“Factors that Contribute to the Effectiveness of Business Coaching: The Coachees Perspective (2006, Blackman, A. The Business Review, Cambridge 5.1, Sep, pp.98-104) attracted my eye. Whether we’re business coaches or not, we can all benefit from being aware of these contributing factors to coaching efficacy. In addition, it’s so valuable to take some time to see the coaching process through the eyes of our clients and this paper takes the perspective of the coachee.
COACHING RESEARCH:
According to Gegner (1997), “the effectiveness of coaching depends on three main components, the coach, the coachee and what the coach does” (p.100). In this study, 113 respondents (61 female and 52 male) were interviewed and among them, “The coach was rated most important overall with 35.1% giving it a most important ranking. What the coach does came second with 33.3% of respondents ranking it first and finally the coachee came in third with an overall importance ranking of most important from 28.9% of the sample” (p.100).
The respondents in this study also identified the most important features of a coach. In order of importance, the features they identified were: good communication skills, credible/experienced, empathetic, knowledgeable and sufficient contact time (p.101).
Next, respondents were shown a list of features that made coaches effective, which was sourced from existing coaching literature. The respondents ranked these features in order of importance as follows: communicates clearly, is organized, maintains confidentiality, is honest, has experience in my industry, displays self-confidence, has experience with coaching, is able to see things from my point of view, displays acceptance of me and is creative (p.101).
Finally, respondents identified what they saw as the most important features in the coaching process: able to identify my blind spots, helps me to constructively view difficult issues, encourages me to take appropriate action, focuses on my successes rather than my failings, helps me to relate my personal goals to my organizational goals, is free from interruption by outside influences and uses priorities and timelines (p.102).
An interesting little titbit in this paper was a preliminary question about the length of sessions. FYI, sessions were most frequently reported to last 1-2 hrs, next most frequent was less than one hour, followed by sessions of 2-3 hours and half day sessions.
IN PRACTICE:
As usual, here comes the “So what?” question, always to be asked of research (and many other things for that matter). This paper didn’t suggest any implications, so here are my extrapolations of the findings:
Maintain a three-way balance when assessing the effectiveness of a coaching experience. Consider yourself as a coach, the coaching process you applied and the coachee.
Try putting together a survey monkey survey and ask your clients to rate you based on any of the above criteria.
After a session, rate yourself on the degree to which you applied the above mentioned coaching processes.
Try doing a session of a different length from what you normally do and see what happens.
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Translating coaching research into coaching practice,
Dr Kerryn Griffiths
Global ReciproCoach Coordinator
ReciproCoach: Reciprocal peer coaching, mentoring and supervision
Web: http://www.ReciproCoach.com
