How Do You Hire A Coach of Excellence?

Leading Coaches Sheila Maher and Suzi Pomerantz have been brainstorming about what advice we’d give to those executives in organizations who have the job of hiring executive coaches.  We’ve put together a rating scale and we’d love your feedback and input, from your own experience, about the hiring of “individual coaches of excellence”, whether they are solopreneur coaches or chosen from among a cadre of coaches in a coaching company.

We assert that it is not useful to shop by price.  The cheapest coach is not the best coach.  Shopping for coaches on price, comparing rates per coach, is not how to choose excellence.  It is impossible to compare the hourly rate per coach in a coaching company with the hourly rate per coach as an individual solopreneur due to cost factors such as overhead, marketing, and mark-ups for profit margin in a coaching company.  In other words, the organization may hire a $400 an hour coach from a coaching company, but may actually be getting the services of a coach who is only being paid $80 an hour by the coaching company that subcontracted them out.

Thus, we offer this template for hiring executive coaches of excellence so that you will have criteria to use besides pricing:  the hiring executive can use this for interviews or in an RFP process for executive coaches.

Criteria for selecting coaches

While designing this list, we allocated points for each item, thinking that the hiring executive would then be able to determine based on weighted criteria whether or not the coach being interviewed is a coach of excellence.

Executive Experience:  total points: 30

1. Do they have management, leadership, or boardroom experience?  — 10 points
2. Experience at the executive level: Have they coached executives or worked as an executive? — 20 points

Coach Experience:  total points: 50

1. What led you to become a coach? — 0 points (this is just about hearing their story to determine if their journey is relevant to your coaching needs)
2. What was the most valuable “take away” from your coach training?  —  5 points
3. How much of your coaching has been done in organizations? – 10  points if over  70%, 0 points if below 50%
4. How do you integrate your coaching into organizational systems?  –5 points
5. Have they had experience coaching executives at the same level for which you’re hiring?  (i.e., have they coached CxO’s or high potential leaders before?) – 10 points
6. Do you have any “specialty” areas that you like to coach or have significant background in, i.e. diversity, conflict, leadership presence?  — 1 point
7. What results do your clients report from their work with you?—10  points if their executive client references confirm these results OR if the results they report are aligned with what you are looking to hire them to do.
8. What is the coach’s philosophy?  Does it align with the organization’s mission, objectives, values and culture? – 5 points
9. Do they have a coaching credential from ICF or IAC?  — 4 points

Using Coaching Tools Effectively:  total points: 20

1. How have you measured the success of your coaching? Has the coach successfully used metrics to measure results and demonstrate behavioral change? — 4 points
2. Has the coach had experience using the organization’s metrics to measure the results of the coaching program?  360’s, employee satisfaction, leadership survey, already existing tools in the org. — 4 points
3. What assessments has the coach used? How has the coach used assessments within the coaching engagement? — 4 points
4. What leadership model(s) and organizational theories has the coach utilized and how have they used it in their coaching? —  4 points
5. What coaching methodology has the coach utilized and why is it appropriate for this executive, this organization, this engagement? — 4 points

Do you agree with these criteria?  What are we missing?  Are these weights aligned with your thinking about what’s important to consider?

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