7. Coaching Centers of Excellence emerge
Wikipedia defines a Center of Excellence (COE) as an entity “that provides leadership, best practices, research, support, and/or training for a focus area. [Also] known as a competency center or capability center.”
Now, Coaching Centers of Excellence (CCOE) are beginning to emerge in organizations such as Accenture, Ernst & Young (EY), GSK, and PwC . What these coaching centers share is commitment to building internal coaching capabilities in the ways that Wikipedia describes. Where they differ is in their respective locations on the org chart and business models for deploying their coaches.
Says a leader in one CCEO, “It used to be that coaching was part of the HR domain, and you got it because there was a problem. We had to change the mindset in our organization from coaching being remedial to it being a reward and development opportunity.”
To distinguish between the two, “remedial” coaching usually remains within HR and gets delivered by external coaches and/or coach-trained HR staff. “Leadership” or “executive” coaching below the upper echelons is delivered by coaches who work in a CCOE housed with OD, L&D, or a business strategy unit.
Four business models are evident:
The first model treats coaching as an investment in developing the organization’s current and coming leaders. EY formed its CCOE in 2009 with seven coaches focusing on partner transitions (i.e., those who are entering the partnership, repatriating, joining the firm from outside, or rejoining after a leave of absence). Currently 19 full-time EY internal coaches spend about 70% of their time delivering transition coaching to leaders throughout North and South America. They also have responsibilities to develop and mentor nearly 90 part-time in-house coaches, who play a role in coaching managers and senior managers. EY calls on a list of roughly 15 external coaches for other types of work.
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Rey Carr
December 27, 2016 at 2:34 pm
With the increasing use of polls and surveys by different coaching groups or independent survey firms, it has become more difficult to integrate the different findings into a coherent picture.
Carol Goldsmith integrates the results from different surveys/interviews brilliantly in this article; and for those with a short attention span, she’s even included the top 10 in an executive summary.
Most of the organizations that conduct coaching surveys do not point out the limitations of their instrument or data collection procedures. However, when such surveys are combined, as they are in this article, the resulting data can be more credible.
Carol Goldsmith
January 2, 2017 at 10:33 pm
Thank you for the kind comment, Rey. Glad you found the article to be useful.
Be your best, Carol
Carol Goldsmith, PCC, NLPT
The Discovery Coach