opinion leaders and be prepared to learn their language if you want them to
own your coaching strategy.
- Coach your fast trackers
so that the next generation of leaders improves their performance faster and when appointed to key roles are already carriers of the
coaching culture you want. Many public
and private sector leadership development and Aspiring Director programmes
include coaching.
- Use transition coaching to
accelerate the speed with which managers in new roles following re-organisation
or merger become effective successful, as is being done
in the Department of Work and Pensions and in the Pensions and Disability
Carers service.
- Focus your coaching
investment on top leaders who need to work effectively together. A good example is the North West Employers Organisation who set up
paired coaching between Chief Executives of Local Authorities and PCT Chief
Executives.
- Invest in the development
of your internal coaches and supervisors through master classes and learning
exchange gatherings with external coaches, as they
do in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and to harvest organisation
learning.
- Require people who want to
receive coaching to prepare the business case as part of their application, which has to be signed off by the line manager, as is done by
Unilever.
- Ensure that every coach is
engaged in identifying the systemic patterns that inhibit or accelerate
learning as they do in Unilever.
- Include in the contracting
a person who is responsible for organisational learning and can seed the
learning elsewhere, as implemented by HSBC and the
BBC.
- Take responsibility as a
commissioner to know when to move from individual coaching to team coaching in order to strategise together and reduce costs, as they have done
at Wiltshire PCT.
- Show that you take the
cost reduction agenda seriously by ensuring your training and supervision
arrangements are cost efficient, even when people
drop out unexpectedly. This has been successful in HMPS and the West Midlands
Local Government Association. Bath
Consultancy Group's work with the NHS Institute is enabling Strategic Health
Authorities to develop internal coaching supervision capability which will
result in significant savings.
- Insist on a skills
transfer so you reduce your reliance on external consultants.
The need for coaching
supervision
Increasingly, supervision
of coaching is being used not just to ensure good practice by individual
coaches but to help strengthen the coaching strategy so that it is seen to make
a direct contribution towards the achievement of business goals. In the current
climate, cost reduction should be at the heart of that strategy.
Bath Consultancy Group's research for the CIPD into coaching
supervision identified a wheel of good practice which describes the industry
standard:
If you would like
to know more and explore how robust your coaching investment is, give Bath
Consultancy Group a call (01225 333737). Look out for the new book on coaching
strategy being written by Prof Peter Hawkins and coming out in 2011.
|
|
|
Coaching Challenges for 2009 |
|
 Coaching has blossomed in booming times. With the economic downturn, will it continue to bloom? Gil Schwenk offers his predictions for what 2009 will hold for coaching.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Developing an Effective Coaching Strategy |
|
Peter Hawkins recently gave a keynote address at the 2008 Association of Professional Coaches and Supervisors (APECS) and Henley Annual Conference. Peter said to the conference that we are in danger of riding a wave of enthusiasm about coaching. Unless coaching begins to connect the personal benefit to the organisational benefit, the wave will lose its power and coaching will become a past flavour of the month.
Download:  Developing an Effective Coaching Strategy 63 Kb
|
|
|
A Short Guide to Action Learning & Practicum Groups |
|
Action Learning was formulated and developed by Prof Reg Revans during the 1940's and 50's. He traces its roots to, among other things, his experiences in the Cavendish Laboratories in the 1930's, where he met the great minds of that generation, such as Einstein and Rutherford. He refined and developed the method through his work with the newly created post-war organisations of the National Coal Board and National Health Service through the 1950's - 70's.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
A team should be more than the sum of their parts. But this does not happen automatically; it must be worked at - regularly. In sport, a team of individual stars do not between them make a great team. High quality team coaching and time on the training ground is essential for improving the team's success. The same process is important for organisations.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Self-assessment Questionnaire for Supervisors |
|
This
self-assessment questionnaire affords you the opportunity of getting some 360°
feedback from supervisees, peers, tutor and supervisor. Each person is asked to rate each area of
skill on a one to five scale. To create
some common understanding of how to use this rating scale the following
definitions are offered:
1.
professional
learning need - don't know how to do this
2.
personal
learning need - know how to but unable to make it happen
3.
sporadically
competent - occasionally do it fine
4.
consistently
competent - this has become part of natural way of doing things
5.
role
model for this - can teach it to others
Download: Self-assessment Questionnaire for Supervisors 67 Kb
Further reading on the above can be found in Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith - Chapter 12 - Core Skills and Capabilities.
|
|
|
Four Key Areas of an Effective Coaching Strategy |
Bath Consultancy Group develop four key areas of an effective coaching
strategy
With coaching fast becoming the focus of many leadership development
programmes, Gil Schwenk, principal consultant at Bath Consultancy group,
discusses the four key elements of an effective coaching strategy.
