The use of coaching in organizations is on the rise across all sectors, includ- ing government departments, financial services, pharmaceutical companies and beyond. As coaching develops there’s a higher demand for evaluation, measurement, and return on investment. While most people agree that meas- uring any people development initiatives is important, many feel that it’s easier said than done. We believe a lot of coaching is not measured accurately, o�en because of the resources that organizations feel they’d need to commit to it.
In The Case for Coaching (Jarvis et al, 2006) there is a designated chapter on evaluation and a list of the benefits of evaluating coaching, including:
It allows you to justify the investment in coaching in your organization.
It allows you to benchmark your activities with other organizations.
It can help to build support for coaching within the organization if
positive results are seen.
What is important is to consider first of all why you want to measure the impact of coaching. Secondly, successful measurement will come about if and when evaluation is planned as early as possible, ie before the coaching starts. So just how do you measure the impact of coaching? You could use:
employee a�itude/climate surveys;
staff turnover rates or improved retention of key staff;
achievement of objectives set at the start of the coaching; comparison of pre/post-coaching 360-degree feedback ratings; improved appraisal/performance ratings.
The CIPD recommends the following six stages to measure the return on investment (ROI):
1. Verify changes in behaviour and results through discussion with the client.
2. Estimate the financial benefit of these changes. 3. Judge the role of coaching in enabling the changes.
4. Estimate the total financial benefit a�ributable to coaching. 5. Estimate the cost of providing coaching.
6. Calculate the return, ie the benefit relative to the cost.
Unfortunately, it’s not common for organizations to carry out a full ROI on their coaching activities. Here’s a case study of an organization, Skandia, that did measure the ROI of both emotional intelligence and coaching.
Skandia
Carla Ginn, Senior Learning and Development Adviser of Skandia spoke at the UK National EI Conference in 2006 about an emotional intelligence and coaching development programme some of Skandia’s leaders went on. The key objectives of the programme were to improve the productivity and performance of their middle managers. The format of their programme is shown in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2 Skandia programme format
Knowledge How When
Introduction day First meeting of group Including pre-work eg ‘ie’ profile
Residential week El outdoor experiential learning and ‘ie’ profile debriefs
1 month after intro day
Follow-up day Consolidate and revisit
learning 1 month after residential Three coaching sessions For each participant of up to
1 hour Monthly Evaluation Close out reports – evaluation
of personal learning After 8–12 weeks Questionnaires – participants
and line managers After the 3 coaching sessions From the project and the measurements it carried out, Skandia found significant improvements in performance. It was able to measure the improvements and calculate the return on investment. Working out the ROI is an element that is commonly missed out, and with both EI and coaching it is entirely possible to do the calculation if you are willing to dedicate the appropriate resources to it. There were 20 to 32 per cent performance improvements across the group, which showed the company got 20 to 32 per cent more out of the salary investment of the group of managers who received the development. The impact of EI development meant changes such as:
Figure 4.2
Skandia group per
for
mance ratings
Group rating out of 10
9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.0
Confidence
Ef
fectiveness
Management and goal
Ef fective r elationship Overall performance achievement building
getting things right first time through self-belief;
getting relationships right when it matters most;
getting teams to deliver;
tackling people issues;
saving the company money from effective negotiations. It calculated the return on investment using the formula:
ROI = Gross Benefit/Value - Cost x 100%
Cost
Its ROI worked out at £77,000 for the initial group of managers trained, which translated into 197 per cent (using external coaches) or 319 per cent (using internal coaches) of the cost of the programme (excluding time spent training). It identified some of the group performance ratings before and after the programme and after the coaching, shown in Figure 4.2, demonstrating what a positive impact the emotional intelligence development and coaching had.
Summary
There is a clear link between emotionally intelligent coaching, performance
and profitability.
Research shows that EI and performance are linked.
Research shows that coaching can have a positive impact on individual,
team and organizational performance.
Negative attitudes cost!
Training works, as long as it addresses all the elements in the KASH model
– Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits.
You can improve organizational performance by decreasing the interferences
that people have or increasing the potential they tap into. EI coaching is an ideal way to do this.
EI coaching is a great way of enabling team development and performance,
as shown in the case study of AstraZeneca.
An emotionally intelligent leader uses coaching as one of his or her
leadership styles to ensure high performance.
EI coaching can change your life!
EI coaching can support a wide range of organizational changes, develop-
ments, and strategy – see the section on 10 situations where EI coaching can make a difference.
It is possible to measure the impact of EI coaching, as shown in the Skandia
References
Buzzan, T (2001) Head Strong, Thorsons, London CIPD (2004) Buying Coaching Services, CIPD, London
De�erman, D K and Sternberg, R J (1993) Transfer on Trial: Intelligence,
cognition and instruction, Ablex, Norwood, NJ
Druskat, V U, Sala, F and Mount, G (2006) Linking Emotional Intelligence and
Performance at Work, Lawrence Erlbaum, Philadelphia, PA
Goleman, D (2002) Primal Leadership, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA ICF (2001) The Effectiveness of Coaching, Results from international research,
ICF, Lexington, KY
Jarvis, J, Land, D and Fillery-Travis, A (2006) The Case for Coaching, CIPD, London
McGovern, J, Lindemann, M, Vergara, M, Murphy, S, Barker, L and Warrenfeltz, R (2001) The Manchester Review, 6 (1)
Maddocks, J and Sparrow, T (2000) The Team Effectiveness Questionnaire, JCA Occupational Psychologists, Cheltenham
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