Coaching Successes In Corporate America Part3

Insight on Coaching Coaching Successes in Corporate America: Part 3

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Confidential | September 8, 2008 Page 2

Coaching Successes in Corporate America Part 3 Transcript

Time Speaker Transcript

00:28 Tom Floyd Hello everyone and welcome to Insight on Coaching.

Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors and sides of the emerging professional coaching field.

I'm Tom Floyd, I'm the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting, and your host for today's show.

Well this week our topic is Coaching Successes in Corporate America.

For our listeners for who have been with us for awhile now, this is the third time we have done a show like this, and it's always one of my favorites.

On today's show, we'll be talking with professionals who've implemented coaching programs within their organizations, including ABN Amro, Booz Allen Hamilton, CNA and EDS.

Now before I introduce our guests, just a brief disclaimer for our listeners to keep in mind. And that's that the views expressed by our panelists today are their own, and may not necessarily reflect those of their respected employers.

That said, let me give you a quick run-down of who we have with us today.

First let me introduce Karol Eller. Karol is an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton serving as the Program Manager for Executive Coaching.

Karol is also a member of the executive development team which provides programs and services for the firm's senior leaders.

Welcome to the show Karol.

01:50 Karol Eller Thanks Tom.

01:52 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Jane Moran is an internal Executive Coach in her role at EDS Global Learning and Development. Jane's also the global Program Manager and professional Coach Trainer for the EDS internal ICF accredited coach training curriculum, which will have involved 80 EDS leaders from nine countries by the end of this year.

Welcome to the show Jane.

02:11 Jane Moran Thank you Tom.

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02:13 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Tracey Wick. Tracey is Managing Director of Leadership and Learning for ABN Amro's Global Market Division in the Americas where she assesses the talent, development needs of her clients and helps them create high performing teams.

Welcome to the show Tracey.

02:26 Tracey Wick Glad to be here.

02:28 Tom Floyd And our last guest, Maureen Williams is the Assistant Vice President of Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness responsible for the design and delivery of the leadership development curriculum worldwide for CNA.

Maureen's team is also responsible for CNA's executive coaching program, as well as many other leadership initiatives.

Welcome to the show Maureen.

02:46 Maureen Williams

It's my pleasure to be here.

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02:48 Tom Floyd Well as we do with each of our shows, I’d like to set the stage with some data our research team pulled together.

In a Forbes article dated January 12, 2007, writer Hannah Clark states, “Once a tiny industry, dominated by boutique firms, leadership coaches have moved into the mainstream.”

At the start of this decade back in February 2000, Fortune Magazine declared that “The hottest thing in corporate management is the executive coach--part boss, part consultant, part therapist.”

According to a 2004 survey by Executive Development Associates, Inc (EDA) 55% of corporations utilized external executive coaching as a learning methodology.

Organizations in the survey indicated an average of 52 leaders per year received coaching, spending an average of approximately $15,000 per leader.

65% of organizations report that coaching represents 1 to 15% of their total development approach. An additional 21% of organizations rank coaching as representing 16 to 30% of their development efforts.

Well to start out the conversation today, I'd like to start by asking all of you how your coaching programs got started within your organizations.

And Karol, I'd like to start with you.

What were the business drivers that really highlighted the need for coaching within Booz Allen Hamilton?

04:30 Karol Eller Yes, our coaching program started based on a recognition that there was already coaching happening that some of our leaders had been getting on their own, and they reached out to ask about having a more formal program.

So there was an effort to do an internal survey of our top tier leaders and find out who had worked with coaches and to find out how effective it had been, and at the same time we also brought in some consultants to do some external benchmarking.

As a result of some of those early efforts, we really just formalized something that was happening really in more of an ad hoc informal way.

05:13 Tom Floyd And what were some of the reasons for that?

Were you starting to hear a lot of success stories in terms of how impactful coaching had already been?

Was it some of those successes and stories that you heard that really made the organization realize “wow this is something that we should formalize?”

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05:35 Karol Eller Yes, I think that the data was showing that the people who had worked with a coach were having an overwhelmingly positive experience but there were also some things that could be done better, and they would be done better if it was a bit more organized where coaches were more carefully vetted, and there was more of an effort to establish relationships with a set number of coaches that could also in turn, learn more about the organization and the culture, and then be more effective working with our leaders.

