What is Coaching?

Quotes

  • "Executive coaches are not for the meek. They’re for people who value unambiguous feedback. All coaches have one thing in common, it’s that they are ruthlessly results-oriented."  

    FAST COMPANY Magazine  

 

  • "If ever stressed-out corporate America could use a little couch-time, it's now. Trust in big companies is at an all-time low. Baby-boomers have been burned; Gen Xers aren't expecting the Corporation to take care of them. Under the circumstances, employees are much likelier to go outside and get independent advice to help them be better managers"

    Karen Cates,
    Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

 

  • "Between 25 percent and 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaches"  

    Recent survey by The Hay Group, an International Human Resources consultancy

 

  • "I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable."  

    John Russell, Managing Director, Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

 

  • "Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies."  

    Fortune, 2/19/01, "Executive Coaching -- With Returns a CFO Could Love" 

 

  • "Coaching is the number two growth industry right behind IT (Information Technology) jobs, and it's the number one home-based profession."  

    Start-Ups Magazine

 

  • "What's really driving the boom in coaching, is this: as we move from 30 miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180......as we go from driving straight down the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and getting on motorcycles...the whole game changes, and a lot of people are trying to keep up, learn how not fall off."  

    John Kotter, Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School.

 

  • "Across corporate America, coaching sessions at many companies have become as routine for executives as budget forecasts and quota meetings."  

    Investors Business Daily

 

  • "...[A coach is] part advisor, part sounding board, part cheerleader, part manager and part strategist."  

    The Business Journal, April 10, 2000

 

  • "Coaches are everywhere these days. Companies hire them to shore up executives or, in some cases, to ship them out. Division heads hire them as change agents. Workers at all levels of the corporate ladder, fed up with a lack of advice from inside the company, are taking matters into their own hands and enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about everything from personnel to strategy."  

    Fortune, May 21, 2000

 

  • "Inside every successful business person is an even more ambitious one trying to get out. He or she just needs a little help."  

    Someone To Watch Over You, 10/9/00, Australian Financial Review

 

  • "A coach may be the guardian angel you need to rev up your career."  

    MONEY Magazine

 

Fortune Magazine on Metropolitan Life

"... the topic in the original column was whether executive coaching pays off in real dollars and cents, and Metropolitan's (Metropolitan Life Insurance Services) experience strongly suggests that it does. The company put part of its retail sales force through an intensive coaching program, and afterward found that productivity among those salespeople increased by an average of 35%, while 78% of the sales reps embarked on the pursuit of a new license or professional designation, and 50% identified new markets to develop. Perhaps most important, Metropolitan has retained all the salespeople who had coaching -a big deal, since industry statistics show that each rep who leaves a company with three years' experience costs $140.000 (one hundred forty thousand dollars) to replace. In all (Richard) Keating (at Metropolitan Life Financial services) writes, the program, which cost about $620.000, delivered $3.2 million in measurable gains."

Fortune May 13, 2002

Survey Results

LEE HECHT HARRISON recently surveyed 488 Human Resource professionals to learn how coaching is being used in their organizations. Nine out of ten respondents said that their organization provides coaching, although many had a broad definition of what it means. Companies are increasingly turning to coaching for leadership development, style issues and talent retention, so it makes sense that 55% of respondents said that their organization uses coaching as a one-on-one process intended to maximize management and leadership potential and 54% do so to change behaviours. But a surprising number of respondents indicated that their organization uses coaching for personal /psychological counselling (36%), advice on appearance or attire (13%) or preparation for a major speech or presentation (11%). These conceptions date from the 70s and early 80s when the term "coaching" was a euphemism for helping employees with problems.

  1. Why does your organization provide coaching?  
    • For leadership development: 70%
    • For skill development or style differences: 64%
    • To retain top talent: 40%
    • As part of management succession planning: 34%
    • To insure success after promotion or with a new hire: 30%
    • For pre-termination counselling: 18%
    • Other: 3%
  2. In your organization today, to whom is coaching provided?
    • Equally to High-Potential and Other Employees: 54%
    • Mostly High-Potential/Fast-Track Employees: 26%
    • Good Performers to Resolve Issues: 20%
  3. From your experience, how effective has coaching been?
    • Worked More Often Than Not: 57%
    • Don't Know/Hard to Measure: 21%
    • Produced Results: 17%
    • Disappointment: 5%
  4. How often is the HR department involved in the decision to use an executive coach?
    • Always: 30%
    • Usually: 33%
    • Seldom: 19%
    • Don't Know: 18%
  5. In your opinion, why has coaching grown in recent years?
    • Helping people improve is better than replacing them: 60%
    • Good talent is harder to find and retain: 54%
    • Greater emphasis on performance: 44%
    • Need to intervene early with performance problems: 37%
    • It produces behaviour changes training: 28%
    • Senior executives have less time for mentoring: 12%
    • Other: 3%
  6. Now that coaching is increasingly being used for high-potential people, do you believe that it is losing its stigma
    • Yes: 34%
    • No: 38% 
    • Unsure: 28%
  7. Do you think organizations will increasingly use coaching as part of their succession planning?
    • Yes: 79% 
    • No: 2%
    • Unsure: 19%

37% of the respondents came from organizations with less than 500 employees, 11% with 501-1,000 employees, 22% with 1,001-5,000 employees and 30% with more than 5,000 employees. The majority of respondents represented U.S. companies from a variety of industries.