The use of internal and external coaches in organisations has grown beyond recognition in the last decade.

External coaches are usually offered to senior executives, while in more and more large organisations coach registers have been set-up where staff members can be matched with trained internal coaches.

In some of these organisations, literally thousands of coaching conversations are taking place every month. This is absolutely fantastic, and a testament to the benefits of coaching for personal development.

However, in my experience in most of these organisations these coaching conversations are disparate and not connected beyond a central procurement process or an internal coach register and usually hopefully a feedback process on the performance of the coach.

This is a missed opportunity for coaching to have a much bigger impact on helping the organisation achieve its strategic objectives; to go beyond ‘simply’ helping raise individual performances.

Coaching and organisational objectives

The traditional thinking is that the organisation will reap the benefits from investment in coaching through increased performance of the individuals, which will then translate into improved performance for the organisation.

However, coaching can also be elevated and used at a much more systemic level to support strategic objectives such as:

Systemic coaching

Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith described the term systemic coaching in their book “Coaching, Mentoring and Organisational Consultancy” something like this:

In systemic coaching, the coaches will be asking themselves:

  • What needs to change in the wider system and in turn?
  • What shift does this require in the individual or team I am coaching?
  • What change in behaviours does this require in the coachee(s)?
  • So what questions do I need to ask to make this happen?

The coaches are, in their one-to-one conversations, basically helping effect an organisation-wide change through helping the individual(s) change their behaviours.

This is a more directional type of coaching, rather than a free-flowing conversation based entirely around what the coachee wants to focus on.

(Note: I prefer to adapt Hawkins and Smith’s approach a bit: Rather than me, as the coach, trying to figure out what the coachee should change, I will instead help the coachee answer the above questions themselves.)

New demands on the coaches supporting change programmes

To make this work, it requires that the coaching conversations are no longer seen in isolation, but coordinated across a large number of coaching engagements.

The coaches must have a thorough understanding of the organisational context, what the change programme is attempting to achieve and the organisation’s ambition.

This is very different from the traditional highly independent, individual approach that professional coaches are accustomed to.

But, in my experience, coaches are particularly well placed to support strategic change programmes, through their understanding of how to help people deal with change and how to influence behaviours – areas that many change programmes fail in.

Contracting

The contracting between the coach and coachees will need to adapt to allow for coordination, learning and organisational measures of success aligned with the programme objectives. There is also a need for coordination with the rest of the influencers in the change programmes e.g. project managers, consultants, facilitators, HR, senior leaders etc.

Confidentiality is a key area to consider. The coachees need to know they can trust the coach not to disclose sensitive information. As we start to impose some of the areas that need to be discussed in the coaching conversations, we also need to share some of the information from these conversations for the wider benefit of the programme. This requires a sensitive approach with clear contracting.

Individual and organisational growth

This approach does not mean that the coachees are robbed of the opportunities to experience personal development and growth from their coaching. On the contrary: a well-designed coaching programme can achieve a ground-swell of individual improvements across a large group of people as well as supporting the organisational objectives.

Conclusion

There is a big opportunity for coaching to play a substantial role in helping organisations achieve their objectives, but it does require a rethink of the contracting process and the coach’s role and remit.

Back to News & Blogs Overview