Coaching Services

Organizational Coaching Services: Customized Solutions

For organizations seeking coaching support for multiple staff members, we offer a strategic approach to managing multiple coaching engagements that allows us to optimize service through a single point of contact by providing:

  • Consultation on matching coaches to clients;
  • Consistent processes for engagements, i.e. clear goals for the engagement, check-in process with client’s manager, and alignment with organizational goals;
  • Recommendations to optimize success of engagements; and
  • The ability to address problems quickly and efficiently

 

Coaching services with The Learning Advantage's Sandra Mobley

 

In addition to being coaches ourselves, we have developed and led internal coaching functions within large organizations, and we can help clients bring that capability in house, if appropriate. In all our coaching services we always keep foremost in mind our clients’ needs and incorporating best practices in managing the coaching program throughout its phases. We are skilled at assessing fit, working with coaches to increase learning and consistency, and serving in a leadership role to detectand intervene in problems early when can they be most easily addressed.

Many issues can arise in an Organizational Coaching function. Lack of engagement or commitment by the client, lack of stakeholder support for the client, mismatch between coach and client, inconsistent coaching approaches, difficulty showing the value of coaching (metrics) — these are all challenges we have encountered and developed methods to solve, with an emphasis on staying close to the organization and the coaching team. For example, we hold regularly scheduled teleconferences with the coaches assigned to each client organization. This forum is used to accomplish a number of goals: 1) deliver consistent messages to the coaches from the client organization or from our organization, thereby keeping everyone apprised of changes that may affect their clients; 2) identify themes that may arise among clients and exchange lessons learned and best practices for addressing them; 3) build a common community among the coaches serving the organization, so they present a uniform voice, convey information consistently and support each other, and 4) identify high-level themes to communicate back to the client organization.

At the tactical level, we have in-depth knowledge of the skill sets and personalities of our coaches and have developed templates and questionnaires that help us match coaches to organization members. By using this approach to determine key goals and needs, we have achieved a 100% success rate in assigning the right coaches to the right clients. However, we are always open to whatever preferred approach and coaching process the client organization may be more comfortable with.

And in all large organization programs, we know the importance of tightly managing the administrative and accounting aspects. Our program manager is adept at creating spreadsheets to show the amount of spend per engagement at any time. We pride ourselves on billing processes that are timely and accurate.
 

Case in Point: Mobilizing coaches for flexible, consistent support

A financial services organization decided to outsource its coaching function. Working at the vice presidents and above level, our team of eighteen coaches provided executive coaching for over 35 executives over a three-year period. We worked closely with internal staff to ensure effective matching, defining individual development plan forms, consistent coaching procedures, and proper invoicing processes. In addition to providing coaches for individual support, we identified common themes across the coaching clients and were asked to provide training and development courses for areas such as increasing staff engagement, effective delegation, and time and stress management. Based on such metrics as goal attainment and promotion, all our coaching engagements were deemed successful. Internal staff reported that working with us increased the consistency and ease of providing coaching services.