Selecting an Executive Coach - What Truly Matters

Jessica, the VP HR of a luxury retailer in Hong Kong, got the task from her Managing Director Tim to find a suitable Executive Coach for him.

"What is important for you", she asked.

Tim replied: "Make sure he has a strong business background, is an experienced coach and has coached people like me on how to be a more inspiring leader."

So far, her company had not engaged any professional coaches in Hong Kong and she had also no prior experience in coach selection. So what to do?

She decided that she will ask a few of her colleagues in her HR network to see what they propose or if they can refer any good coaches to her.

There are a few problems with this approach:

• How would Jessica know that the coaches referred to her are really a good fit for Tim?
• How would Jessica know that her colleagues in the HR network are sufficiently proficient in coach selection?
• Is Jessica even well equipped to ask the right questions to her HR colleagues based on the brief given by Tim?

While an optimal coach selection is not the only factor contributing to a successful executive coaching program, it's definitely a crucial one.

We have been selecting coaches since 2002 to work with us and we have probably pre-assessed (based on some key factors like hours of coach training, hours of coaching practice, years of relevant corporate experience, leadership experience, cross-cultural exposure, etc.) over 600 coaches and thoroughly assessed about 400 coaches across Asia since then. Less than 200 actually made it successfully through the process over the years. And we have become much better and much more thorough since then. I was personally involved in the assessment of every single one of them.

So what makes a really good executive coach?

First, let's make it clear that even the best coach may not be suitable for every possible coaching assignment. That's the reason why we don't work with only 15-20 coaches (who probably could fulfil time-wise all available coaching assignments we get) but with over 80 very carefully vetted executive coaches in 15 cities across Asia.

Second, we don't believe that only one specific type of coach can be very impactful, in fact, we have quite some diversity among our coaches in terms of style, background, approach, etc. and we know they are all excellent coaches in their own right.

So the selection process of coaches needs to be stringent enough to ensure high quality and open enough to allow for meaningful diversity.

Over the years, we continuously fine-tuned our selection process and made it tougher and tougher as also the availability of high-quality coaches has been increasing a lot in Asia over the past 10 years or so (Note: in 2002 when I started out as an executive coach, there were only a handful of trained executive coaches in Hong Kong, today the number has risen to probably over 500 in Hong Kong alone).

The Challenges in Coach Selection

"Paper is patient", my grandma used to say when I was a kid, "It never complains about what is written on it." Definitely valuable grandma wisdom, that is. Consequently, relying only on the profile or CV of the coach could be a grave mistake.

How about certificates? While certificates from international bodies such as ICF, IAC, WABC, EEMC, etc. aim at ensuring a certain quality level of the coach, I'm sorry to say that even these papers are not a guarantor for high coach quality, but improves the odds. It's a bit the same as with a medical doctor: having the license doesn't guarantee a great doctor, but ensures that some minimum standards are in place.

Then there is the challenge of personality: some personality aspects are not easy to detect in interviews and yet could have a big impact on how well someone coaches. To give you an example: one of the coaches we assessed turned out to be highly self-critical. When having this coach conduct a sample coaching session (a mandatory element of our coach selection process since 2010), it turned out that this personality aspect adversely affected his coaching ability - he quite easily projected his own issues onto the coachee which ultimately moved the coaching session into a not so meaningful direction.

Some personality aspects may show up only over time in a coaching assignment and then potentially derail the coaching (or at least make it less impactful than it could be). As a result, we also integrate a profiling system (we have very positive experience with Harrison Assessments) into our coach selection process.

Finally, the perhaps most important part of our selection process is to see the coaches coach 'live' on real cases. To accurately assess such live coaching sessions, it is important to set them up as realistically as possible and to have observers who really know what good coaching looks like, who can filter out language challenges (in case it's not done in her or his native tongue) as well as account for the nervousness that tends to be present in such 'tests'.

The fact that we train and certify professional coaches since 2007 means that we get to see a lot of coaching and therefore have developed a keen sense of what good and impactful coaching looks like.

So what should Jessica do? Get an expert on selecting coaches and managing coach pools in and get coached by her/him on discovering what really matters for Tim's case and what to pay attention to for this case. If that expert manages a comprehensive pool of coaches, s/he may propose coaches that are most likely suitable for the given case.

Besides, it's good practice to pre-select at least two coaches per coachee so that the coachee has a choice after getting to know them in the so-called 'chemistry check' session.

Executive coaching programs usually require significant investments; ensuring the right coach selection is a key determining factor on your Return on Investment (ROI).

Learn more about Executive Coaching by Progress-U