06:10 Tom Floyd Jane, what first prompted EDS in realizing that there might be a need to have an internal coaching program within your organization?

06:18 Jane Moran Okay Tom, it was back in 2004 when I was still working for EDS in Australia, and received some funding to run a global pilot.

There was actually an enterprise wide diversity initiative that was looking at the advancement of women in the organization.

And so, I actually worked one-on-one with about 15 senior leaders in various parts of the company for six months and then measured the outcomes and their achievements and I think that sort of tangible evidence was enough to spur further investment into a corporately endorsed coaching initiative.

So it very much, we started out not necessarily by looking to get into running a coaching program of such, it was that coaching was used more as a mechanism in support of another business strategy, and in that case that strategy was diversity.

07:20 Tom Floyd Hmm, and can you tell us a little bit more about that?

How did folks see coaching as fitting within an overall diversity strategy?

07:29 Jane Moran Well what we were finding out was that it seemed that there was a bit of a gap in terms of the types of conversations that our leaders at that level were finding that they had access to.

So I think basically just in terms of people’s level of inspiration and motivation to exceed what they initially thought was possible, was something that then was seen as “hey we could actually widen the space here to have more of those types of conversations and to be using coaching as a mechanism to faciliate results on other business initiatives.”

08:18 Tom Floyd Got it. Tracey, were there similar drivers that built the case for developing an internal coaching program at ABN Amro?

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08:28 Tracey Wick Yes, I echo what's already been said.

For us, it was really around the advent of a new strategy for the global business which we called Managing for Value.

And when the executives looked at what was going to be necessary from a leadership point-of-view for the future to execute against that strategy, they had developed a whole new competency model around what that would be.

And it really took the top 200 worldwide, to make sure that they were up to the task to really take the bank where it is.

And I think some of the, while we're a very sleepy company in some ways in terms of not wanting to be in the press, I think all the drama that's coming out in the press today, kind of shows a little bit about what I'm speaking to.

And what was really interesting about it is just the level at which when we first started, it was only the top and it took like wildfire in terms of really being an effective way of getting traction with the new leadership model very quickly.

And then, therein we just cascaded it down to the next layer and the next layer so that we transformed the perception in the organization that had previously existed that coaching was only for people that were about to derail, and we really began seeing coaching as a perk and that it was definitely something that was getting people to their next career, whatever goal that might be.

09:57 Tom Floyd So in terms of how it was perceived, it was first initially perceived as more of a “fix-it” solution, but as it evolved, it became more of a personal growth and career development tool?

10:10 Tracey Wick I think so, because we hadn't done prior, to I think in '02, we hadn't really done any coaching at that level.

So when you're talking about creating a high-performance culture, we really thought coaching was a major tenant to build that culture at the executive level.

And so I think some people who had had coaches in the past, they were primarily derailers.

So yes, I think initially but we were able to nip that in the bud very quickly because of some of the other things we did to socialize a message about what we were really out to do.

10:36 Tom Floyd Maureen, anything you would add in terms of some of the drivers that really drove the need for an internal coaching program within CNA?

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Well I would certainly first echo what Karol, Jane and Tracey said and that was we had always done a lot of coaching internally, and we also had a lot of ad hoc executive coaching engagements where people who were new to the organization brought a coach with them, or had asked for a coach during a transition period.

The thing that really drove us to look very carefully at it in around '03, was around cost and oversight in terms of the professionalism and delivery of services.

Because coaching was somewhat unregulated, we didn't have high confidence that all of the coaches that people had brought in had the required skills or accreditation that would be needed.

And we also knew we were paying a great variety of services, I mean some we were paying for assessments, others were asking for the engagement rate, others it was per hour, and what we wanted to do was get control of that and create some consistency around it.

11:54 Tom Floyd What were some of the steps you took to help create that consistency?

Because that's something that I've certainly heard as well, I mean depending on the company that you're working with, or the vendor that you're working with, there's all sorts of different models out there.


