External Coaches Research Articles

Driving organizational change with internal coaching programs: part one

PurposeThe purpose of this two part paper is to outline a new way of utilizing coaching to drive wide scale organizational change.Design/methodology/approachThe authors illustrate the various benefits to using internal coaches, flesh out the cost benefits, and highlight a range of ways that organizations can integrate coaching into their people, performance and culture frameworks. It covers training, design and implementation issues as well as looking at aligning coaching models with the organization's strategic approach. The paper draws on extensive case studies and posits some best practice principles, then addresses some of the key questions around this topic. This paper draws on interviews with over 50 internal coaches over two years, and several other research papers on this topic.FindingsIt illustrates how training leaders to be internal coaches is a more scalable, sustainable and robust approach to driving change and improving performance than hiring external coaches. Early indicators are showing significant increases in retention, engagement, productivity and performance, as well as ROI (17x), across organizations that have developed internal coaching.Research limitations/implicationsData is critical to understanding coaching impacts within organizational contexts. Thanks to those organizations using measurement, impacts to the business can be determined.Originality/valueThis positive data is significant for organizations making decisions about introducing coaching initiatives, driving organizational change or adopting a coaching culture.

Advances in research on coaching outcomes

The review gives a theoretically grounded overview over new advances of research oncoaching outcomes. In the first part general standard outcome measures and different specific methodsare presented. The second part summarises studies that investigate coaching outcomes asthe result of changes in pre-requisites or pre-conditions for coaching (e.g. change readinessand persistence of the client) and success factors in the coaching sessions, (e.g. esteem and emotional support the coach, clarification of the goals). The third part describes eight experimental and quasi-experimental studies, with and without random assignments. particularly individual coaching by external coaches, peer-coaching, self-coaching programmes and control groups. The results show that the different coaching interventions produce significant and sometimesstrong but not always expected and consistent effects. A discussion of perspectives of theory andresearch and an orientation model for future outcome studies close the contribution.

Leader coaches: Principles and issues for in-house development

More and more leaders are taking on coaching responsibilities in their organizations themselves rather than relying solely on external coaches. But leaders who are considering such coaching need to understand a number of things. Here's a primer for today's aspiring leader coaches.

Executive coaching: An outcome study.

While executive coaching continues to mushroom as a practice area, there has been little outcome research. This articles presents the results of a study that explored factors influencing the choice of a coach, executives’ reactions to working with a coach, the pros and cons of both internal and external coaches, the focus of executive coaching engagements, indications of successful coaching engagements, coaching tools executives favored, and the sustainability of coached executives’ learning and behavior change. The author also raises a question about which executives are most likely to benefit from this development resource and presents a typology for gauging this issue. ________________________________________________________________ Karol M. Wasylyshyn, Psy.D., is president of Leadership Development Forum, a management consulting firm specializing in applications of psychology in business. She is a member of the coaching faculty in The Wharton School’s Advanced Management Program, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Widener University and was appointed to the University’s Board of Trustees in 1995. Since 1982, Wasylyshyn has profiled and coached hundreds of senior executives from every global sector. She is also in clinical practice. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karol M. Wasylyshyn, 431 Chestnut Street, Pennsylvania 19106 or kwasylyshyn@erols.com.

Coaching isn't Just for Athletes

In schools all over Boston, change coaches and content coaches are offering principals and teachers the kind of professional development that research says is most effective: ongoing, in school, high quality, focused on instruction. Ms. Guiney provides the details. THE shapes on the students' papers look like puffy clouds with spindly legs, hardly the stuff of which strong foundations are built. But looks can be deceiving. Inside these airy structures, students in Helen O'Malley's fourth-grade class are placing their most precious words, the ones that will be the cornerstones of their writing adventures. The words My new neighborhood find their home inside one girl's cloud. From its protruding stick-like legs, this fourth-grader hangs other phrases to help connect her thoughts: the dance studio, where the new neighborhood is, the way it is different, the places there. Each of these is a notation designed to prompt images that will emerge in her writing. Soon she writes: moved a couple of weeks ago. I'm kind of lonely because I haven't made any new friends yet. I used to live in Dorchester and have a lot of friends there. Now I live in Roslindale. In Ms. O'Malley's room, now quieted by the industriousness of its occupants, Writers' Workshop is under way. Helen O'Malley, now in her ninth year of teaching, her first in the Boston Public Schools, welcomes whatever advice Charlotte Teplow, Everett School's content coach, can offer. With Teplow's weekly guidance and instructional modeling, Writers' Workshop has become the tool that is propelling O'Malley's students to write with enthusiasm and demonstrate steady, measurable progress. Initially I was sort of anxious because I was not quite sure what Charlotte's role was going to be in my classroom, O'Malley says. thought she was going to be there critiquing my lessons, saying to me, 'We do this, this, and this in Writers' Workshop.' And it hasn't been like that at all. It has just developed into a collegial relationship. Charlotte is there to reassure me, to guide me. She offers me suggestions, but she does so in a manner that enables me, half the time, to feel that I am coming up with these wonderful ideas. You are! Teplow responds. In schools all over Boston, external coaches like Charlotte Teplow - often former teachers with expertise in school reform (change coaches) or literacy or math (content coaches) - are offering principals and teachers the kind of professional development that research says is most effective: ongoing, in school, high quality, focused on instruction. The one-day-a-week consultants are doing everything from leading teachers through Writers' Workshop training to helping them analyze results of newly implemented formative assessments. Each coach's work is grounded in Boston's districtwide reform effort but customized to the specific learning needs of the students and the adults in each school. Superintendent Thomas Payzant's blueprint for standards-based, urban school reform aims to improve student performance by improving teaching, particularly for the estimated 30% of students who have routinely advanced in school without mastering the material. Boston's approach to whole-school improvement rests on two central strategies: 1) focus on instruction and on professional development to improve instruction; and 2) place an unwavering emphasis on helping teachers work together, make their work public, and end teacher isolation. In the process, teacher leadership emerges. Coaching and Teacher Leadership To support this kind of change, the Boston Public Schools created a new kind of professional development that integrates teachers' learning with teachers' practice, gives participants ongoing feedback, and makes these activities a whole-school, collegial endeavor. Crucial players are the coaches. They don't teach teachers. Instead, they do their work with teachers, helping them to imagine and create another reality, helping them to engage in regular, reflective discussions about instruction. …

Coaching continuous improvement in small enterprises

This paper describes the introduction of continuous improvement (CI) in three small enterprises with employees with little educational background. The approach adopted was carefully tuned to the actual situation and conditions in the firms. A key element in the approach was that facilitating the learning process of both the employees and the management was regarded as core to the continuity of the CI activities. The research suggests that, in order to create a climate of confidence, consultants hired as external coaches to support CI activities must, on the one hand, respect the owner‐manager’s need of sovereignty and the short‐term, “flexible”, style of the small enterprise. At the same time, their role is also to support the long‐term learning process. This requires these consultants to strengthen their abilities not only to cope with different and often unforeseen situations, but also to balance short‐term and long‐term issues.