The Case for Business Coaching

The Coaching at Work Survey, 2002
For full report on PDF click here.

"An overwhelming 8o per cent of managers believe they would benefit from coaching/more coaching in their place of work - a clear indication that this is a learning and development method that appeals to most people, and should be carefully considered by organisations."

"93 per cent of managers believe that coaching should be available to all employees regardless of seniority."

"80% of managers believe that Coaches must have some training before coaching others and 81% believed that not everyone would make a good Coach."

 

Research by The International Personnel Management Association 1997

“Following training , employee productivity increased by just over 22%, whereas training combined with coaching produced an increase in productivity of 88%. Coaching in the workplace positively impacts the bottom line.”

 

Executive Coaching: Inspiring Performance at Work
The Institute for Employment Studies

For a summary of why Corporations employ a Corporate Coach
click here.

 

Fortune Magazine (May 13 2002).

"... the topic of the original column was whether executive coaching pays off in real dollars and cents, and Metropolitan's (Metropolitan Life Insurance Services) experience strongly suggets that it does. The company put part of its retail sales force through an intensive coaching program, and afterward found that productivity among those salespeople increased by an average of 35%, while 78% of the sales reps embarked on the pursuit of a new license or professional designation, and 50% identified new markets to develop. Perhaps most important, Metropolitan has retained all the salespeople who had coaching - a big deal, since industry statistics show that each rep who leaves a company with three years' experience costs $140.000 (onehundred forty thousand dollars) to replace. In all (Richard) Keating (at Metropolitan Life Financial services) writes, the program, which cost about $620.000, delivered $3.2 million in measureable gains".

 

PEOPLE AND PROFIT BY STUART CRAINER
CEOs search for inner peace
Sunday Times - February 28, 2002

“Coaching is the continual shaping of performance by understanding the individual, creating aspirational goals and giving feedback against them,” says Robert Sharrock, of the business psychologists, YSC. “Coaching is growing rapidly as it is now more acceptable to get help to develop personal skills. There is increasing focus on how and why executives do things. In addition, people are casting around for new ways to get better results. There is a greater emphasis on coaching towards business results — a recognition that business and personal growth can go hand in hand. It is as much to do with pragmatism as self-actualisation.”

 

Fast Company Magazine

"Executive coaches are not for the meek. They're for people who value
unambiguous feedback. All coaches have one thing in common, it?s that they
are ruthlessly results-oriented."

 

Karen Cates
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

"If ever stressed-out corporate America could use a little couch-time, it's
now. Trust in big companies is at an all-time low. Baby-boomers have been
burned; Gen Xers aren't expecting the Corporation to take care of them.
Under the circumstances, employees are much likelier to go outside and get
independent advice to help them be better managers"

Recent survey by The Hay Group, an International Human Resources consultancy

"Between 25 percent and 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use executive
coaches"

 

John Russell
Managing Director, Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

"I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw
out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual,
and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought
unsolvable."

 

Fortune, 2/19/01
"Executive Coaching -- With Returns a CFO Could Love""

"Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the
coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than
$100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies."

 

John Kotter
Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School.

"What's really driving the boom in coaching, is this: as we move from 30
miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180......as we go from driving straight down
the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and
getting on motorcycles...the whole game changes, and a lot of people are
trying to keep up, learn how not fall off."

INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY

"Across corporate America, coaching sessions at many companies have become
as routine for executives as budget forecasts and quota meetings."

 

The Business Journal, April 10, 2000

"...[A coach is] part advisor, part sounding board, part cheerleader, part
manager and part strategist."

 

" Someone To Watch Over You."
10/9/00, Australian Financial Review

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. Workers at all levels of the corporate ladder, fed up with a
lack of advice from inside the company, are taking matters into their own
hands and enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their
performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about
everything from personnel to strategy."

MONEY
Magazine

"A coach may be the guardian angel you need to rev up your career"