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Successful Performance Management Practices employed by organizations to best manage
    the effects of the Global Recession.
A major US research firm has released two new studies during a time when most organizations are busily downsizing and focusing on the the bottom-line. The research demonstrates the important finding that effective employee management practices are different from those in the past and now focus on alignment, development, and measurement using coaching as a strategic platform. Nearly all user-organizations studied are seeing "demonstrable positive business impact from implementation".

A large US Talent Management Group in a nationwide survey of 750 organizations found that "coaching ranks at the top of 22 processes which consistently drive the highest business impact". The analysis confirmed that coaching generated "higher levels of engagement, leadership, flexibility and performance." Coaching was now being recognized as "a management style that proactively prevents problems instead of fixing issues after they occur ie; via performance evaluations."  In turbulent times, coaching was now viewed by a growing number of organizations as an invaluable tool that provided the requisite "knowledge and insight -the key for making the best decisions." -Sky Business Journal

One of the first published case studies (Glaser, 1958) on the effect of coaching was on individual sales performance enhancement. The case study involved the coach working with the Sales Training Director and included the sales staff receiving regular group coaching sessions focusing on team building. The program objectives of higher sales, greater team motivation and reduced staff turnover were all met.

"Formal training in leadership and interpersonal skills and follow-up behavioral coaching, has been shown to increase productivity by 30% in the first year, as related to that area of training. Continued improvement in performance is seen with feedback and behavioral coaching. Without such follow-up, the performance level is just slightly higher than before the training. 

Behavioral coaching has consistently been shown to result in the perception of enhanced leadership effectiveness by 99% of those observing the person. Also 99% of individuals who follow the prescribed program improve by at least one full point on a six-point scale as determined by their co-workers." -Personal Leadership Development Study - Michael Woods MD, Welyne Thomas PhD

"Impact of Behavioral Coaching in one of the world’s largest healthcare organizations. 
Following implementation of behavior-based coaching, individual and business unit performance improvement was achieved in the range of 20-250%. Leaders that focused on key behavioral change areas achieved long-term sustainable results. Some specific results included: All business units that implemented behavior-based coaching methods made substantial improvements. The group's sale division that used a behavior coaching approach was voted best division in the world-wide group for the past two years. One sales division went from being 52nd out of 55 in sales of a key product, to 1st. Managers evolved from critics to coaches; and subsequently, culture evolved from that of subordinating to supportive."  - NGP, Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry Magazine

"The use of executive coaching is widely reported to be growing rapidly...Organizations that have utilized coaching find it so valuable that they continually increase its usage...Ninety-five percent of organizations that use coaching have increased their utilization of coaching over the past five years."  -State of the Coaching Industry in Organizations Project

An independent Research Firm released a 321-page market study that found; "40,000 people in the U.S. are life or work coaches and this $2.4 billion market is growing at a fast-paced 18% per year." Marketdata also found that it's becoming a status symbol to have a personal coach. -Marketdata  Inc

"Fifty percent of all employees’ skills will become outdated within three to five years, so it’s no surprise that corporate America invests over $55 billion dollars in workforce development annually. Given that managers represent the cornerstone of employee productivity and company competitiveness, accelerating manager learning and increasing skill transfer through coaching programs translates into big savings." -Worldwide Learning and Performance Report

"Today, 20 percent of the United States 22 million small businesses use some sort of coaching. Latest research shows that it is expected to surge to 50 percent in the next few years." -Infinia Research. 

"In the December issue of Training and Development, corporate training expenditures were estimated to have reached $109.25 billion. Yet, much of these training dollars have failed to deliver a significant impact to the bottom line. Even with high technology and extensive educational research, traditional training still delivers a poor return on investment. Some estimates suggest that as high as 90% of all training dollars fail to achieve a positive return on investment (ROI). However, coaching appears to have reversed that trend. For example, Dell Computers has been tracking the positive returns on their investment for more than 5 years and have also noticed that those who have participated in the corporate coaching program tended to be promoted more often than those who did not."  -eBusiness News 

"Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at $1 billion." -Harvard Business Report

"Coaching, in personal and business capacities -Some (US) surveys indicate that more than half of all businesses now employ
 coaches." -DMNews

"Business coaching is a major growth industry. At least 10,000 coaches work for businesses today. And that figure is expected to exceed 50,000 in the next five years. Business coaching is also highly profitable; employers are now willing to pay fees ranging from $1,500 to $15,000 a day." -The Economics of Executive Coaching.  Harvard Business School Journal. 

