Why coaching fails and how to prevent it

“Ah, you’re one of those are ya? A Coach. Not another one, there are so many of you!”?

That’s the response I got recently when I told someone at a business networking event that I was a Leadership & Executive Coach; it annoyed me a little because I clearly was being tarred with the same brush as some poor coaches this person had experienced, and more frustratingly it was not the first type of first response I’ve had in the recent years as a professional coach. I recall back in 2017, when I quit my corporate life to kick off my career in the people development world, many were curious of what Coaching was, how it helped individuals, organisations and society as a whole - that curiosity provided me comfort that I was sailing off on an adventure.

5 years on and in a recent conversation with a CEO, Harry, of a enterprise training platform allowed me to see that actually the comment was not a phenomenon just in China, but also in India too where Harry's company is looking to bring a hybrid learning experience to SME’s and Fortune companies. His platform requires a bench of quality “master coaches” to support the learning journey of the leaders, where I was recommended and shortlisted as only 1 of over dozens of interviewed in China. In the UK where Harry interviewed over 67 coaches only to identify 2 coaches that he felt “suitable”- ability to understand the Business landscape required as an Executive Coach. Harry actually wasn’t too disappointed, mentioning that over the 3 years of his platform start-up, the population of coaches in Bangalore where he is based “9 out of 10 people call themselves Coaches”.?

"In 2017, there were 1,800 coaches in mainland China, in 2022 there are over 4,200, that more than a 2X increase!" - how can we separate the wheat from the chaff ?

I can’t help but notice a trend with my network of coaches and clients where the sentiment around coaching and the successful outcomes of coaching is correlated - I want to use this opportunity to outline my views on “Why coaching fails”, and to provide advice to those, especially to HR and L&D leaders, seeking coaching as a development approach.

The main 4 reasons coaching fails are because

1. Coaching is misunderstood
2. Coaching is misused
3. Non-coaching-recipient sponsors
4. Over-saturation

1. Education of coaching needs to be better

Coaching is rather misunderstood. In my experience around 8/10 of the general public may not be able to distinguish the difference between mentoring, training, counselling and coaching, with coaching falling into 2 broad categories; life coaching and business coaching. Life coaching focused more on transformation of self, includes spirituallity, relationship, family, health etc, a lot of which is quite fundamental but not essential to Business coaching, which pertains to performance, motivational, leadership, executive coaching etc. Below is an image I borrowed from Erickson coaching to highlight which areas I have coached my clients - noting that I left to be an executive coach and branched out due to client needs.

If we further look at the history of coaching, rather than fro the stage coach analogy but more from the psychological level, coaching is a branch from psycho-analysis and psycho-therapy, which deals with cognition and how we turn those into behaviour changes, be it for self-improvement or applied business performance. This implicitly suggests that those that use coaching will mentally be prepared and have a level of maturity in their own critical analysis of motivation, skill and desire to progress. Therefore HR and L&D leaders should be identifying and nominating those candidates that are ready to be self challenging, appreciate their development areas through critic and prepared to push their mental limits - not just those ready to be ‘promoted’ or in ‘senior positions’. The classic coaching requirement of people are ready for coaching is they not only have the skills/experience to improve, but also the mental will to be better; so many I have coached have the former but not the latter; where I’ve had to terminate a few contracts as the situation bred ego and stagnation.

2. Apply coaching in the right circumstances

We all know that when one starts in a new role one of the first things we suggest is training, in a particular skill or tool that is essential for the job.That said, coaching isn’t only for those tenured or with vast amounts of experience, it can be applied to anyone that is ready to take their roles of self to the next level, as long as they can define it themselves, and for business coaching, congruent to the organisational goals. However for many coaching contracts, especially in the mainland, I’ve noticed there is a bigger need for mentoring, rather than coaching - many of the competencies that are requested being built are very role specific, or due to rapid organisation expansion or transformation, previous experience can not be applied. For some of the requirements, mentoring is actually the right development approach, especially those that are looking to grow specifically in a career direction, learning to?change specific organisational culture or learning new power [soft] skill competencies - note the word ‘learning’. Often there is an expectation that coaching provides immediate returns in the form of business revenue, and in most circumstance the development of the person before application to the business needs to take place first. In these instances there needs to be a re-address of the coaching goals, the balance of personal development versus the performance objectives of the contract - setting these right in the first sponsors meeting is critical and poor coaches neglect this very impact goal setting meeting.

So advicsing a correct application of coaching would be for those that are ready to hone a set of skills beyond their current scope, 70% ready incumbents of greater roles, those just being promoted with a bigger remit where it has been recognised that their capabilities are set to be unleashed - these are the best circumstances to have coaching as the most effective development tool, complimented with a sprinkling of relevant training and a mentor (which may by default be a coaching outcome anyway).

3. Sponsors that say no to coaching normally haven’t been coached

“I’ve heard coaching isn’t that effective, therefore we don’t think coaching is the right option for this person.”

