Executive Coaching for Non-Executives

Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.co.in editor

Are you physically energised at work? Are you mentally focused? Do you have good relationships with colleagues? Are your communications positive? Do you know what you want and when, and how you’re going to get it? If so, you have probably received coaching at work – but you may be in the minority.

The School of Coaching has discovered that the majority of London workers believe executive coaching would improve their performance at work. Myles Downey, managing director and founder, comments, “Executive coaching is no longer the preserve of the boardroom. Innovative companies that care as much about their staff as their profits are looking to coaching at all levels.”

Tracy Meachin-Adams, managing director of Dynamic Solutions Europe also feels behaviour change programmes needn’t be the preserve of senior managers. She recently ran a behaviour change programme at a commuter train company for all levels of staff, including cleaners, front-line employees and managers.

Broadly speaking, the CIPD defines coaching as “developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organisational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work, although it may also have an impact on an individual’s private life. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals.”

However, in a year-long study of more than 5,000 employees in 25 companies across a range of industry sectors, an overwhelming 83% of respondents complained their managers weren’t coaching them to help improve their performance.

Andy Clare, co-owner of staff survey specialist Shine, said the issue that arose repeatedly was that those with people management responsibility were spending less and less time doing it. He commented, “This meant less time for one-to-one sessions, performance appraisals, discussing career goals or just shooting the breeze.” No wonder one of the main reasons employees leave a company is because they aren’t satisfied with how they’re managed.

So does coaching employees really work? Recent research by Gallup has found that “higher workplace engagement predicts higher earnings per share among publicly traded businesses.” They discovered that earnings per share grew a staggering 2.6 times more for companies whose employees showed a high level of engagement compared with companies with below average levels of engagement. Two in three never measure the financial return on their investment in coaching, despite spending an average outlay from their development budgets of £83,250 per year.

Are companies being short-sighted? Jo Causon, director of marketing at the Chartered Management Institute, believes coaching employees is key because of the looming worker shortage over the next 20 years. “We will have a knowledge gap as the baby-boomers retire and there aren’t people enough to replace them. So unless you have a strategy to get and develop the best people you are sunk.,” Causon said.

It would appear that employees at every level want more coaching from their managers. They’re looking for guidance on changing business strategies, feedback on their performance and help in leveraging their talents. As Downey concludes, “The fact that the majority of workers feel they have more to give, and that their performance could be improved with the use of coaching support, means that UK Plc could be missing a trick in developing and retaining staff.”