When Business Coaching Fails to Deliver

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By Clare Norman, author of Cultivating Coachability

Often, coaching can be less effective than intended. There can be numerous factors at play. For example, it can be because the person receiving coaching doesn’t appreciate or fully buy into the idea that they are the one needing to do the hard work of thinking – they are the thinker in the coaching process. However, many times it’s because coaching relationships are no longer set up for success as well as they used to be. My theory—backed up by twenty plus years of experience as a coach—is that organizations tend to want the benefits of coaching without the up-front investment in strategic screening for coaching readiness.

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This is down to the coaching custodian. That is, the person who is responsible for coaching in an organization. That may be the:

• Owner of all things coaching (full time, part-time, some of the time)
• Holder of the coaching budget
• Sponsor of the coaching
• Coach procurer
• Coaching platform/associate organization

If you hold one of these roles, the return on investment and expectations of the coaching is in your hands. That’s quite a responsibility and it requires more than a cursory introduction to a coach in your coaching pool.

Here are a few ways you can make the investment pay higher dividends:

Establish the coaching context for your organization

What is the strategic intention (focus and purpose) of this coaching and how will it meet organizational needs?

For example, the focus might be maternity/paternity return to work, first 100 days in a new lateral role, emerging leader, increased scope and scale, parental coaching, executive coaching, leadership coaching, retirement coaching, wellbeing, enhancement of diversity and inclusion, high potentials. The purpose might be business-driven, individual development needs driven, goal-led, or program-led. What is it that your organization needs?

Include this in the coaching brief that you send to the coach. And keep your coaching pool in the loop about business changes that may have an impact on the employees for whom you provide coaching.

Screen for coaching readiness

Before any member of your staff embarks on a coaching journey, you must ensure they are ready for the process. Ask the following questions:

1. Is coaching the best intervention for the presenting need?

Don’t throw coaching at everything. For example, might training be a better fit for a newly promoted team lead? Or might the line manager be trying to outsource to someone else to give the difficult feedback that they have shied away from giving to the individual. Perhaps it’s the line manager who needs coaching.

2. Does the person receiving coaching understand what they are signing up for and are they willing to do the hard work of thinking for themselves? And changing?

This is a big commitment on their part. They can’t just show up and hope that everything will get better for them. Your role is to brief them on what coaching is and is not and how to make the most of it. Yes, the coach will do this too, but people need to hear things more than once for it to sink in; and if they are not motivated, there is no point wasting their salaried time or the coach’s time by putting them forward for a chemistry meeting if they don’t want coaching in the first place.

3. Is the timing right, for the individual and for the organization?

Match with one coach at a time for a compatibility call

Choice is important for the thinker, but they don’t always have the tools to discern who will be the best fit coach for them. So, match them with the coach who you think will offer just enough challenge and let the thinker know that they can ask for another match if they discern for themselves that:

• The style of support will not optimize the individual’s learning style
• The amount or style of challenge feels like it is too stretching or not stretching enough
• There are conflicts of interest that you could not have foreseen

This cuts down on unconscious bias in the matching process, so if you are serious about diversity, inclusion and equity, it’s important to match that in mind.

Do expect the coaches to have regular supervision – and ensure you learn from them

Given that the coaches will likely choose their own supervisors and work in a silo in your organization, don’t forget to harvest the systemic learning across the work that they are doing for you. What is coming up time and time again that individuals cannot resolve in one-to-one coaching? For example, is there a bullying problem that keeps showing up? Are minorities finding it hard to make progress due to systemic barriers that need to be addressed by the whole organization? What is the temperature gauge around potential burnout?

Conclusion

This is a big ask for those of you who have been tapped on the shoulder to add this to your burgeoning to-do list. But ensuring that coaching is a success within the organization is not just another transaction to be ticked off the list, it’s a strategic imperative to get this right. You are the major custodian of results here, the protector of business spends and the talent multiplier. The choices you make will have an impact – so make them wisely.

  Clare Norman is author of Cultivating Coachability (2024) and founder of Clare Norman Coaching Associates. Clare is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), a Master Mentor Coach and a Certified Coach Supervisor. She has a Masters in Training and has received multiple awards for ground-breaking leadership development. For over 25 years, Clare has focused on maximizing individual, team, and organisation effectiveness, enabling people to express their needs, in service of a more caring world. Clare’s two previous books are The Transformational Coach (2022) and Mentor Coaching: A Practical Guide (2020).

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.