Looking again at the survey summary from which I quoted yesterday (by DBM in partnership with the Human Capital Institute), I was curious to see what the numbers suggest about when Executive Coaching has the greatest impact. They came out as follows:

• Top place with 29% of respondents comes grooming high potential employees;
• 28% of respondents cite helping capable executives achieve higher performance;
• 8% of respondents cite enhancing team effectiveness;
• 5% of respondents cite addressing short-term, targeted situations;
• 5% of respondents cite onboarding newly hired or promoted executives; and
• 3% cite guiding career decisions.

It’s stiking to me that the first two circumstances are cited by 57% of respondents as those in which Executive Coaching has the highest impact and that both are concerned with – if I can put it this way – taking good people and helping them to become even better.

It’s also interesting to notice that this does not correlate with the reasons organisations commission coaching, with addressing derailing behaviours coming joint first with helping capable executives achieve higher performance. Together, these account for 36% of responses. Only 8% of respondents cite onboarding newly hired and promoted executives as the main reason for commissioning coaching.

It would be easy to conclude that investing in coaching to help address derailing behaviors is of limited effectiveness. However the figures don’t seem to support this – 18% of respondents cite this as the number one reason for commissioning coaching and 22% of respondents cite it as the circumstance in which Executive Coaching has the greatest impact.

By contrast, it does seem that the benefits of using Executive Coaching to groom high potential employees are generally underestimated in the commissioning process, with 16% of respondents citing this as the number one reason for commissioning coaching compared to 29% citing this as the circumstance in which coaching has the greatest impact.

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