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Our particular gap is in tailored opportunities for mid-level managers to develop leadership competencies to make their next leap to senior vice president or beyond . To tackle this , we are designing an internal coaching program based on the individual client ’ s professional development interests . We ’ ve learned some good lessons along the way . In sharing them , I hope to help internal coach practitioners looking to expand program buy-in and participation at their own organizations .
To start off , we needed to make the case for the value of coaching . Fortunately , several members of our executive team already believe in the power of good coaching . As our chief operating officer Jeannine Jacobsen has said , “ Investing in your people by delivering a good coaching program is a key component of a leader ’ s development . It helps instill critical practices as participants begin to understand what good coaching looks like and how to bring it into play themselves .”
Drawing from this idea , we used a current-state / futurestate argument in our initial conversations . When looking at the succession plan , where there are blanks between middle manager and SVP / EVP roles , we noted that the conversations were never about bringing somebody ’ s technical skills up . Instead , the need was for soft skills , such as executive confidence or gaining buy-in . It ’ s not as clear how to develop those skills as it would be to send somebody to an advanced class on using Microsoft Excel .
We focused on our core value
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(“ Cultivate ”) to bring clarity to the issue . “ Imagine ,” we said , “ that the next time you look at your succession plan , you have somebody in mind who has worked with a coach to grow further into their potential as a leader with deliberate and focused effort , and who has demonstrated a strong desire and ability to evolve .” For those who do need hard figures , we ’ re happy to bring out studies from ICF about improved bottomline results .
Along the way , we ’ ve had the opportunity to explain what coaching is and what it isn ’ t . For instance , it isn ’ t remediation for an employee on a performance improvement plan , and we ’ re not offering an opportunity for senior managers to have us “ coach ” their teams to work harder or train them to do their daily jobs better . We have been clear that “ coaching isn ’ t consulting and it isn ’ t counseling ” in order to best manage expectations . We see light bulbs go on when a senior manager moves from thinking about how to “ fix ” somebody to imagining how to empower them . We also continually emphasize that this isn ’ t fluffy stuff — in each session there is a call to action and accountability .
To gain deeper support and additional perspectives on how a program could actually work , we selected a small group of senior and veteran managers and held longer conversations with each of them . We shared some simple graphics about where the process fits into our current offerings and gave them an outline of how it would work . We answered basic questions and then asked each manager to do two things for us .
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First , we asked them to meet with us again in about a month , after they had an opportunity to digest the concepts . Second , we asked them to consider which of their team members would benefit from participating in the program ’ s pilot . We got double value when we met again : They suggested refinements and delivered a short list of potential participants .
Some of the suggestions that came from these conversations included having more than one person trained as an internal coach so there is backup and continuity , emphasizing confidentiality , and ensuring that coaching agreements are between the client , the coach and the client ’ s supervisor . We also began to see a case for working to create an organization-wide coaching culture .
By building a case based on our core values and observed needs and designing a program with the input of current leaders from the beginning , we believe we ’ ve built a robust pilot that can further prove the value of internal coaching . We ’ re launching the program now , and a second member of a possible coaching pool will begin formal training from an ICFapproved provider later this year . We are excited to be living our core values with this program and look forward to being a key part of developing our next generation of senior leaders .
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Coaching World 15 |