" Corporate coaches are in such demand that they can charge from $600 to $2,000 a month for three or four 30- to 60-minute conversations. Executive 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. Businesses are enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their management performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about everything from personnel to strategy. "- TIME Business News

"Demand for executive coaching has been booming as more company executives and small business owners seek the service. Many consulting and training firms state that within the past year, the number of requests they have received for executive coaching has increased by 60 to 80 percent. A recent study showed that coaching now accounts for around 20 percent of their business, when two years ago it was 5 percent...More executives are beginning to request the service for themselves.. as the negative connotation of coaching as a form of punishment for poor performance is replaced by the growing perception that coaching can help an individual or group to build sustainable professional and personal skills, better learn, overcome challenges, reach stretch goals and integrate leadership training." -US Careers Journal.

"The number of UK organisations using coaching this decade has risen from 85% to 96%, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)." -University of Bristol Newsletter "Call it professional coaching, executive coaching or corporate coaching. Whatever the name, this phenomenon is the hottest service in corporate America today."- says David A. Thomas, Fitzhugh professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. THE BUSINESS JOURNAL.

"Business Coaching is needed today more than ever as a critical tool for organizational change...Change is essential for an organization to grow and adapt to today's rapidly shifting marketplace...In changing from old hierarchical models to relational models for leading and influencing, businesses are creating coaching cultures that encourage organizational learning. Coaching has emerged as the best way to help individuals learn to think and work together more effectively."- Georgetown University, Center for Professional Development.

"If ever stressed-out corporate America needs coaching, it's now. Trust in big companies and financial institutions is at an all-time low. Baby-boomers have been burned and Gen Xers aren't expecting the Corporation to take care of them." - says K. Cates, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

"With the aggressive marketing of executive coaching by consultants, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain an objective view about what it is." This report has found "the reasons for the phenomenal growth in the use of executive coaching by employing organisations seem to include: a) the knock-on effects of the downsizing of the 1990s, resulting in ‘lonely’ and isolated senior managers who welcome support and challenge from someone external to their immediate work environment. b) The increasing demand by organisations for senior managers with key ‘soft skills’. Many business schools and in-company standard development programmes have failed to embed the kinds of feedback-based approaches necessary for self-insight and the acquisition of soft skills, for managers when they were more junior. c) Some senior managers consider they have ‘made it’ and worry that being seen to undergo development may be perceived by others as admitting they have a weakness. The nature of the executive coaching relationship is private and avoids that public gaze. d) Attendance on whole-day courses or regular learning sets can seem an imposition into an already busy schedule. Sessions with executive coaches can be fitted around other diary commitments." -IES Research (a group of 30 of the UK’s leading employers) Report 379. 

Who qualifies as an executive coach? At the moment, just about anybody. "I wonder about the vulgarization of coaching,"  "I'm concerned about unlicensed people doing this." - says Warren Bennis of USC's business school.

The demand for Executive Coaches has skyrocketed over the past 5 years.... today’s executive coach (EC) is intended to help leaders and potential leaders across the rocky, wild, and challenging road of organizational growth in today’s dynamic and unstable work environment....As with most emerging professions, the rules and guidelines for how to make executive coaching work have been scanty at best. This gap has been felt by executives seeking help, their organizations, and the scores of people putting up shingles as EC’s. At the same time, a cadre of other types of coaches is trying to catch the coattails of the popularity of executive coaching." - The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - American Psychological Association

Booz, Allen & Hamilton's Ed Cohen, Director for Professional Excellence says; "We hire outside certified coaches to help our executives fill in minor gaps that may not have shown up earlier in the person's career because those skills may not have been the ones that were needed to help them rise to their present level." - The Edge

"The Australian Institute of Management says 70% of its member companies hire coaches. They can cost around $5,000 for middle to senior level executives and for CEO's the bill quickly gets to $12,000 and higher if the relationship remains open ended. But the cost of not doing it can be far greater." -Inside Business. Channel 2.

"We've done lots of research over the past three years, and we've found that leaders who have the best coaching skills have better business results."  V.P. of Global Executive & Organizational Development at IBM.