What I'd like to say is that the easy way, or the nice way, would be to say that we worked with each business leader and we explained the rationale and the reason and et cetera, but what really happened was our chairman gave us a centralized budget, and the budget went to me.

So anyone who wanted to use an executive coach went through my area.

12:30 Tom Floyd Well let's go ahead and go on pause; I'm hearing the music for our first commercial break.

Stay tuned everyone, more Insight on Coaching when we return.

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15:22 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.

Today's topic is Coaching Successes in Corporate America.

With me are Karol Eller, Associate and Program Manager for Executive Coaching at Booz Allen Hamilton; Jane Moran, Executive Coach, Global Program Manager and Professional Coach Trainer at EDS; Tracey Wick, Managing Director of Leadership and Learning for ABN Amro's Global Markets Division in the Americas; and Maureen Williams, Assistant Vice President of Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness at CNA.

I’d to share some more information from another Forbes article to start out our next segment.

And this is from an article in their July 2007issue of this year.

In the article they mention a number of standout companies and their CEOs have relied heavily on talent building as a cornerstone of long-term corporate success.

Some of the examples they use:

General Electric, under Jack Welch, becoming legendary for grooming the next generation of leadership;

Honeywell International thrived under CEO Larry Bossidy who emphasized talent development and succession planning as a core process.

The article goes on to say that many well-known companies with high profile CEOs are poised for a continuation of their recent success because of their emphasis on building talent internally.

Some of those companies include IBM, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and United Technologies.

I'd like to start out this next segment by talking a bit more about how the internal coaching programs within your organizations really tie into your overall leadership development strategies.

And Maureen, I want to go ahead and start with you, can you tell us a little bit about how coaching fits within your overall leadership development strategy?

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Yes, first of all, what we have is a couple processes in place that link directly to executive coaching.

First is our leadership development program, meaning executive coaching is actually part of the curriculum and it may be for a short period of time which might be a total of say six or eight hours to review competencies and a 360 assessment against those competencies.

And it could be all the way through a year long coaching engagement.

We also link it with performance management, meaning anybody who's being coached, it should be on their development plan, not because it's a derailer or a negative, but rather we're positioning them for expanded roles and responsibilities, or it could be in fact a performance issue.

But more than likely, it is somebody who's being groomed for something else.

And we also directly tie it with our, what we refer to as Talent Review Process which is our succession planning.

So people who've been identified as a hi-po or a high potential, we may give them an executive coach because we know what we're preparing them for and we want to prepare them for it as appropriately as possible.

18:13 Tom Floyd Do all the coaches you use have a really good understanding in advance of the corporate culture, the environment and what all of the competencies folks are measured against really mean?


Yes. What we do is a certification program for all our executive coaches.

So we use a major consulting firm for some international engagements that are hard to manage locally, as well as a cadre of internal - or external executive coaches that are across the country.

What they have to do though first, is once a year, we have a certification program where they go through a day long or couple hour training program.

They go through our assessments, they understand our business issues, and they hear presentations by some of our executives about what the current issues are for '08 or what we're positioning for '08.

And they also use our internally developed 360.

19:14 Tom Floyd How long does it typically take to make it through the certification process?

Is it a couple weeks? Is it a month?

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Oh no, no.

Before we would hire anybody as an executive coach, we look to see what their background is.

We want people with business acumen, who've had real experience in the line.

We're not looking for straight academics.

However, we are looking then for someone who has coaching certification.

So that might be through something like the International Coaching Federation, but more than that, we're looking at people who've also had either a Masters or a PhD in a related type field.

And we also look for someone who's had some significant experience coaching already.

19:57 Tom Floyd Karol, what would you add?

How does coaching fit within the overall leadership and development strategy at Booz Allen Hamilton?

20:05 Karol Eller Let me echo, we actually look for very similar things in terms of the external coaches that we partner with to deliver coaching, we want them to have coaching specific training certification, but often advanced degrees in a related field.

And real professional experience, particularly if it's within professional services since we're a consulting firm.

As far as how it fits in we are — I would say right around that time that this program was really kind of getting formalized and everything, we also were adjusting or coming out with competency models and an official set of core values.

