How does business coaching work?
Business coaching relationships are custom designed to match individual goals and objectives. A typical set of stages could look like this for an external business coaching program***:
Step 1: Contracting or Intake Stage.
Meetings typically occur between the client*, coachee** and the coach to discuss business coaching services and to define the strategic business context. These one or two contracting open dialogues set the stage for a solid business coaching process. Successful business coaching relationships require trust, safety, honesty, support, challenge and high-quality feedback.Once all key parties (client, coachee, coach) are ready to move forward, these contracting objectives including clearly defined processes, roles, responsibilities and expectations are typically formalized into several documents including a Business Coaching Agreement and Confidentiality Agreement.
Step 2: Information Gathering and Debriefing Stage.
Appropriate business and organizational information is first gathered and reviewed by the coach. Typical information includes personnel file, organizational values and principles, mission and vision, ethical statements, organizational charts (formal and informal), annual reports, policies and procedures, internal correspondence, operating plans, product literature, analyst’s reports, and public files.Your business and/or organization is a complex system. Thus, business coaches can use a variety of information gathering tools and assessments to assist them:
These are custom designed interviews with key stakeholders to specifically target the coachee’s business issues.
This is one of our most powerful information gathering tools. Business coaches are trained competent observers. The business coach may recommend observing the coachee in certain business contexts in order to assess how he or she interacts with others and manages his or her working environment. Remember, business coaching is about facilitating behavioral shifts that result in enhanced performance. Seeing the coachee in action allows the business coach to better understand the coachee and how he or she impacts others.
The business coach and coachee will discuss what type of additional assessments are appropriate given your particular goals and objectives. This phase can take anywhere from one to several days or even weeks depending upon the types of assessments used.In general terms, expect that information gathering tools and assessments will almost certainly include the coachee’s interpersonal, communication and leadership styles; emotional and attitude management; and physical comportment.
Step 3: Feedback Stage.
Following each key information gathering stage or assessment, the coachee will receive verbal, written and/or audio feedback. A discussion will establish the purpose of each information gathering stage and/or assessment, and when and how feedback is to be delivered.Step 4: Planning and Active Coaching Stage.
Equipped with powerful baseline data from these information gathering stages and assessments, the business coach and coachee can now diagnose intelligently what needs to be done next—at least in broadest terms—to work towards the establishment of significant goals and an action-results development plan.Step 5: Reassessment Coaching Stage.
A reassessment phase every agreed upon number of months consists of an abridged version of the initial assessment and allows the business coach to evaluate, refine and enhance the coaching program. The results of this reassessment are shared with identified organizational change partners to help fortify the coachee’s change initiatives and ensure business or organizational alignment.Step 6: Final Evaluation Coaching Stage.
Towards the end of the business coaching program, the business coach and the coachee identify suitable evaluation processes (such as‚ shadow coaching, interviews with key stakeholders) to provide a final measure of the extent to which the goals have been met and what impact the accomplishment of these goals has had on the coachee and the business or organization. An evaluation of the business coach and the program is also conducted.Formalized feedback is provided to the executive leadership only if this is applicable and was agreed upon during the contracting phase of the business coaching program.
Step 7: Follow-on Coaching Stage.
In the final session, the business coach and coachee discuss next steps. Follow-on business coaching is often suitable to further support and reinforce the learning and new behaviors that have been established.Alternatively, the business coach may work with the coachee to create a game plan that the coachee implements on his or her own with the assistance of other business or organizational partners to help ensure permanent positive behavioral change and sustained success.
