What draws organisations to use internal or external coaching, and how committed are they to these? asks Clive Mann, in the first of a series of articles highlighting themes emerging from the 6th Ridler Report, illustrating innovation and best practice with case studies
Some 73 per cent of the large organisations surveyed for the latest Ridler Report expect to increase their spending on coaching over the next two years.
The 6th Ridler Report, published last month (October), highlights key trends in the use of coaching in large organisations, offering organisational sponsors of coaching data to benchmark their coaching strategy with other organisations.
As with previous Ridler Reports, quantitative and qualitative data is collected exclusively from organisations that use coaching (rather than from external coaches). Some 105 blue chip organisations were surveyed, including: BBC, Clifford Chance, Deloitte, GSK, Johnson Matthey, Lloyds Banking Group, Microsoft, NHS, ScottishPower and TNT.
The latest Ridler Report shows 39 per cent of coaching hours delivered are currently one-to-one internal coaching and 42 per cent one-to-one external coaching. Some 70 per cent of organisations currently have an internal coaching capability and 20 per cent of organisations are planning to introduce internal coaching.
Over the next two years, 57 per cent of organisations will increase their use of one-to-one external coaching and 75 per cent will increase their one-to-one internal coaching.
Organisations are finding compelling and different reasons for balancing their investment in these two main types of coaching.
The drivers of organisations’ investment in internal coaching capability include its contribution to the broader development of a coaching culture, its role as an accessible centre of excellence for coaching which the organisation can draw on and widening the availability of coaching to less senior executives who have not traditionally had access to coaching.
The CBRE UK case study from the Ridler Report illustrates some of the reasons why external coaching is thriving alongside internal coaching. CBRE has selected external coaching for its senior leaders because of external coaches’ diverse experience of coaching in a variety of different businesses and because its senior leaders are more ready to share confidential business and personal information with an external coach than an internal coach.
Future articles will draw from the 6th Ridler Report’s analysis of data on coaching evaluation, internal and external coaching, team coaching, organisations’ use of chemistry meetings, remote coaching, group coaching, supervision, fees for external coaches and accreditation, sharing case studies, including E.ON’s advanced framework for evaluating coaching and Rentokil Initial’s use of group coaching to instil a coaching culture.
- Next issue: remote coaching, featuring Standard Chartered
- Clive Mann is the author of the 6th Ridler Report and managing director of the executive coaching practice, Ridler & Co
What do you think about the Ridler Report?
- “It is the voice of organisational sponsors of coaching, providing an invaluable guide to the evolving pattern of coaching practice in large organisations”
Professor David Megginson, joint founder of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council
- “It is the world’s leading source of insight into current and future trends in executive coaching”
Doug Ready, president of the International Consortium for Executive Development Research