Time to spring-clean your coaching function?

Coaching is a funny old business. As a profession it’s only been going since the 1980s but yet the industry has skyrocketed in just that short space of time. All large Western organisations now have a coaching department. It would be rare to find a senior leader who doesn’t employ their own executive coach, and even rarer to find a manager who doesn’t believe they ‘use coaching’ with their staff.

Of course that speedy growth spurt has it’s downsides. Often the coaching function has grown quicker than the support structures around it. Coaching in many organisations lacks a coherent ethos or purpose. Even where a far-sighted HR Director or Senior Manager has created a coaching ethos, the sprawling nature of coaching often means the execution can be patchwork, with many coaches across an organisation all practicing differing coaching styles and lacking a clear evaluation process.

I increasingly believe that auditing your coaching function is essential for all large companies. Auditing is essentially like a spring-clean. It creates time for you to look under the sofa and see just how many dust-balls have gathered!

A good audit should let you understand whether your company’s coaching is transformational or transactional, and exactly how to move it closer to the former. Auditing looks at a whole range of factors including coach training, evaluation, ethos, individual and team needs.

So how do you get started with an audit? Just get a good professional to help. Then it’s time to roll up your sleeves and slide on the marigolds.

To find out more about coaching audits, read here.