 “Behavioral Coaching is the only cost-effective way to reinforce new behaviors and skills until a learner is through the dangerous results dip.  Once through the dip, when the new skills bring results, they will become self-reinforcing." Training and Development Journal.

"Corporations believe that coaching helps keep valuable employees and that the dollar investment in it is far less than the cost of replacing an employee."  Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School  -TIME Magazine Article   

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How Behavioural-Based Coaching is being used today:
(Adapted from the book 'Behavioral Coaching' by Skiffington and Zeus. -With permission from the publisher McGraw-Hill Professional - New York ) 

During the years of conducting our coach training and certification courses, we have tracked the ongoing development of Behavioural-Based Coaching  Some of the major areas where we have trained coaches to successfully work/specialize in include: executive coaching (CEO’s), transformational leadership coaching, coaching female executives, coaching in education, business coaching, cross-cultural coaching, sales coaching, coaching in the health care industry and personal coaching. 

Executive coaching
Coaching for leadership development occurs with selected executives, senior managers and teams or as part of a company-wide coaching initiative. Coaches, both internal and external, are also contracted to work within a specific business unit or with individual referrals. Some areas of leadership coaching include: leaders in transition, new hires, high potential individuals being ‘groomed” for promotion, individuals in new positions, management competencies to complement technical expertise, developing and communicating a strategic vision, strategic planning, culture change, ambassadorship, leading executive teams, overcoming isolation and interpersonal skills such as communication and dealing effectively with colleagues and with power. 

Business coaching

Business coaches work with small to medium enterprises to develop and grow the business. Coaching entrepreneurs, start-ups, mergers and developing a business in order to sell it are some of the more common areas of business coaching. Within these broad categories, Behavioural Coaches, who usually have a background in small business, coach for business or strategic planning, developing and growing the market, staff relations, networking, life balance, time management and partnership conflicts. 

Transformational leadership

Coaching leaders for transformational changes involves changing the very way they think, increasing their ability to deal better with ambiguity and be more creative and reflective. It effects change in what the leader knows and enhances their ability to step back and reflect on assumptions previously taken for granted. These may be about culture, values, the self, organizational objectives and vision. 

Some documented benefits of leadership coaching include: enhanced ability to develop and foster trust; increased accountability within the organization; developing and maintaining more satisfactory relationships with the Board, shareholders and employees; enhanced credibility and influence as an ambassador; increased ability to align others to the company’s vision and mission; successful change management projects; enhanced managerial competencies; a growth in self-responsibility in self and others; developing a culture that truly values learning and development. 

The manager as coach  

Coaching involves managers aligning their team and employees to the organization’s objectives and vision and fostering independent and creative problem-solving.  Another expectation of managers is that they develop their staff. There is, after all, a consistent body of research that shows a direct link between human capital management and superior shareholder returns.  

Coaching offers managers a methodology for enhancing the individual or team’s current skills. They thereby develop employees who are committed and trusted to use their discretion and judgment to act in ways that are congruent with organizational objectives and goals. Managers have to manage and coaching is simply a vehicle for them to enhance their management skills. 

Coaching executive women

Women executives not only face those issues common to all leaders as discussed above, but have to contend with other challenges, some external and some a function of their internalized beliefs and misconceptions about women in leadership. 

Because of the increasing number of women in the workforce and in executive positions, there is a greater demand for women to be coached. Some of the most common coaching issues that surface include: life balance and the expectations of peers and family, political manoeuvring and relationship building with key stakeholders, being assertive, delegating and managing dissent and conflict. 

Coaching Program Managers (CPM’s)

Coaching Program Managers, trained in Behavioural Coaching (BC) methods and techniques, fulfill many roles. Typically, they are involved in coaching programs from their inception. As internal coaches, they often introduce coaching into the organization and oversee and manage its delivery. They may also be the person designated to manage a coaching program introduced by an external coach provider. 

BC and Education

One of the expanding areas of Behavioural Coaching is in the field of education. Behavioural Coaches provide individuals, groups, teachers, students and administrative personnel with a wide variety of coaching interventions. They train senior teachers to coach new and experienced teachers and students as well as establishing and monitoring peer coaching programs. Coaches also work with students on life skills, study skills and social skills as well as career choice and preparation. 