So part of the competency model is around coaching and mentoring.

So we're using coaching somewhat as helping instill those sorts of behaviors in our own leaders and managers.

And we also use the coaching in conjunction with other leadership programs, so for example, we have a program - whether they're promoted or newly hired into the first level that is really considered a leader at Booz Allen, they participate in an off-site program, and in that program each participant meets with a coach one-on-one for some coaching.

And then also, we are now offering the option that they can have some subsequent sessions with that coach.

So that's something that really, for those kind of entry leaders, provides opportunities and we do similar things in other programs.

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21:49 Tom Floyd And coaching within Booz Allen Hamilton, is it only for people who are at a certain grade level or certain title?

21:58 Karol Eller It's certainly positioned that way, although one thing that's maybe a little bit different for most of the coaching we're doing is that it's funded or at least partially funded by the teams who are going to be having the coaches work with their leaders.

22:16 Tom Floyd Ah.

22:17 Karol Eller So it's also somewhat of a joint management or decision with the leaders in that team as well.

But I think what we like about that model is that then the top leaders in those teams also feel some sense of ownership because I think it's important for managers to be engaged to some degree in the coaching process.

Of course not violating confidentiality, but certainly to provide the organizational perspective and what they're looking for as far as outcomes.

22:55 Tom Floyd In terms of when you say the manager is engaged, that's come up on some of our shows in the past too.

Are they typically just involved in the initial conversation between the employee and the coach?

Are they involved in a check-back process throughout the engagement?

23:09 Karol Eller They’re involved both initially and during the engagement, and we've also for the past couple of years, when we do follow up evaluations, the individual's manager is asked to do an evaluation as well.

Not just the individual who worked with the coach.

23:32 Tom Floyd So after x-amount of time, you're really trying to see if their behavior has changed?

23:38 Karol Eller Yes.

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23:40 Tom Floyd Got it.

23:42 Jane Moran Karol, it's Jane here from EDS, that's interesting because do you find that actually increases accountability then on behalf of the coachee, because the manager is then very aware of the engagement?

23:51 Karol Eller I think so. I think though more, it increases the accountability on the manager, more than the coachee.

23:58 Jane Moran Mm-hmm.

24:00 Karol Eller I think the coachee, really because they're going through the direct experience, they may have some trepidation in the beginning but once they get going, I think they really see how wonderful this is.

24:14 Jane Moran It sound like it raises more visibility of your program.

24:18 Karol Eller And it raises the importance that that individual needs the support of other people around them, because they are not going to keep their coach forever.

24:27 Jane Moran Yes, great stuff.

24:29 Tom Floyd Definitely.

Tracey, can you tell us a little bit about how ABN Amro has tied coaching within the organization into things like competencies and to your overall performance management system?

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24:39 Tracey Wick Yes. Well I would echo those that Jane and Maureen have said.

I think that there's another aspect to it, which I think can be - depending on what organization you're from - I think it can be an interesting dynamic, which is the role of the HR Advisor or the business partner with someone like myself who's the coaching program manager, in coming up with the strategies, the coaching program itself and then work to execute it.

And why I bring that up is because when we do engage the managers; we do a certification program to make sure that the cadres of coaches are on the page that we need them to be on.

And it's really around the model of who's a leader at ABN Amro, we really need to have them be aware that this is not just about — we're coaching people with a two-way particular leadership sort of frame of mind that we're looking for, to take us into where the strategy is headed which is a very distinct skill set that we're looking for in our coaches.

So in addition to having business acumen and financial services experience and yes, coaching certification, we definitely want to have that added piece.

And we have a whole model that we hired an external consulting firm to do for us which has leadership framework competency models at the top and then the next layer down.

So we definitely are concerned about that, and we also have quarterly meetings with the coaches to check in.

And what I'm looking for is themes across the organization.

And this is at the executive level, and then how we map that into the next layer down is we begin to think “well okay, what are the top 200 people struggling with?”

Or is there a theme about drive to win, for example, which is one our competencies, or is it about influencing others?

Like can we say that, and if not, then we look and say “okay, what are we looking to do so that the people that are at the top see where they are now, I guess the next layer down, we embed that into our leadership development programs for their direct reports.