Download: Four Key Areas of an Effective Coaching Strategy 113 Kb
|
|
|
Action Research into Harvesting Organisational Learning from Coaching |
An invitation for organisations to join Bath Consultancy Group in Action Research into Harvesting Organisational Learning from Coaching
Are you concerned about these issues...
- How can we ensure greater return on our investment in coaching and be more strategic in how we deploy our resources?
- How can we use the individual development in thinking and behaviour to get a wider organisational development?
- How can we harvest the learning from the many coaching conversations to reap the organisational learning, while still preserving appropriate confidentiality?
- How can we ensure the organisational client benefits as much as the individual clients?
Bath Consultancy Group has just published Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development and recently conducted research for the CIPD Change Agenda - Coaching Supervision: Maximising the Potential of Coaching. During our research we spoke to a large number of organisations who expressed a strong commitment to the individual benefits of coaching but also the above concerns.
Bath Consultancy Group has now developed a method of harvesting the organisational learning from coaching through the integration of our pioneering work in coaching supervision research, practice and supervisor training with our 20 years of leading practice as an organisation development consultancy.
We are looking for a select number of organisations who are coaching leaders to join with us for an action research project that will test and hone this groundbreaking methodology. The project will include joint inquiry amongst all organisations with customised field work in each participant organisation.
By participating in this unique action research project, your organisation will:
- Be pioneers in harvesting organisational learning from coaching.
- Benefit from the organisational learning to optimise the value of coaching for both individual and organisational benefit.
- Learn from other organisations.
- Gain publicity as a leader in coaching excellence and organisational development. We will publish this research and will publicise it widely through journals and conferences. Participant organisations, if they wish, may also be featured in our next book on using culture for sustainable organisational advantage.
The project consists of:
- 1 day workshop for all participants to discuss their use of coaching and the return on investment. We will candidly explore what is working and what is not. We will explore what organisations have already done to harvest learning and their ideal scenario regarding coaching and organisational learning.
- Harvesting Feedback in each participant organisation including:
- 1 day consultancy to customise the harvesting process to your organisation.
- 2 day unique harvesting learning event where your coaches (internal and external) will be facilitated to identify and capture the key learning that they have experienced from coaching in the organisation. These will be distilled and presented to the organisation's executive team in dialogue with the coaching community. We will conduct a facilitated inquiry with the executive team about the organisational challenges, the systemic patterns and collectively agree how the organisation can learn from these and move forward with its overall coaching and development strategy. Action plans for both coaching strategy and other organisational developments that build on the learning will be developed and documented.
- 1 day consultancy to the organisation's Executive Team, HR/OD and leaders of the coaching community to further develop and plan the implementation of the learning and take forward the emerging coaching strategy.
- 1 day workshop for all participants to share and capture the joint learning:
- for their organisations,
- for the action research cohort,
- for the method and approach of harvesting organisational learning from coaching.
We are seeking commitment from organisations by 31 July, to commence the project in September 2007. Interested organisations should call Gil Schwenk who would be happy to discuss in further detail regarding details including the cost of involvement.
For more information, please contact Gil Schwenk by e-mail
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
or phone 07976 154192
|
|
|
Team Coaching - an extract from Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy |
|
An extract of Chapter 4 Team Coaching from our book "Coaching,
Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy" by Peter Hawkins and Nick
Smith - available from January 2007. Click here for more information on the book.
Download: Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: extract from Chapter 4 - Team Coaching 315 Kb
|
|
|
Coaching supervision: maximising the potential of coaching |
The work was carried out by the Bath Consultancy Group for the CIPD.
Reports on research into good practice in coaching supervision. It
includes:
- an overview of what coaching supervision is and why it matters
- a summary of the current state of supervision in the UK
- guidance on good practice.
The text is illustrated by case studies showing how very different
organisations are using coaching supervision to support their coaching
services.
Download: CIPD Coaching Supervision: Maximising the potential of coaching 275 Kb
|
|
| |
|
|
Bath Consultancy Group recognises that climate change is one of the most serious change issues affecting the world today. We offset our activities with Climate Care