Who should make the coach selection decision?
To establish the foundation for a successful coaching engagement, the ground rules and objectives must be clear. When it comes to who should make the coach selection decision, the issues can be broken down into three areas of concern.
Who is paying for the Coach and why?
Nearly 100% of the time, the organisation is paying for the coach. If so, the organisation must own the coach selection process. In other words, the organisation is hiring the coach because it needs the coachee to improve his/her performance. That organisational need must be front and centre throughout the engagement. Allowing the coach selection process to be ceded to someone who doesn’t have the organisation’s clear objectives in mind is a mistake.
Choices of coaches can be presented to all who are concerned. The coachee must feel reasonably comfortable with those choices, but the client should be the ultimate decision maker.
Who is the Client?
When defining who the client is, a gray area may exist between who is being coached and who is paying for the coach’s service. To some, degree this ambiguity is inherent to the confidentiality and trust necessary to the coaching relationship. As the organisation is paying for their services, and the achievement of the organisation’s goals is the ultimate objective, the relationship between coach and coachee is akin to doctor-patient, or lawyer-client relationship.
The main concern in this approach seems to be confidentiality and trust. The majority of coaches are clear that although trust and confidence between coachee and coach are inviolable, the coach is being hired by the organisation. Clarity in that relationship moves the ball along. The coachee knows that his/her agenda must be aligned with the organisational agenda, and that success or failure, will be measured on those terms. During times of disagreement, the organisation’s wishes are paramount. If the coachee is to believe that he/she is the client and in control, a very different dynamic might result.
The actual client is almost always the coachee’s superior. In those frequent cases when the CEO is the coachee, the client and the coachee may be one. regardless of who the client is, the coach is always working to the best of his/her ability for the betterment of the coachee.
What is the role of Human Resources?
Frequently, Human Resources is given the opportunity to provide a list of appropriate coaches. Although this can become tantamount to actually selecting the coach, it should not. Human Resources, with its insight into organisational behavioural change, may be well informed about an individual leader’s needs – especially when it is involved in executive development, succession planning, and organisational strategy. But the selection decision should remain with the client, because the client is more affected by the payoff or lack thereof from hiring the coach.
Nor should HR allow the coachee the opportunity to select a preferred coach among two or three choices. In such cases, coachees will typically make the choice based on personal criteria, likes and dislikes, connection or chemistry, or sometimes even based on seeing particular coaches as stronger advocates for their careers. Rarely will this help the coachee push into uncomfortable areas or make desired performance improvements.
When it comes to reporting relationships, HR needs to step aside from this dynamic as well. If HR is closely involved in the selection process and is also involved in checking up or reviewing the progress of the engagement, there are a number of risks. First HR may be viewed as the defacto client. Second, the department’s personal views about the coachee’s and client’s needs and objectives may overly influence the belief structure of the coach.
The coach should feel empowered to set the ground rules regarding client and coachee, to clarify reporting relationships, and to work to align the coachee’s challenges with the client’s or manager’s objectives.
Why is a Coach being hired?
As the paying client, the organisation needs to be clear about why a coach is being hired to work with the coachee. What is the root cause of the decision to hire a coach? Is it positive or negative? Is it obvious on the surface, ie is there a clear goal in mind, or are there unstated reasons related to politics, performance issues, or inter-personal dynamics? The reasons for hiring can usually be broken down into two distinct areas: performance correction and performance development. Both influence the cost, time, and energy the organisation should be willing to invest.
Performance Correction
How valuable is the coachee to the organisation? What is the sost of replacement as opposed to fixing the problem? Would the organisation be able to move faster and more efficiently without that person, or do their other contributions make the effort, expense, and time of coaching worthwhile? Will performance levels of colleagues and reports improve if that person’s performance improves, or will they improve at even greater rates if that person is no longer in the organisation?
When performance correction is the reason for coaching, there is nothing wrong with the organisation thinking in such blunt terms. In fact, clarity in those matters can ease or guide the decisions that occur along the way – for everyone involved.
It is human nature to avoid dealing with unpleasant or uncomfortable issues, particularly at senior levels, where collegiality, territorial politics, and personal history can create a great deal of wilful ambiguity. Organisations have clear mandates for dealing with the most difficult performance issues, such as sexual harassment, anger management, and so on. But in grey areas, it’s not uncommon for an external coach to be engaged as a substitute for the manager’s own leadership duties. Sometimes, a coach is actually being hired as a kinder, gentler way of moving the coachee to a life outside the organisation – a very expensive mode of outplacement.
The client needs to consider some critical issues. Is coaching going to help the problem? What’s the probability of success, and what’s the payoff for success? When these variables are measured against the cost of the coach and the cost to the organisation’s resources and capabilities, the answer should be clear.
Performance Development
Because of the cost and investment required to hire a coach, organisations today more often focus their external coaching budget on valued leaders whose contributions are considered critical. The question whether to hire a coach or not, however, is still one of cost benefit. The organisation must answer some key questions. Who is worth coaching? What areas of skill or capability development are important enough to warrant coaching? In what direction does the organisation want to move, and can its current leadership develop the requisite capabilities? What is the final result that is desired?
Competition for talented performers is intense. Such people have unlimited options. What is the cost to the organisation in providing or in not providing growth opportunities? If the star performer’s capabilities are improved by 25% through coaching, will there be a place in the organisation for him/her to perform at higher levels? If not, the investment will likely have been wasted – painfully so, if the individual moves to a competitor.
Coaching for performance development is almost always applied in advance or slightly after a change in circumstance. The coach’s role is to provide objective, continuous advice to the coachee on how to position him/herself most effectively within his/her environment. The following list provides examples of when coaching can help with performance development. Specifically, coaching applies when the individual leader is:
Taking on a new role or rising in level within the organisation.
Slated for development because he/she has been identified as high potential or as someone who fits in the succession management process.
Expanding the scope of his/her responsibilities to include new challenges, for example, an increase in geographic, multi-national, or cross-cultural territory or the rolling in of other divisions or departments.
Charged with driving some kind of organisational change or strategy critical to organisational success.
Working with senior team members in a new way that requires external counsel, advice, and support.
In need of optimising his/her own capabilties to improve the performance of others.
In need of developing critical, inter-personal skills in order to work better in a non-technical, leadership role.
In need of help presenting, developing and articulating a message, vision, plan or strategy.
In need of counsel, advice, or critical thinking from an outside perspective to reconfigure the organisation’s direction, structure or capabilities.
What are the desired results of the coaching engagement?
Just as the organisation’s objectives should be clear, so should the desired results. In the case of performance correction, the cost of coaching should be no more than the cost of replacement. In the case of performance development, the cost should be considered an investment that sees a greater return through the coachee’s new level of contribution.
As much as possible, return on investment (ROI) should be measured in dollars and impact. This is one of the most challenging aspects of coaching. When goals are clear from the outset, success can be judged by whether those goals are met. But goals often evolve throughout the course of the engagement, or the impact of coaching may be intangible, or the foundation that is being laid for impact will have its effect at some time in the future. Satisfaction of coachee, and client is one measure of success, but does it gauge the sustainability or long-term success of the impact, or merely the success of the relationship?
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