And again, it is like I believe Maureen said, we offer coaching in the leadership development program for leaders, not just the top, but pretty much across all levels, all the way down to Vice President.

So it's definitely a mechanism that the organization believes in whole heartedly that coaching, if you can't coach, you really can't lead.

And if you can't lead, we're not going to execute on what we're out to accomplish.

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27:15 Tom Floyd So it's really like it's looking at coaching as both an intervention and tool to help people grow, but also as a skill that leaders need to successfully grow those on their team as well?

27:27 Tracey Wick Absolutely. Yes.

27:29 Tom Floyd Well I'm hearing the music for our next break, let's go ahead and go on pause.

Stay tuned everyone, more about Coaching Successes in Corporate America when we return.

30:23 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I'm Tom Floyd.


And with me are Karol Eller from Booz Allen Hamilton; Jane Moran from EDS; Tracey Wick from ABN Amro; and Maureen Williams from CNA.

I want to spend some time now talking a bit about any challenges or obstacles that each of you encountered when you introduced coaching programs within your organizations.

And Jane, let's start with you.

Can you tell us a little bit about any challenges or obstacles you encountered when the program was first introduced?

30:57 Jane Moran Yes, Tom. I can't remember who actually mentioned it about 15 minutes ago, but we did find that we came up against an inherited definition of coaching that we sort of needed to unravel quite quickly and almost relaunch what we thought the definition of coaching needed to be to move in the direction that we were heading.

So in our organization, coaching is all about facilitating positive change, so we had to set about looking at and demystifying what coaching isn't, as well as what coaching is.

So that was one of the first things.

31:38 Tracey Wick That was me, Tom. That was Tracey about the derailer.

But the other thing we encountered, which was that first piece, was the derailer concept of what coaching was, so we really had to go out of our way to say “okay this is what coaching is, and this is what coaching is not.”

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31:57 Jane Moran Exactly.

31:59 Tracey Wick Yes, and then the other thing though, which I'd be curious to hear from others because I think we're all working in global businesses is there was also a — well ABN Amro does business in many countries and is really not just one culture.

So there wasn't this notion of what coaching is within a particular country, in a particular business and we had to really do some work to map that onto what we were really talking about, because we were looking 30,000 feet up as we're developing a coaching culture for initially the top executives, but really for the entire organization.

And that was something that was quite challenging, particularly because the bank was going through so many strategic changes, so there was a lot of work to be done around the whole notion of where were we really going with this program. At least initially.

32:51 Jane Moran Yes Tracey, and what we found too, was also just what people thought in terms of who gets a coach.

So we very much too, have had to sort of rebrand coaching as something that is a way of retaining our best and brightest leaders and future leaders.

So using it as a recognition mechanism if you like and I think that's as we've developed that critical mass of coaching engagements and success stories.

That's very much taken on, again as one of you said, like wildfire.

It's a feeling of “I want what they're getting.”

33:25 Karol Eller This is Karol, I've occasionally come across pockets or individuals, where there's that sense of it's some kind of remedial fix.

But then I've also seen it swing to now as everyone is putting in development plans and things, oh well get them a coach.

And it's not really necessarily, or certainly not an executive coaching or leadership coaching kind of a situation, but they've swung to “well just get them a coach.”

And it's like, “well that's not necessarily the right answer for everything either.”

We need to step back and look at what's the appropriate intervention or learning opportunity for each situation.

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34:10 Tom Floyd When I hear some of our clients say that phrase alone, “let's get them a coach,” that causes me to wonder if they might be thinking of coaching in the wrong way.

Just hearing that question even posed that way.

34:24 Karol Eller Right and one of the ways that we were able to stop some of that from happening was the partnership that I had with my HR team and the business partners, because we aligned on the hurdles, if you will.

We made them rather high for people to get coaches because not so much that we were — yes, which I believe Jane was just describing which was the acknowledgement that you're a high performer so here's something that we're going to give you as sort of a perk.

But it was really because what we found is that it took several conversations that were really meaningful conversations to contract around what we really doing here.

And you're right, because some people would be like “oh let's get him a coach.”