This is comment or those like it are the most common I’ve had coaching been turned down as a development option for team members. When asked whether they coach their team members or have been coached, their answers are “No” or “Yeah I coach sometimes” - you can all see the irony of this last response.

In my experience 90% of those who sponsor coaching for their staff have either received coach training or themselves have a coach at some point in their career; where only 1 sponsor in 2019 had never coached or been coached, he decided to experiment coaching with his team over 18 months, and now has his own coach as a result.?

Some managers see coaching as a gamble, since it is seen as rather expensive compared to group training, an investment which is dependent on the candidate delivering on their own define actions and accountability - it can be forgiven that sponsors themselves who have little personal experience will spend limited budget on this. Great companies I’ve worked with have a separate coaching budget to their training budget, clearly differentiating the difference of intervention and who the pot should be reserved for - perhaps sponsors who deny an individual the opportunity to be a great team asset, first think about whether they can be on the receiving end of 2-3 coaching sessions first then to experiment with the rest of their high potentials.?

Sponsors of coaching recognise the power, and I have received more requests for team coaching, especially those in Technology and product development organisations to compliment this with their agile development philosphies. See below the difference between team bonding, team building and team coaching.?

Those HR supporting the executive team to facilitate off-site strategy meetings should note the difference, where much money has been incorrectly spent on team building where instead it should been invested in deep and continued team coaching to support the critical quarterly and annual strategy planning & execution process.

4. Over saturation of poor coaches

This last reason for failure comes back to the first point of too many coaches, in fact there are too many poor coaches in the market. I have probed each fellow coach on their desires to be coaches in the first place, where I'm delighted to say that many have the right ethos of wanting to help others; however many have also said they just want to be consultants in one particular field but felt Coaching was a better title. In fact an ex-colleague of mine retorted to me “I’ll be a coach one day, it’s just asking a bunch of questions, it doesn’t really work but people think it does!” - not only was it ignorant comment, it was also very disrespectful and (personally) hurtful as I had just qualified as a ICF PCC.

I know of some newly qualified coaches who set up their own coach 'training' practice with very little actual experience in coaching (number of hours or client depth), a coach who stitched together audio coaching transcript in order to pass certification (that person I know failed). Other unbecoming behaviours are from an attendee of my very own Coach Camp setting up their own coaching practices after only attending 6 sessions (camps were for honing techniques rather than coach training). The Covid-19 pandemic saw a whole host of people pivoting to be Coaches due to unemployment and then giving-up due to the competitiveness of the industry and ultimately their lacked of coherence & commitment with the discipline (I know over a half-dozen in the last 12 months who have tried and failed as coaches). Just like every industry there are some bad actors that bring a bad name to this guild, a vast majority of coaches do indeed have a passion to grow people, we are in the people business and not business of coaching (so many coach because of the money, profit over people). So how do you distinguish or seek a quality coach for your team members or yourself?

Here are my top 3 things to look out for when screening a credible coach:

• Credibility: Quality coaches are word of mouth recommendations, they tend to have a reputation based on their success and are on the vendor lists of top companies, so look towards “who" is saying “what" about the coach.
• Experience tells: good coaches may have many hours of coaching, great coaches leave a trail of successful clients - many coaches fail the chemistry/in-take call because they can’t articulate their success as coaches, this is especially prevalent for executive coaching where they lack the business acumen required and the empathy of the political & transformational landscapes.
• Certification and other roles: often quality coaches are certified by ICF, EMCC or other recognised country coaching authorities; but in addition to this, they may be Coach Mentors or are associated to other people development institutes such as in psychology, education or organisational development. A coach doesn’t necessarily have to be schooled in health, psychology or counselling disciplines, however you'll invariably find that passionate coaches will have some form of certification that supports their choice of being a coach in the first place.

Summary:

If you're a HR director, sponsoring manager or L&D specialist empowered to invest in coaching for your team,

(i) be conscious about whether the person is at the right level (mentality and experience) to be coached,

(ii) decide with the individual whether coaching is in fact the right development approach at this stage,

(iii) when seeking a coach look at the 3 coaching qualities that qualify them as the credible coaches for the organisation and individual, and

(iv) lastly you yourself should believe that coaching works, if you have doubts then consider to be a recipient of coaching yourself.

If you want to become a Coach yourself, some qualities you can self reflect upon on are your ability to empathetic, to listen, to be curious, to be non-judgemental, to care for others, to celebrate small wins - because the next time you meet a passionate coach, this is the type of person you’ll most likely be speaking to.

About the author:

Will Sung is a ICF PCC certified professional coaching, coaching in at an organisational capacity since 2008, before setting up a regional coaching practice in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (mainland China) in 2017. He coaches (individuals & teams) start-ups, young professionals to SME's leadership and executives at FT100 companies, is a Leadership coach for the HKUST MBA program and career coach for Hong Kong University Business school since 2019. As a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy practitioner, he works with young teenagers in Leadership, entrepreneurship and future skills