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Back to Articles Page Why Organizations Hire Coaches by Lyn Allen Organizations invest in coaching when their leaders: Decide consciously to make, integrate and sustain changes. Choose to leverage their staff development dollars for the greatest possible ROI by developing vs. merely training employees. Commit to expanding and updating their understanding of "leadership." Desire to create a legacy by touching the world in a meaningful way, through how they "are" in the world as much as, if not more than, what they "do" in the marketplace. Make integrity a priority and model "walking the talk" by personally embracing change from the inside out. Coaching can be highly effective in addressing situations such as: Working with a team to foster greater harmony, alignment and effectiveness. Working with individuals who may be technically proficient but who don't mesh well with others in the organization. Challenging sub-par performers to move into their potential. Dealing with organizational "trouble-makers" by addressing what lies beneath the symptoms of acting out. Updating the organization's vision and enrolling employees to support it. Improving morale via deepening respect and trust, upgrading communication and reducing stress. Integrating change: New staff, structures, vision, procedures, culture. Situations and challenges addressable by coaching include: High stress levels Reacting vs. responding Misunderstandings, selective listening and resulting resentments Employees acting out dramas or patterns from childhood in the workplace Going through the motions "on auto-pilot" or doing just enough to get by Defensiveness, blaming, finger-pointing, scapegoating Need to control, including control dramas Negativity, complaining, whining Fear or uncertainty about the future Resistance to change and passive aggressive behavior up to and including sabotage Distortion of information up to and including lying Unwillingness to take responsibility Disconnect and fragmentation in the work force resulting in kingdom-building, turf protection and infighting. Attendance problems, turnover and time management challenges Failure to follow established guidelines and procedures Manipulative behavior Failure to follow through Failure to consistently deliver or perform up to established standards and guidelines Dissatisfied customers/clients/patients Lack of trust, respect, and/or compassion "Me" or "I" focus instead of "we" Lack of cooperation between departments Traditional corporate philosophy relied on the use of training to correct problems and foster change in organizations. We now know that training alone c an fall short of creating lasting change. Coaching and Training With a standard training approach to organizational change, you can lose 70 cents of every training dollar you spend. This is because: People retain only 30% of what they hear and 40% of what they hear and see. To boost retention as high as 90%, people must hear, see and apply on a daily basis, and - Habits and patterns take a minimum of 30 days with consistent attention to reprogram. Training often uses a passive learning approach via a training event where people sit and listen to a presenter. Even with exercises and workbooks, you generally see a maximum of a 30% ROI on staff development dollars spent in this way. Why? Because this approach does not build in ongoing supervision, encouragement and reinforcement to fully integrate new skills and behaviors in a real world environment. When people sit and listen in a passive training event, measurable results - a.k.a. CHANGE - will diminish across time the farther you go from the date of the event. Remember: Training alone does not provide the across-time support to fully integrate new skills and behaviors. Often we choose to send employees to a training event because it offers the illusion of a quick-fix or gives us the sense that we are Taking Action. In our rush to feel as if we are accomplishing something by Taking Action, we may fail to note the total costs associated with training. To determine the actual costs associated with training, add Tuition + Travel + Cost of Lost Productivity for the hours employees are out of the office attending the event. Example: Let's say you send five employees to a one day workshop in a location in your local city, which eliminates travel costs and time. You still have tuition and the cost of lost productivity. For this example, let's use an average hourly wage with benefits of $25 per person and tuition of $100 per person for the all day workshop. Five employees @ $100 tuition each $    500 Five employees X 8 hours X $25/hr 1,000 Total $1,500 If you fly these employees across the country for this event, you can see how your costs increase dramatically. Either way, what matters is: What return do you get on this investment? Typically what we see in standard training scenarios is this: Information and skills that aren't immediately applied and reinforced are much more likely to be lost the farther you are from the initial training event. As more time passes, people tend to slip back into old patterns and habits, losing much of the value of the training event. Consider the additional costs to your organization as employees slip into a sense of futility that Things Won't Ever Change. This sense of futility can develop as people note the lack of change in an organization in spite of investing in training events. In the long term, without effective support and supervision to implement change, employees will lose faith in your management team and even in themselves. The negative impact on morale is immeasurable. Low morale affects your organization's productivity and profitability as people simply become dis-invested in the organization's success. At the very least, they stop caring and beyond that, accumulated frustration and anger can lead to active sabotage. To summarize: Employees fail to adopt and use new skills, concepts and behaviors when they: Don't receive reinforcement, support, encouragement and acknowledgment for the changes. Don't see the relevance to their job or the company's success. Aren't truly enrolled in the success of the organization or their department Fear change and a perceived loss of power, so they go into resistance. Valid coaching delivered by an accredited professional: Provides the across-time support to apply behaviors in the realities of daily life. Supports your team with defining their own measurables and creating the strategies to achieve those goals. Fosters accountability via the structure of coaching. Offers a relationship designed to support real change. Given the many benefits coaching can offer your organization, doesn't it make sense to use coaching to help you maximize the return on your organizational and staff development dollars? For more on what constitutes coaching, see the article What is Coaching - Really? located on the Articles page. Copyright 2005, G. L. Allen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way without specific, prior written permission from the author.   Back to Articles Page