How do you know executive coaching is working when the conversation is confidential?
One of the questions we’re increasingly asked by organisations considering executive coaching is how they will know whether it is working.
It’s a fair question. Coaching can be a significant investment and HR, L&D and the person sponsoring the coaching need to know that it is making a difference. At the same time, confidentiality is an important part of the coaching relationship. Leaders need to know that they can speak openly with their coach without those conversations being reported back to the organisation.
Those two things can sometimes appear to be at odds. They don’t need to be.
It is perfectly possible to protect the confidentiality of the coaching conversation whilst having a clear structure for agreeing what the coaching is there to achieve, reviewing progress and evaluating what has changed.
The important bit is getting that structure right from the beginning.
Be clear about why you are coaching
We often see coaching objectives such as ‘become more strategic’, ‘improve executive presence’, ‘delegate more’ or ‘own their seat at the table’.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those, but they’re difficult to evaluate unless you go a little further.
Take ‘become more strategic’. What would that actually look like in this person’s role? Would they be spending less time in operational detail? Contributing differently at board meetings? Looking further ahead? Delegating more effectively to their team?
And, importantly, who would notice?
This is where the conversation between the individual, their sponsor and the coach at the beginning of a coaching programme can be so useful. Rather than simply agreeing a development area, you can agree what you hope will be different as a result.
The CIPD makes a similar point in its guidance on evaluating learning, recommending that evaluation is connected to the original performance gap and the business objectives the development was intended to address.
Keep the coaching confidential, not the objectives
A sponsor can know what someone is working towards without knowing what they talk about with their coach.
At The Leadership Coaches, we use three-way conversations between the coachee, sponsor and coach at different points in our longer coaching programmes. At the beginning, that gives everyone an opportunity to agree the objectives and what success might look like.
Once the coaching starts, however, the conversation between the coach and coachee is confidential.
A senior leader might want to talk about a relationship with their boss, something they’ve got wrong, doubts about their own ability, a difficult decision or simply an idea they haven’t fully thought through yet. They need somewhere they can do that freely.
The CIPD also highlights the importance of agreeing clear boundaries around confidentiality and information flow between the coach, individual and organisation.
The sponsor doesn’t need a report from the coach about what was said in the room. What they can talk about is what is happening outside it.
Look for evidence of change
This is where measuring coaching becomes much more useful. If someone wanted to delegate more, has anything changed for their team? If they wanted to influence more effectively, are their stakeholder relationships different? If they needed to move from being a very operational leader to operating more strategically, are they beginning to spend their time differently?
Some changes will be easier to measure than others, and not everything needs a number attached to it. Feedback from colleagues, changes in behaviour, progress against an objective and relevant business measures can all provide evidence.
What matters is that you decide what evidence would be useful rather than relying solely on whether the coachee says they enjoyed the coaching.
Enjoying coaching is nice, but it isn’t the same as it having an impact.
Don’t wait until the end to find out
For longer coaching programmes, we’re big believers in reviewing progress part-way through.
A lot can happen over six or nine months. Someone can change role, get a new boss, take on a bigger team or find that an objective which felt important at the beginning isn’t the priority it once was.
A midpoint conversation gives the coachee and sponsor an opportunity to talk about what they are noticing and whether the coaching is focusing on the right things. It can also highlight where progress isn’t happening.
That doesn’t automatically mean the coaching isn’t working. There may be something else getting in the way, which is one of the reasons we wrote recently about what happens when culture and coaching collide.
Sometimes the original objective needs adjusting. Sometimes the organisation needs to do something differently too. The important thing is that somebody notices before the programme finishes.
What about ROI?
This is probably where measurement gets most contentious. There are occasions when it is possible to make a credible connection between coaching and a financial result. We’ve seen examples where the commercial impact associated with a leader’s change has been significant.
And we should also be careful.
If sales increase, a team performs better or somebody gets promoted during a coaching programme, it doesn’t automatically follow that coaching caused all of it. There will usually be other influences at play.
For us, good evaluation is about being able to show, as credibly as possible, what changed, what evidence supports that and what contribution the coaching appears to have made.
Sometimes that can include financial ROI. Sometimes behavioural and organisational evidence tells the story better.
So, who should know what?
Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is this. The coachee and sponsor should know what the coaching is trying to achieve. The coachee and coach should know what is discussed in the coaching room. And the organisation should be able to see whether something is changing as a result.
Those boundaries allow a leader to have the confidential space they need whilst giving the organisation a sensible way of evaluating its investment.
Executive coaching shouldn’t be a black box. At the same time, neither should confidentiality be sacrificed in the pursuit of measurement.
You can have both.
Ready to talk about your executive coaching needs? Contact us
