How can we measure the impact of managerial coaching on the end user – the customer? Is it even possible, asks Paul Stokes, Coaching & Mentoring Research Unit (CMRU), Sheffield Business School.
At a recent coaching & mentoring research day at Sheffield Hallam University, there was an interesting discussion about evaluating coaching and mentoring work. Delegates were questioning the extent to which a coaching or mentoring programme, run within an organisation for some of its managers, could have a discernible effect on customers/end users of the organisation.
Some felt it was possible to connect changes in leaders’ behaviour following coaching interventions, to changes in how the customer or end user experiences the service. Others were sceptical about whether that was possible, given the distance between leaders and customers.
This brings into play the whole concept of creating a coaching culture (Clutterbuck & Megginson, 2005; Hawkins, 2012). Is it possible to embed coaching deeply within the values and behaviours of those who work in an organisation so that it influences the way things are done throughout?
In his review of the coaching literature, Joo (2005) puts forward a useful conceptualisation of executive coaching and its outcomes that is helpful in thinking through how progress towards a coaching culture might be developed. He distinguishes between proximal and distal outcomes for coaching as follows:
Proximal outcomes These change the behaviour of direct recipients of coaching programmes and might include self-awareness, interpersonal behavioural change and personal learning.
Distal outcomes These enhance organisational performance such as improved productivity, quality, customer service and shareholder value, increased commitment and satisfaction (retention).
Looking at the research-based literature on evaluation of coaching, there does seem to be relatively little on how the end user benefits from coaching interventions in terms of distal outcomes. Clutterbuck & Megginson (2005) and Hawkins (2012) give us some tools and frameworks for checking how embedded coaching might be in an organisation. However, this is not then overtly connected to how the customer would benefit from this change.
At the CMRU, we are working with clients who seek to understand these connections – what it means for their organisations and their coaching programmes. Our research so far suggests that, in order to gauge impact on customers/end users, it is vital that any research instrument, such as a survey, is contextualised to fit with the language and behaviours that customers can work with and understand. Our research has suggested that conventional customer satisfaction surveys may not always work because dominant stakeholders – such as researchers, leaders, managers and HR professionals – decide on the wording rather than seeking to use customer perspectives to inform what is focused on. This can mean that survey respondents struggle to offer any evidence of impact on their experience of the service they receive.
Also, our experience suggests that asking participants in a coaching programme to assess the impact on their behaviour often results in them claiming significant positive changes in their own behaviour and that of their organisation. However, it is important to temper this with data from other stakeholders before being confident in making strong claims about the effectiveness of coaching within an organisational context.
As our research progresses, we hope to be better placed to answer these questions concerning impact.
Further reading
D Clutterbuck & D Megginson, Making Coaching Work: Creating a Coaching Culture, London: CIPD, 2005
P Hawkins, Creating a Coaching Culture, Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 2012
B Joo, ‘Executive coaching: A conceptual framework from an integrative review of practice and research’, in Human Resource Development Review, 4(4), pp462-488, 2005
Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 4