-Coaching the teacher

BC is not simply another term for traditional mentoring or peer supervision between teachers. Instead, coaching focuses on assessment of the teachers’ strengths and weaknesses, developing a personalized action plan and working to the coachee’s agenda rather than that of the governing educational body. The coach’s role then, is distinct from supervision and is unrelated to performance evaluation. Of course, if the coachee wishes to set objectives around performance evaluation, the coach acts in a strictly confidential role as support, guide and giver of feedback. 

-Peer coaching

Experienced teachers also derive significant benefits from coaching, especially in relation to enhancing their skills and general professional development as educators. The aim of peer coaching is to refine present teaching skills and it has proved particularly effective with senior teachers. 

Peer coaching allows teachers to share a professional dialogue about the science and art of teaching. It involves teachers receiving support, assistance and feedback from fellow teachers. Typically, all teachers involved in the peer coaching program are trained in the fundamentals of BC including goal setting, action planning, interpersonal and helping skills. 

-Coaching students

Teachers, of course, have to teach and they do not have the resources or time to individually coach all students. However, two types of coaching, namely Cognitive Coaching and Coaching for children with Attention Deficit Disorder have been translated to the classroom. 

Teachers also employ BC techniques when coaching students in a group setting. The group may be composed of students who have a common problem to address or may be part of a life skills coaching curriculum. Indeed, a study of socially-rejected fifth graders found that coaching improved their social skills and increased their ability to be liked by peers. 

-Coaching for academic success

Because few high schools, colleges or universities have the resources to offer students individualized attention, more students are employing Behavioural Coaches to work with them on both personal and academic issues. 

Career coaching

Coaching for careers and career transitions offers individuals support,  resources and guidance during what are often stressful times. Many organizations recognize the importance of career development as a means of retaining staff. Hence, they offer internal career coaching programs often conducted by external coaches. 

Coaching in health-care settings

There are two primary types of Health Care Coaches. The first type works with individual physicians, supervisors and administrative personnel to improve the quality of their professional and personal lives and hospital system or practice. These specialist coaches can work in hospitals and other public and private health organizations. Some of the coaching areas include: personal leadership, management skills, managing interpersonal conflicts with and among staff, career development and career transition. Executive coaching services around leadership and management skills in hospitals typically focus on competencies for doctors in management and leadership positions. These include resource allocation, strategic planning and meeting the demand for profitability while maintaining medical values and ethics. 

The other type of Health Care Coach can work both in the health care arena, the corporate world and with educational and residential communities. This specialist coach helps people clarify their health goals, and implement and sustain behaviors, lifestyles, and attitudes that are conducive to optimal health. They also guide people in their personal care and health-maintenance activities and assist people in reducing the negative impact made on their lives by chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Sales coaching

In our first book (‘The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work”), we explored  sales coaching in relation to the following areas: negative beliefs and expectations that can impact on sales performance and the coach’s role in working with salespersons in the ‘flow’, ‘panic’ and ‘drone’ zones. We also discussed coaching skills for the sales manager. Increasingly, Behavioural Coaches work with sales managers to enhance their management and coaching competencies. 

Cross-cultural coaching

Coaching individuals and teams in cross-cultural settings is a rapidly expanding niche for Behavioural Coaches. Such coaches are specialists who know about and can guide and support others through the complex process of cultural adaptation. 

Chartered Public Accountants (CPA’s) and coaching

Increasingly, Chartered Public Accountants (CPAs), attorneys and other financial advisors are coaching other practitioners and entrepreneurs as an add-on their traditional services. CPA’s particularly, are recognizing the need to become a trusted advisor to their clients, being able to work on vision, mission and strategic planning.  Studies show that their clients benefit from coaching especially in the areas of smarter goal setting and a more balanced life style. 

Others areas where BC is used:

The application of Behavioural Coaching is not limited to the above mentioned areas. It also entails coaching coaches including those in the executive, business, personal and sports arenas. Furthermore, Behavioural Coaching is carried out in the military, the civil service and other public institutions and non-profit organizations as well as the legal profession. Christian coaching and Spirituality coaching also employ BC methods, tools and techniques.  

In summary, the application of BC methodologies is employed in a growing number of areas. These include corporations, small businesses, public and private organizations such as health and education and the personal development realm.  Within this vast arena, Behavioural Coaches form an alliance based on trust and commitment that aims to foster productivity, growth and well being according to the coachee’s agenda.   

