Executive Coaching That Makes a Difference

I coach people who are serious about growing themselves as leaders. They like to measure the coaching’s effectiveness. That way, we ensure the coaching makes a difference.  

How do I measure it?

I won’t start the coaching until I’ve agreed goals in writing with the client and sponsoring company. That enables us to use what I call a Dual Perspective analysis. This measures two angles based on the client’s coaching goals.

• First, what the client thinks has changed, both mentally and behaviourally: the “Inside-Out” view. 
• Second, the degree to which the client’s colleagues have seen shifts in his or her leadership behaviour, skill and presence: the “Outside-In” view.

You need both angles. Partly because there are insights that only clients can comment on (I always find sponsors are fascinated by what clients say about their mental performance gains). And partly because it’s always important to verify what the client is experiencing through objective observers’ feedback.

My preference is to show the results graphically. Here is a real-life, but anonymous, example of a Dual Perspectiv report. What you see first is the Inside-Out profile:

Note the remarkable shift in the profile, represented by the difference between the light blue bars (before coaching) and dark blue bars (after coaching). The client scored himself on 32 qualities. 10 focused on his mental performance state while 22 concerned his ability to choose his behaviour skilfully under pressure. The light blue bars show a mix of positive and negative scores before the coaching, meaning the client recognised weaknesses. After the coaching, as the dark bars show, the client had removed all of his negatives and boosted his strengths.

To make sure the client wasn’t kidding himself, we paired the Inside-Out perspective with the Outside-In view, which relied on ratings by eight observers. Here’s what it showed:

The change profile is clearly slanted towards the graph’s right-hand side (Slight Improvement – Improvement – Big Improvement). This means the 8 observers saw definite advances in the client on all 13 of the behaviours he’d chosen to work on. Indeed, 92% of the ratings showed improvement of some kind, with 74% of the ratings showing either obvious “Improvement” or “Big improvement”. 

Interestingly, all but one of the eight observers were peers. Peers are a tough crowd. They are the most critical reviewers you can find. They always rate improvements lower than bosses and direct reports, who score more generously. So this was a real success. The boss, who was the CEO, felt that if we’d included direct reports we’d have seen more “Big improvement” ratings.

My point is that you can measure the impact of coaching to everyone’s benefit.

If you’d like to know more, you can call me on +44 (0)1525 718023 or write to me at [email protected].

The author of this article is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill , was published in 2011. You'll find his coaching website at www.thescoullerpartnership.co.uk