CEO Today - Executive Coaching Awards 2022

CEO Today Execut ive Coaching Award s 2022 - USA -

failure. Some companies focus more on the performance aspect of coaching while others are focused on the development and learning aspects of coaching. Research shows that a coaching culture is more likely to be achieved when organisational values, and the behaviours associated with them, align with a coach approach. Finally, the organisation needs to put real investment into the quest. This means addressing the need for coaching at all levels by providing professional coaching from internal and external coaches, teaching coaching skills to managers and leaders, and incentivising and rewarding defined coaching behaviours. There must be a way to measure accountability. This can be done with engagement surveys and performance reviews. When an organisation receives high scores on questions such as “I feel like my manager cares about my development” and “I can use my strengths and skills in most of my work”, it is an indication that things are moving in the right direction. Our vision for Blanchard Coaching Services is that we love our client sponsors and create an environment in which their leaders can leverage coaching to realise anything and everything possible for themselves and their organisations. Our purpose is to help our clients be their best possible selves. To do this, we help them to: • achieve clarity about what is most important right now and what is most important in the long term; • set compelling goals and take steps toward achieving them; • have more awareness of themselves, their impact on others and their environment, and what it will take to be effective and to achieve their goals; • incorporate and integrate everything they learn as they move toward their goals and to use that knowledge to continually grow. There is a lot more. Suffice to say we have a detailed credo and exhaustively detailed definitions of what coaching is and is not, and what a coach does and does not do. Is there a particular creed or philosophy that informs your work?

How do you measure your success?

Measuring the success of coaching is a bit of a holy grail. The keys are setting a clear agenda and organisational objectives at the outset and gaining the commitment of the client sponsor to help us gather feedback at the end. Measures require a baseline starting point and feedback when finished. If we cannot get feedback from coaching recipients and from their boss and direct reports, we cannot provide reliable ROI information. If we do not have a clear picture of what the organisation is trying to achieve by offering coaching, it is impossible to measure — so clarity is key. This is also true of setting goals with individual recipients of coaching: the clearer the goals are, the easier it is to assess the extent to which coaching helped clients reach those goals. We strive to ensure every client who receives coaching would recommend it to others; but, ultimately, “I loved my coach” or “I enjoyed my coaching experience” are worst-case scenarios. Examples of organisational objectives on which clients can track progress are: • increasing the quality and quantity of communication; • learning new ways to accelerate their own and others’ performance; • increasing objective metrics on business outcomes; • strengthening buy-in to stated cultural norms. Ideally, through online surveys and interviews, we learn that individuals can point to specific behaviour changes that have explicit results, e.g. a key employee who was planning to leave and take her best people with her decides to stay with the company. This kind of thing can be monetised because we know the cost of replacing one employee can be three to four times their salary. How has your interest in neuroscience informed your attitude toward coaching? The volume of research being done in the field of social neuroscience has essentially confirmed everything we have learned from the great leadership gurus —Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker and, if I may, Ken Blanchard. Of course, this is a perfect example of confirmation bias, so I work hard not to get too carried away.

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