The Behavioral Coaching Model:
- Achieving Behavioral Change with validated Coaching Techniques
(includes some extracts from new text book 'Behavioral Coaching' by Zeus and Skiffington - copyrighted by McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing)

"The purpose of coaching is to produce behavioral change and growth in the coachee for the economic benefit of the client." - Harvard Business Report

The term "behavior" is frequently misused in training and coaching literature/programs, with little attention paid to methods of actually changing behaviors and insuring that these changes are lasting. 

 

The definition of behavior to which behavioral coaching subscribes is: the actions, responses and reactions of an individual, team or organization. Behavioral coaching can also be defined as the science and art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of the individual or team, which in turn assists the growth of the organization. The overall goal of behavioral coaching is to help individuals increase their effectiveness and happiness at work, study and/or in a social setting.

Everyone involved in personal and professional development needs to understand and appreciate basic behavioral processes and how these relate to individual functioning and organizational performance.

Many organizations and coaches claim to use behavioral coaching simply because they are dealing with behavior. On closer scrutiny, however, they are merely attaching a new name to the old workplace counseling model; that is, the "coaching" is remedial, occurs on an as-needs rather than an ongoing basis, involves little monitoring or evaluation and does not attend to preventing slippage. Furthermore, some professionals claim to practice behavioral coaching simply because they employ personality profiling. Behavioral coaching goes beyond false promises about change and examines what we can and cannot change. It presents research-based and scientifically validated means of instilling new optimism for coaches and their clients about achieving change.

Behavioral coaching integrates research from many disciplines into a validated, user-friendly model of practice. It incorporates knowledge from psychology (behavioral, clinical, social, developmental, industrial and organizational), systems theories, existential philosophy, education and the management and leadership literature.

One of the reasons why behavioral techniques are so widely accepted is that they allow for data to be gathered on specific, targeted behaviors impacting the application of a professional skill. By using appropriate validated, behavioral change instruments, these targeted behaviors can easily be measured and evaluated in a rigorous manner. Behavioral coaching, with its emphasis on research and evidence, provides individuals and organizations a validated and proven system that greatly increases their chances of effecting lasting behavioral change. 

Changing behavioral patterns cannot be achieved by using the many simplistic, outdated models of coaching still widely promoted in the coaching industry/literature. Many so-called "certified coaches" churned out by the "coaching associations" are simply doing more harm than good. Meantime, many large, high-profile coach training schools are still teaching simplistic models of coaching that employ re-labeled, old performance counseling strategies or, in some cases, scientifically unproven fuzzy techniques. 

 

Because coaching is still in the early stages of its development, there is no agreed-upon, all-embracing model of the coaching process and practice. To date, most efforts to construct a comprehensive coaching model have emerged from sports coaching.

 

A coaching model cannot be procrustean. It requires an in-built flexibility and adaptability so that coaching programs can be tailored to fit the specific needs of each client and coachee. For example, a coach needs to take into account their own, as well as the coachees', differences in personality, knowledge, skills and abilities. Coachees also vary in motivation and preparedness for change.

 

As well as individual factors, each coachee exists within various systems, both personal and professional. These affect how a coaching program is conducted, as do factors such as the organizational culture and structure, available resources and the organization's business objectives.

 

The behavioral coaching model emphasizes the following aspects of behavior and learning:

• Much of our human behavior is learned.
• All behaviors result in positive or negative consequences for the individual and those around him or her
• Individuals are systems within systems, and each individual affects and is affected by these systems and the constant changes they are undergoing
• Defining individuals' current status and developmental progress in terms of their behavior, rather than personality traits or personality styles
• Specifying the target behavior impacting on say; a professional skill, position task etc
• Measuring the target behavior
• Exploring and changing core values, motivation, beliefs and emotions -which can result in significant behavioral change
• Assessing covert behaviors (e.g., limiting beliefs, anxiety) in relation to overt actions (e.g., speaking at a meeting)
• Accessing and assessing emotional events
• Assessing environmental events and the interactions between behavior and environment
• Employing validated behavioral techniques
• Providing statistical proof of beneficial change/learning acquisition and ROI
• Employing sufficient follow-through monitoring and coachee self-coaching strategies