CEO Today USA Award s 2022 - 16 - - CALIFORNIA - Many companies never make it past that first step, or they skip it altogether, which is a common cause of 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. Is there a particular creed or philosophy that informs your work? 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. 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. “Like any culture work, creating a coaching culture is always a work in progress. It requires behavioural role modelling as well as constant reinforcement from top leadership.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk3Mzkz