Professional coaching in business development

By Karen Tweedie

Is professional coaching right for your company? Perhaps you’ve read something about it in a newspaper. Maybe you even know someone who has hired a coach. Coaching is getting a lot of attention these days, but does it really work? If you ask organizations like IBM, NASA, the BBC, Deloitte and Touche, or LogicaCMG, they’ll say yes it works – these groups have used coaching to meet a number of different goals, including improving work performance, increasing employee productivity, team building, raising product quality and increasing employee retention.

“A strong majority—85 percent— of coaching clients from North America surveyed in the study report being “very satisfied” with their coaching experience. Globally, 99 percent of coaching clients surveyed were very or somewhat satisfied with their experience*.”
-International Coach Federation

Global research

Progress being made by companies such as the above supports results of the 2009 ICF Global Coaching Client Study. The study, which collected input from over 2100 coaching clients located throughout 64 countries, demonstrates that professional coaching is having a remarkable impact on businesses and individuals around the world.

Global results from the study show the median company return was 700 percent, or seven times the initial investment. In fact, these results show that, where ROI could be calculated, a significant majority (68 percent for personal and 86 percent for company) reported that their return was at least 100 percent of their initial investment in coaching.

Logica case study

Now let’s take a look at just one case study – LogicaCMG. Logica, a leading European IT and business services company with more than 40,000 employees, has been using coaching for several years now, developing new coaching-based initiatives as part of their overarching business development programs.

The company first started pursuing a strategic coaching agenda in 2003 when it launched a leadership development program for high potential executives. Since then, the company has continued to use coaching with business performance improvement projects. The overall coaching strategy in Logica has impacted the organization at many levels and in many ways. Success has been shown through various means including by organizational staff surveys and staff retention measures.

Logica CEO Andy Green says, “We aim to inspire our people to achieve more than they ever felt possible. By opening eyes and minds and building skills we can help people improve performance and put our clients at the center of everything they do. Our innovative approach to coaching plays an important part in delivering these ambitions.”

In its business development program, the company is piloting the new Logica coaching framework and supervision process. Forty account directors are participating with 16 coaches and five coach supervisors.

An important component of this initiative is to implement a supervisory framework for the internal coaches in Logica that aligns the objectives of the coach, coachee and the organization; promotes and maintains a comprehensive ‘contracting’ process throughout the coaching cycle; continues the development of coaching skills in line with the International Coach Federation’s Core Competencies and Code of Ethics; supports the coaches through specific coaching challenges on a ‘case by case’ basis; and facilitates the development and inclusion of internal coach supervisors over time.

The business impact of this service will be feedback from line managers and HR sponsors that coaching in Logica is being delivered in a clear professional framework and generating measurable business benefits.

For the business development program in which this new framework will be piloted, “the aim of the coaching is to support the vision to create world class account directors that are able to operate effectively at a senior level”.

The envisioned results are: Logica’s Account Managers to proactively interact with the business leaders of their target accounts and create projects around their customer’s big strategic needs, before they are fully formed and gone out to tender; to use knowledge management and relationship based activities, to create sufficient demand for Logica solutions that it becomes a single source tender situation; and that the customer sees Logica as a ‘trusted advisor’ at boardroom level.

See for yourself how coaching works. Visit Coachfederation.org/value for more information on professional coaching and findings from the ICF Global Coaching Client Study.

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Biography

Karen Tweedie, ICF Professional Certified Coach, served as President of the International Coach Federation in 2009 and has 16 years of successful experience in coaching, training, facilitating and consulting. She is Director of Coaching for Coachbroker Pty Ltd, a company that matches quality coaches with the corporate world.