10 Key Success Factors for implementing coaching in organisations

If you are thinking of creating more of a coaching culture in your company or at least using coaching in some way for the development of your people, you'll want to know how best to do that and what are the pitfalls to avoid. These 10 Key Success Factors are a great starting point for your planning.

1. Develop an organisation-specific understanding of coaching: coaching is a term that is interpreted in many ways and this step ensures that you achieve a shared understanding of what you in the company mean by coaching. for example is it 1:1 learning delivered by technical experts or is it a facilitated and purposeful discussion based around the individual's development needs?

2. Take a systematic approach: this allows you to properly control the learning intervention and learn from the results, whereas an ad-hoc approach, where everyone does what they think is appropriate is difficult to evaluate and understand the impact.

3. Choose an adequate level of penetration: once you have determined the purpose and aims of using coaching as a development tool, what forms of coaching would be appropriate to use and at what level in the organisation? Do you simply want to conduct a test on the effects of executive coaching with senior managers or a wider and deeper initiative including all layers of the organisation in some way?

4. Involve top management: coaching is a way of working and for the coaching iniative to be successful, you need to have at least the full backing of the Board. Ideally you want them to role model the coaching style, so you want them actively participating and role-modeling.

5. Promote coaching as a positive developmental tool: historically some organisations have used coaching as a last-resort intervention for poor performers. This drastically limits the potential of coaching, it should be positioned and promoted as a positive intervention that helps achieve great results. Eg an early example of someone who is considered good, benefitting from coaching support to achieve great results, would be a positive promotion of coaching.

6. Optimal win-win value for all stakeholders: coaching is a type of intervention that can achieve good results for all concerned - the individual improves their performance, the coach improves their coaching, the line manager sees improvements, the team's performance also sees better results. How can you ensure that all parties see that their investment in coaching will pay back significant results?

7. Full consistency with business strategy: any development strategy should be designed to deliver the business strategy and coaching is no exception. Decisions around what coaching to provide to whom should all be based on what capability is required to deliver the business strategy.

8. Complete transparency of the coaching concept: by being open about the coaching concept and its implementation in the organisation, you encourage people to ask questions and to get on board with this development strategy. This reduces any resistance to a new way of working and encourages participation.

9. Effective and careful evaluation: Think about how you will evaluate the coaching right from the start, so you put in place the necessary benchmarks and measures to be able to evaluate effectively. Additionally the confidential aspects of coaching need to be handled with care and never abused.

10. High integrity and quality at all levels: Your company-specific definition of coaching and the coaching concept you have chosen to implement will determine what is quality and integrity for you. It is important to be clear on these aspects from the outset and to recruit appropriate coaches and ensure those participating in the coaching do so with integrity.

This brief introduction to the 10 Key Success Factors may raise more questions than it answers and there is a lot of detail and clear guidelines in the book. I hope it has got you thinking about what you need to consider if you are implementing coaching in your organisation, or if you have had some form of coaching for a while and now want to improve and extend the coaching provision. If you learn best by doing, plan to participate in the pragmatic seminar on how to implement coaching in your organisation.

From the book "The Global Business Guide for the successful use of coaching in organisations" written by Frank Bresser and edited by Amanda Bouch

Highlights in 2010

As the New Year starts, it's worth taking a moment to think about the highs and lows of the year just gone. This will help focus your mind on what kind of things to be paying attention to in 2011: what things bring you success and you would do well to do more of; what things didn't work so well and you would be advised to stop doing?

I invested in learning about doing business online in 2010, which has been somethign of a highlight and now I want to make that business worth something in 2011, so I'll be focusing my effort on the marketing. I find it interesting that although the same fundamental principles apply in the online marketplace, the context is so different and the scale is significantly different.

So I'll be out there seeking to meet people online, to speak/write and be heard and to show how my business can help.

At the same time for my 'traditional' business I will be focusing on meeting people, getting to know others and understand their particular needs and show how I can help. When I was doing that in 2010, it generated a huge buzz for me and it's so enjoyable to meet and work with others to create better business results. The focus though is on much smaller numbers of people and a much more personal relationship, especially as I specialise in helping people improve how they operate individually.

So it is helping people that have given me my best highs and I look forward to much more of that in the year to come.

What about you? I'd love to hear what highs you enjoyed in 2010 and how you will match or better that in 2011. Please do comment.