Great Internal Coaches Are Made, Not Born
What should you consider in the selection and development of your internal coaches?
It takes time and effort to build an effective internal coaching team – but as more companies have discovered it can be time well spent. Without doubt, internal coaches can deliver the same level of professionalism, quality and results as external coaches.
Yet for the business benefits to be realised, internal coaches need to be carefully selected and properly supported.
Choosing your internal coaches
Three challenges in particular can influence the success of your internal coaching. The first challenge is where to look in your business for the best coaches. Is it better to choose HR professionals or senior business leaders to be coaches?
While it is true to say that anyone can be a good coach given the right skills, experience and attitude, we think business leaders can be more effective as internal coaches.
Choosing the best coaches is all about trust and credibility. Internal coaches that come from an HR background have access to sensitive information like succession plans and this can undermine their ability to gain the full trust of the coachee.
Instead, coachees will often prefer to be coached by someone with a similar level of seniority and business experience. This provides the credibility and mutual respect required for a highly productive coaching relationship. Inviting senior business leaders to be part of your internal coaching team also sends a strong message across your company that you endorse coaching at the highest level.
Value internal coaches
The second challenge focuses on ensuring internal coaching is highly valued. Business leaders need to balance their coaching responsibilities with other priorities and coaching can be seen as less important than other commitments.
Yet to be effective, coaching must be valued and sustained. This is why some professional services firms consider an hour’s internal coaching to be equivalent to the same time chargeable to an external client.
To increase the value of your coaching further, make sure coaching is recognised and rewarded as part of the coach’s performance and appraisal process.
Internal coaches are not consultants
In our experience, the biggest challenge encountered by internal coaches is where to draw the line between coaching and consulting.
Senior leaders spend much of their professional life acting as experienced consultants tasked with overcoming problems and making things happen. By contrast, successful coaching should not offer solutions but ask insightful questions. In this way, the coachee gets to explore their own ideas and discover new strengths.
Without appropriate supervision however, coach and coachee can fall too easily into familiar patterns of consulting which can be demotivating for the coachee. Understanding the difference between consulting and coaching is perhaps the most important skill that can be learned by an internal coach.
It is one of the reasons why your coaches should be observed regularly by a coaching expert through one-to-one supervision and quarterly reviews. This ensures that the right coaching skills are developed and that any damaging habits that may have formed are identified and addressed.
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About Cote Consultants
Cote Consultants is a coaching, leadership and performance improvement firm based in central London. We work with any organisation that wants to drive sustainable growth in performance and capital through the personal and professional development of its most promising leaders and teams.
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Posted in: Internal coaching