And once we understood and could help the managers and the coachees understand well that’s not really what we're trying to do here, then it was a no brainer, but it's not something that they intuitively all know because they're business people, they're not skilled in the way that we are in this conversation.


One of the things, this is Maureen, that we certainly did when we centralized the coaching program is we also did some internal development for all our people managers, reminding them that essentially it is the managers role to do much of the coaching.

So when we would see "get an executive coach", which we certainly saw as well, so Karol, Jane and Tracey - we did the exact same thing, is that we'd also say now wait a minute, the manager not only has to be involved, but which of these things should the manager actually be coaching on?

And we were also really careful at looking at people who'd say; “well I really want approval for an extension of a coaching engagement. I've been working with this person three years, four years,” which a huge bell goes off saying, “what is going to be accomplished in the next year that wasn't accomplished in the last three or four years?”

And so we really looked at six months or one year commitments and then we'd have to really look at it very seriously to see why we'd extend that coaching engagement.

36:28 Tom Floyd What are some of the steps all of you have taken to make sure that, in terms of managers acting as a coach and coaching an employee like most good managers would do - how are you ensuring that they're doing that consistently or in the way that you want them to?

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36:39 Jane Moran Tom, its Jane here.

Straight away what comes up for me is we've had a two-pronged approach at EDS globally.

We've never set out to coach everyone in the organization.

We have a leadership basis of about 10,000 people, so what we've done is we have coaching skills for leaders workshop which seeks to equip our leaders with a coaching approach to the way they communicate so that we have a shared vocabulary around what coaching sounds like.

And then at the same time, our professional coaches that are having the one-on-one coaching engagements formally also use that same methodology in a more formal way.

So what we've built now is quite a consistent approach with what we call a brain-based approach where we're all sort of sounding in the same way, so singing to the same tune, sort of speak, and that's really helped things significantly in terms of enforcing that desired definition and culture around coaching.

37:40 Tom Floyd Anybody else with that?

37:43 Tracey Wick Well what we did at ABN Amro, we even embedded the notion of coaching into a whole series of career development workshops where we'd deal with the employees first about preparing them to be coached, if you will.

Then did a one day certification for the managers about how do you coach, and then a follow up session where the manager and the employees would come together.

And then we did small groups, sort of conference calls for whoever would want to join to see what's happening there.

In each of these stages, these are the types of questions you can ask, here's what we mean by coaching and really we're trying to be as rigorous as possible.

It was all linked into the performance management system so that one was sort of mirroring the other.

I still think that there are some coaches, some managers I should say, who are great coaches or who take to this and you can train them and become great coaches.

And then there are some that aren't.

So I think that the struggle we still have is in the consistency and really the quality of this, because I think despite some of our efforts its still pretty - I wouldn't say all over the map - but it's definitely a lot better then it was five years ago.

But we do still have a long way to go where I think what I would say is we're a model of a coaching culture.

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At CNA what we've done is we've put it into the performance expectations of people managers to do the coaching, and we not only track it in terms of performance assessment but we put specific questions on our all employee survey and we put it under the engagement category.

And the questions are:

Are you getting coaching from your boss?

Do you have career direction?

Do you have somebody to go to answer whatever?

And we have seen those every year increase.

So we feel comfortable that by embedding it in a required program that all people managers must take, and putting it on the performance management process or in it, then we are pretty well assured that that is what is contributing to the success of those other survey numbers.

40:12 Tom Floyd So you're able to use some of that data to both find out, for the individual getting coached, how their performance and behavior is evolving, and for the managers though it sounds like you're also able to get some perspective on whether they are participating or being involved in the coaching process too.


Right. We track the difference in a 360 assessment, so has coaching increased among managers, has it increased, but then we also track this on each employee’s engagement, or within all employee individual surveys, those questions that say “does your manager provide coaching to you?”

And we're really able to get a sense of whether it's being embedded throughout the organization.

40:51 Jane Moran Wow that's great.

40:53 Karol Eller This is Karol, I think it was maybe the follow on to some of Tracey's comments.

