By Master Certified Coach Amy Ruppert
I’ve been training organizational leaders and professional coaches how to coach for over 20 years now and I’ve had the privilege to watch hundreds of managers transform into great coaches over the years. I’ll never grow tired of witnessing this transformation and seeing the results of it. I’ve also worked with many companies that saw the value in coaching and invested in company-wide coaching initiatives, training dozens of managers to coach as well as hiring coaches for their employees. With both individuals and organizations, one of the most common questions I get early on is how to know when the coaching is working or making an impact.
Shifts Happen
When the efficacy of coaching begins to emerge in the workplace there are some distinct shifts that begin to occur in both the individual and the organization at large.
But First You’ll Need to Define Effective
When working with companies that want to implement a coaching initiative, I make a point of learning what each stakeholder expects from bringing coaching into the organization. Rarely are any of their expectations aligned in the beginning. Each one has their own agenda and unique problem(s) they’re trying to solve. It’s important to find those one or two kernels of commonality each stakeholder has. This takes a little digging to get to, but it’s well worth it.
Case in point; After interviewing 12 stakeholders in a large hospital system, the common concern that came up with all 12 was how they could reduce mistakes. Of course! Mistakes cost lives in their business and who wouldn’t have that concern? This gave us a common target to address throughout the organization.
After training their senior leaders to coach, and eventually their midline managers, we learned that most employees were operating in a defensive and fearful mindset because when mistakes were made the hunt for who was to blame began immediately, often resulting in reprimand, marginalization or even termination. Often the mistakes were a result of lack of training or authority to make decisions versus negligence.
Because of the cultural emphasis on finding who was to blame over what was needed to be learned, employees were reluctant to share what they thought could be changed or done differently to avoid the same problem in the future. After managers began learning this over and over from their employees through the coaching process, they were able to create a universal protocol for meeting regularly with their teams to discuss potential issues that could result in mistakes.
Bottom Line
With both individuals and entire organizations, the effectiveness of coaching is defined from within and before the coaching or coaching skills training even begins.