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Ascertain what it is that the organization wants to achieve. This can be achieved through one or more of the following:

■ Meetings with the HR director or CEO, who should be coached (infor-mally) by the provider until clear on exactly what the requirements are.

■ Focus group meetings with the board of directors, facilitated by the provider, until they are united on what they want to achieve.

■ Surveys conducted throughout the organization to highlight trends among the staff to see what they would like to see changed. The most effective method of doing this that I have found is the use of Cultural Transformation Tools, described on page 121; for a smaller organization, the Values ques-tionnaire on page 120 is a simpler form of this.

Notice that in all the above processes, and in those that follow, the premise is that the answer lies with the client, just as it does in a coaching session.

Some useful questions to ask during these processes might include:

■ Does the organization want to bring in external coaches or develop internal ones?

■ Will external trainers be required to train the managers in coaching skills, or are there people within the organization who could be trained to do this?

■ Does the organization want to develop a handbook of coaching and leader-ship skills to be given to the managers, or to the whole staff?

■ How much does the organization want to be able to measure the results of a coaching initiative?

■ What terminology does it want to use? Sometimes ‘leadership training’ or

‘management development’ will sit more comfortably than ‘coach training’.

■ Over what time period does it want to achieve the changes?

■ Does the organization want to achieve a flatter hierarchy, where all staff feel they are valued equally at whatever level? In that case, will the directors take the same training courses as the managers and other staff?

Reality

Once everyone is clear on where they are going, it is vital to find out what resources they have at their disposal. Similar processes can be used to those outlined above, using different questions some of the time. The provider can coach and prompt to ensure a broad perspective on all possible issues, asking about:

■ succession planning;

■ what support people are given when they join the organization, say for their first hundred days;

■ whether there are staff reviews and how they are conducted;

■ the current situation regarding knowledge retention;

■ what training and development is currently available;

■ what support is in place for embedding such training and development;

■ how many internal coaches the organization has at present;

■ how they are assessed and accredited, if at all;

■ what mentoring or supervision is in place to support the coaching culture initiative;

■ what budget is available;

■ what similar interventions have been done before.

Options

With the information gleaned on where they want to get to, and where they are starting from, the managers charged with implementing the change are probably by this time bursting with ideas on how to move forward. This third stage is simply to capture these concepts, explore them, add any from the provider along with advice from the provider’s experience in the field, and work out the costs and time frame. Some useful questions to ask here might be:

■ How much time will the staff have available each month to be coached or trained, and to follow through on practising and embedding the training?

■ What budget is available for this project? (This is often the hardest piece of information to extract, and you will usually have to work out the project, name some figures, then trim it back if the cost is beyond the organization’s means.)

■ If the programme involves coaching sessions and coaching skills training, will these elements happen simultaneously or one before to the other? If the latter is the case, it is better if the training happens first, giving people some insight and knowledge to take through their personal development journey during the coaching.

■ How many internal coaches, coaching mentors (or supervisors) and coach-ing trainers does the organization want? How many external?

■ How will staff choose their internal/external coaches?

■ Who will be entitled to one to one coaching?

■ What support could be set up in terms of monthly co-coaching or mentoring/

supervising meetings?

■ If the organization has more than one base, will there be a system in place where managers can select coaching by phone from other branches, either in the United Kingdom or abroad? I have successfully coached people I have never met in the United States and Australia by phone. Such interaction between organizational depots can do wonders for international cohesion.

■ Will all the employees receive some coaching and training? If not, who will?

■ Is it desirable to have an induction presentation where the coaching programme can be explained to all the staff (perhaps in shifts on various days) so that everyone, including receptionists and warehouse packers, understands what this new coaching programme is about, even if they are not directly in line for it?

■ What assessment and accreditation is required, and will it be undertaken by internal or external assessors?

■ What evaluation and measurement on the return on investment is required and how can this be achieved?