We've recently had a whole campaign happen around the career development area and coaching for career development and trying to actually provide all of the tools and support that managers could use so they will start having more conversations with their staff around just their careers and how it's going, and where they want to go, because it isn't necessarily something, I mean I agree with the comments about some people just naturally take to it and others just need something fairly simple and kind of ready to use, and its neat for me to walk around the halls and see people have these resources and tip cards and things like that tacked up around their desk.

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41:56 Tom Floyd So if each of you can summarize the best way to position and really introduce the program to make sure it's perceived the right way by leaders, by managers, by the folks doing it, and by the organization as a whole, what would you say to folks out there are really the key things to emphasize?

42:12 Jane Moran It's Jane here, I guess what comes up is first of all thinking back to how successfully we were able to attach coaching to something that is a business initiative or strategy that’s already high profile and highly visible.

And then just using the actual coaching philosophy around repetition and follow up, and just walking the talk ourselves, people can see there's something good, there's something positive and something contagious about coaching that I want to know more about.

42:45 Tom Floyd Anything that anybody else would add?


What I would add is that we would embed it in all of our on-going development processes.

So from account review, succession planning, leadership curriculum, et cetera.

43:02 Tracey Wick The only other thing, this is Tracey, that I would add is I think that what Jane said initially is really critical, it has to resonate for the people and the business that okay how is this going to help them and help their business.

But one of the things that we also did was, we called it sharing our successes.

So we had a brochure printed up globally which was about key people who would be speaking out openly about their experience with a coach and the difference that it actually made, and doing just what she was describing, which would be furthering their business or their leadership capabilities within the business.

43:39 Tom Floyd Excellent!

43:40 Jane Moran Fantastic.

43:41 Tracey Wick Yes, you’ve got to have the communications team teed up to work with you , and that was one example but we had a whole strategy around it.

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43:47 Tom Floyd It's almost like the communication and change management around the program itself are two of the most critical things.

43:51 Tracey Wick Yes, and it helped that there were a few people, we really thought about it globally and of course I was only responsible for the North American piece, but what we really looked at were two things.

Either people that everyone respected, because again if we're going back to the whole notion of derailment or changing people's perceptions of what coaching meant, we wanted people that were either very well regarded by the entire organization or people that were extremely skeptical that would be, “no way I don't need this,” kind of people who then came out and said, “well in fact initially I was skeptical but then when I got into it and understood what they were saying, here's what happened.”

So those are both very compelling, the divergent, convergent kind of views of what we were out to do that were, I think, very powerful.

44:36 Tom Floyd Well let's go ahead and go on pause.

I'm hearing the music for our next commercial break.

Stay tuned everyone, more from Insight on Coaching when we return.

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47:13 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I'm Tom Floyd.


And with me are Karol Eller from Booz Allen Hamilton; Jane Moran from EDS; Tracey Wick from ABN Amro; and Maureen Williams from CNA.

For our last segment, I want to talk about the benefits some of you are really experiencing from having a coaching program internally.

One thing I saw from the International Coaching Federation was a survey, it was back in '99, on coaching in Corporate America.

And some of the primary benefits of coaching listed included:

Improved individual performance

Bottom line results including profit, client service, and competitiveness

Development of people for the next level

Confidence raising

Skills and self-empowerment

Goal achievement

Relationship improvement

And retention.

Karol, how true do some of these benefits ring to you?

Are these some of the same benefits Booz Allen Hamilton is experiencing as well?

48:11 Karol Eller Some yes, some no.

I think what is interesting from the different evaluations that we've been doing in the past couple years is that I think people went into it with a thought that they were going to work on a particular lack of confidence or fear, and they saw that they were hoping to get this individual benefit and actually the two things that always came out on top as being the most impacted by the coaching were teamwork and satisfaction of others on their team.

And that in the kind of business we're in where relationships are everything, that is really key.

So I think, I don't know that they anticipated that it would have such a beneficial effect on other people around them in those relationships, not just on them as individual leaders.

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49:11 Tom Floyd So it didn't just improve their own self growth, it improved the relationships they actually had with colleagues, with their managers, with stakeholders, and other people?

49:18 Karol Eller Yes.

49:20 Tom Floyd That’s terrific.

49:21 Karol Eller Those usually were the highest rated areas.

