What Prevents Coaching Effectiveness in Organizations?
Here is another excerpt from the research conducted in 2005 by The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Europe’s largest HR development professional body. 29 UK organizations participated in the research, including BBC, Panasonic Europe, Selfridges, Shell. The objective was to understand whether coaching works, what results it provides, and what can hinder its effectiveness.
Following is the excerpt from the research.
Reported barriers to effective coaching:
Lack of understanding of the value of coaching
- Lack of understanding of what coaching can achieve
- Perception of validity of coaching and cost-effectiveness by senior managers
- Initially, confusion over what coaching was about, for example the role of the executive coach versus the role of the line manager as a coach
- Lack of listening to individuals who attempt to implement coaching activities and see this as possibly time-wasting
- Perception that there are no real benefits
Not seen as a priority for the business
- Lack of coaching being seen as a priority activity to be implemented as part of the overall learning and development strategy
- Organisational buy-in to coaching. It is not seen as a valuable business process (yet!)
- Ensuring it is positioned as part of a wider culture change process rather than an isolated development activity
- A belief that coaching is a ‘nice to have’
The organisational culture
- Lack of integrating coaching as part of the overall culture that tends to be ‘tell and sign’ rather than letting individuals work issues out for themselves
- Organisational culture which tends to be driven by ‘red tape’
- Existing leadership culture is the single biggest barrier to implementation, in other words mainly dictatorial non-supportive leaders who ‘tell’ or manage by threat to improve short-term performance levels, rather than seeing the benefit in using more directive and supportive behaviours that result in longer-term sustainable performance
- The nature of the remuneration and commission culture which rewards indvidual achievements and does not reward those that might help underperformers or good performers to improve further
- Ensuring that the business is in the right place to embrace such a change in culture
Overcoming resistance
- Overcoming initial resistance. Coaching seen as something only for underperformers
- Receptivity of coachees; good coaching example set from top down; consistent follow-through of relationship and actions
- Senior executives initially reluctant to use internal coaches
- Coaching by line managers tends to get a lower priority than other tasks and therefore tends to be intermittent and not always effective
Low levels of skills and experience in the organisation
- Line managers’ coaching skills have been shown to vary greatly. An underlying issue is the recognition of coaching as a core leadership skill
- Educating established managers in using a coaching style. This takes time and education and must be embedded and maintained
- There needs to be expertise and ownership of the process within the organisation and it does require ongoing management, promotion, communication, refreshing the pool of coaches, and so on, and this has resource implications
- Accepting the outcomes can be a real challenge for those managing the team. Coaching gives you a healthy dose of reality, when many do not have the strength of character as managers to manage and address
Time and resources
- Coaching needs to be properly funded. Resource is needed to support the whole process
- High workloads are the main barrier
- ‘I don’t have time’ is a common comment
Read about how organizations benefit from coaching.
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In an organizational setting, the biggest barrier is indeed “Existing leadership culture…mainly dictatorial non-supportive leaders…” Perhaps the appropriate approach would be to coach the CEO. The second the CEO is successfully coached, the next barrier would be “resources”. “High workloads” is, to my mind, just an excuse. Just my thoughts.
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