How to Engage the RIGHT Coach to Accelerate Your Career

By the time 2024 ends, perhaps three out of four employers will have provided some form of coaching for their employees. Over the past decade, coaching has become one of the top tools used to accelerate the development of talent in organizations because it has proven so effective.

The purpose of this article is to provide you with some practical tips to help you decide if coaching can help you, and to select the best person to coach you.

?

First Determine What You Want from a Coaching Program

This is an essential first step to take before you can begin the selection process for choosing a coach. For example, do you want someone to coach you in making a career transition? Or to become a more effective leader? Perhaps you a looking to help your sales team improve its performance.? Take the time to first identify the specific area(s) in which you desire coaching.

You may want to consider completing one or more of the dozens of excellent assessments available to help you better understand yourself, your behavioral makeup, your emotional intelligence, and your professional acumen. Often times an assessment will show you your results and hew they compare to existing standards and norm, which can help you pinpoint areas pf potential growth.

?

Next, Select the Right Coach

There are tens of thousands of business coaches worldwide; most major metro areas have dozens to choose from. While degrees, certifications, and affiliations are helpful indicators of effective coaches, consider the following criteria as essential when choosing the person with whom you will work:

?

ONE: A successful record in the areas in which you desire coaching. This is the most important criterion. Suppose you needed surgery – would you choose the surgeon with the shiny new degree who has studied all about your surgery but only practiced it on cadavers, or the surgeon who has successfully performed the operation for years? You choose experience every time! The tough thing about experience is that it takes time to get, which is why you may want to avoid someone who lacks enough experience to be of value to those being coached.

?

TWO: The type and method of diagnostics and tools to be used. Just as a doctor uses diagnostics, such as x-rays, physical examinations and blood work, before embarking on a course of treatment, business coaches should be able to explain the diagnostics they propose to use. What is the coach’s diagnostic plan? Look for industry-proven assessments and instruments that have a solid record of accuracy and reliability. Ditto that for any curriculum or books being used. Find out how much experience the coach has with the diagnostics and tools he or she uses.

?

THREE: The degree of tailoring to each client organization and each individual. This is an area that separates average coaches from exceptional ones. Suppose the person being coached is technically excellent but has challenges due to poor people skills? Will the person being coached gain a general knowledge of how to work more effectively with others, or will knowledge be gained of how to collaborate with specific people in his or her workplace? Will the coach be flexible enough to temporarily detour off plan when the need for the moment is greater than the plan?

?

FOUR: Learn what current and prior coaching clients say about the coach. Prospective coaches will not give you a bad reference, so you’ll need to do a little homework. Ask for multiple references. Speak to clients and learn the plusses and minuses of working with the coach.? What short-term and long-term improvements have they helped individual clients make? Were they engaged once, or for multiple times, and will the reference re-engage the next time coaching is needed?

?

FIVE: Learn how each coach keeps current/ahead of their areas of expertise. One of the benefits of coaching is that individual clients and their organizations gain outside perspective and expertise not available within their organizations. It is imperative that the any coach you engage is green and growing, not resting solely on yesteryear’s best practices. Learn how each coach keeps current.

?

SIX: How is your personal chemistry with the potential coach? In order to be effective, there needs to be an iron-clad level of trust between the coach and each individual being coached. Trust starts with positive chemistry, so you may want to ask for a complementary session to judge for yourself. This factor will have a significant bearing on your ability to work with a coach, so don’t overlook it.

SEVEN: Ask the coach about his or her views on confidentiality. This follows the trust factor closely. The benefit of having a coach is that you discuss things that you would not typically discuss with your boss or others within your organization. Look for a coach that has an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality. Ask each prospective coach to explain how he or she will deal with sensitive issues should your supervisor or HR department ask for the coach to update them.

?

EIGHT: What is the coach’s proposed plan and costs? Once the coach understands what you are seeking to accomplish, ask for a written plan that spells out his or her services and costs. What does the first month or two look like (where most diagnostics will be used), and how does it compare to post-diagnostic months? How long is the commitment, and how easily can you get out of the commitment if you find that the program is not working (you should know this by the third or fourth session)? What specific outcomes will be delivered? How and when will progress be reported? What kind of ROI can you expect from the coach/coaching firm and proposal? Will the coach guarantee his or her services (in other words, if you are not satisfied, does he or she say, “don’t pay my bill?”

?

Frequently Asked Questions About Coaching

?

ONE: What can I expect to pay? While fees vary, a high-cost coach may be overpriced for the value he or she delivers, and a low-priced coach may not be worth the low fees he or she charges. In the US, typical per-hour coaching fees range from a low of $125 per hour to a high of $3,500 per hour (source: Harvard Business Review and BMG research). The important question is this: what is the expected ROI? If a $3,500 per hour coach can generate a multiple of that amount in profits, margin, expense saving, or other key organizational metric, then it would be a great investment.

?

TWO: How important is it for the person(s) being coached to desire coaching? In a word, critical. If you really don’t want to be coached, then your investment will be wasted. Individuals must be motivated enough to commit to the program, attending scheduled meetings and completing diagnostics, assigned reading, practice, and other assignments in a timely manner.

?

THREE: What levels in an organization are typically coached? The answer depends on the needs of each client. For example, some BMG clients engage us to coach primarily at the C and V-levels; others at the director and manager levels; and still others for high potential individual contributors being groomed for larger assignments.

?

FOUR: Should I engage the same coach with whom my boss works? This is a question to carefully consider. Coaches should provide an absolute guarantee of confidentiality. That said, human nature is such that a coach’s objectivity can be compromised when working with individuals in the same reporting structure.?? Think through whether or not this would be a comfortable relationship for you.

FIVE: Is an outside coach more effective than an inside coach? Outside coaches who work with multiple clients are generally preferred to internal coaches who work with employees in their own organizations. The top three reasons cited for this preference are:

• The greater breadth of perspective offered by coaches who work with multiple clients in multiple industries.
• The objectivity and independent perspective that a coach outside the organization can bring.
• There may be a perception that things told an internal coach will be held in less confidence than an outside coach because the internal coach is employed by the organization.

?

?

Bottom Line

Effective coaching has become an essential tool for developing today’s talent to tackle tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges. An effective coach should deliver an ROI of ten or more times the cost of the program, making this a sensible investment for businesses and institutions of any size.

Disclaimer: Since I hired my first employee in 1976, I’ve spent my career training and coaching people to become more effective in their chosen profession. I’ve directly or indirectly trained and coached more than 30,000 people, during my 24 years in the corporate world and the next 26 years delivering professional development services as CEO of Boyer Management Group (BMG). In 2023 and again in 2024 CEO Monthly Magazine named me as its Most Influential CEO, Executive Coaching, based on the results Boyer Management Group has achieved for its clients.