49:24 Tom Floyd Jane, what are some of the benefits you've seen within EDS?

49:28 Jane Moran Yes, I have to echo, I think it was Karol, that in terms of often our leaders don't know what they don't know.

So yes, they may have a certain goal or idea about what they want to focus on, and then we notice a switch from the doing to actually how they're being.

And yes, I would have to agree with, it's almost a surprise that the impact then has that greater reach than they initially anticipated and how they're relating to the client, to their peers, to their teams.

Huge leaps are made.

And also of course, if we're providing coaching as these leaders are coming out of their training programs, just retention and utilization of knowledge and new skills increases also.

Those two particular areas.

50:15 Tom Floyd Maureen, can you tell us a little bit about how you've measured the ROI?

Or the overall return on investment or success that CNA has experienced around coaching?

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What we've done is we've implemented a couple things.

One is we look at an employee’s progression through succession planning or again what we refer to as Talent Review, and we try to attribute whether their movement is attributable to coaching.

Now we use a third party, an assessment firm to do the beginning, mid, and at the end, and then about six months out an assessment to say, “what is the result of the coaching engagement? What has changed? What is the percentage of change?”

And also to try to attribute a dollar amount to it, and there's kind of a sophisticated formula that goes into attributing a dollar amount.

So we certainly use that, and we also have surveys that go out to not only the manager and the employee, but to the coach.

And the coach assigns a dollar amount in terms of what they think has changed as a result of it.

And we do use a third party to do that because it's a pretty sophisticated process.

51:31 Tom Floyd What are some of the factors, just out of curiosity, when you determine that dollar amount that its compared against?

What are some of the other things that go into the equation?


Right. It might be turn-over, if a manager is experiencing significant turn-over and that has been reduced, there's a certain dollar amount there.

The retention of key talent, so as you look at your hi-po's, how many of them have chosen to stay in the company and what was the trend prior to that for those people in the organization?

You could be looking at the performance ratings of individuals, and in other cases it might be retention of key lines of business or pieces of business that are very much relationship based.

Because executive coaching, I think, as Jane and Karol were both saying is very behavioral, and a lot of times you promote people who are technical subject matter experts, but don't necessarily have the behavioral skills.

And so sometimes a piece of business is lost just because of the person's low, if you will, emotional intelligence.

And we're able to track that from business results.

52:34 Tom Floyd Interesting, that's great. Tracey, anything that you would add around ROI?

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52:38 Tracey Wick We do the exact same thing.

We hired a third party individual who actually has experience with benchmarking to come in and benchmark both, and it was more just from my point-of-view than North American program I was running, not globally.

And I think there's not much I would add to it, I just agree with her.

We were looking at all these different variables, key businesses, retention of key businesses, business that they got that they probably wouldn't have had they not gone through the coaching, how many people on their team got promoted.

The whole same kind of lens we were looking from.

What I would say then is that we also tried to look at the next layer down, which would be the result of what happened with the one day coaching certification that the manager's one layer below the executives went through, and what happened with their businesses.

That was a little bit interesting because there's been a lot of different strategy changes within the organization over the last several years as the coaching program was being rolled out.

And I think that the ROI from the executives’ point-of-view is much easier to quantify than it was the next layer down, which would make sense because they were people that had the tactical hats on, executing against the strategy.

So it was a little bit more difficult to put an ROI against some of the businesses that they ran, because there had been so many changes they felt were outside of their control.

54:07 Tom Floyd Well we've got about 30 seconds left here before we wrap up, and Karol last question, for the companies out there who are thinking about implementing an internal coaching program, in 30 minutes or less, what's your bottom line on top advice so to speak?

54:25 Karol Eller I think having an end in mind right from the start, so the sooner they think about what they want to achieve from it, how they're going to communicate that, who their stakeholders are going to be, and how they're going to get champions around that is just critical.

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54:46 Tom Floyd Well huge thank you to the four of you.

And as always big thank you to our listeners as well.

For more information about our show you can of course look us up right here on the Voice America Business Channel.

You can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz, and don't forget you can access the podcast version of our show in Apple iTunes as well.

Thanks everyone, we'll see you next week.

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