Time flies, as they say, and it seems quite a long time since I wrote the first part of this series of blogposts on how to set up an internal coaching network (finding people who make the time, not just those who have the time).
In this part I’ll cover some of the arguments that I use to frame the costs of training and maintaining the network and how to show the value for money and return on investment in a field in which it’s not always easy to pin those things down (and which I believe has much wider impact than even the impressive figures from the research that has been carried out will tend to show).
In a nutshell I’m of the opinion that the training more than pays for itself in the course of the year that it usually takes. Typical costs for coaching training (ILM level 5, as I outlined in my previous blog) is now around £1700 per person (although the window for quality training does stretch from £1500-2000 ish (+VAT). As part of that training the nascent coachee will typically have to undertake something in the region of 18 hours of documented practice in order to qualify (often more).
Now, qualified coaching from someone who has attained the ILM5 will typically cost upwards of £250 per hour, which would cost the business around £4500 to bring in externally. I know, I know that it’s not fair to compare people in training with qualified and experienced coaches, in terms of cost, or the value they provide – however, I do think that with added and ongoing support of the coaches during the training it would be fair to say that you’d get the equivalent of a £100 per hour coaching provision from this route. There’s also some research (which, if not keeping me up at night, does always give me pause for thought) that suggests that newly qualified coaches can be more effective than experienced coaches. The thinking and conclusions from that was that newly trained and qualified coaches stick more rigorously to the training and give a purer coaching experience than us old lags (lured by the temptation to “take our coaching hat off for a minute” and offer advice, or mentoring, or training, or counselling. Eitherwhichway, I think it does help key into the argument that the coaching provided by coaches in training, (properly supported) can offer a benefit, even before the coaching qualification is gained.
The other benefits that I use to sell the case for internal coaching provision I covered in my earlier blog in which I got all evangelical about the advantages that can be gained from having those skills in-house, and on tap. Once trained, those skills are deployed across all aspects of those people’s work (it has been the single most valuable piece of management training that I ever gained in preparing me to run and maintain a high performing team of specialists, in my day job in patents). Having access to coaching provision has demonstrable positive impacts on staff engagement, retention, succession planning and development. How could anyone refuse this business case? Our regular provider also will train a full cohort with a discount on the perperson price, which I think has a number of benefits, even beyond the cost angle.
Anyway, if you want to revisit all those arguments in favour of an in-house provision, that blog is available here:
As mentioned in Part 1, something that anyone undertaking the training needs to hold in mind is how onerous the training is, both in terms of the slog of getting through the assignments and building the written portfolio, which is laborious in an effort to ensure the quality of the qualification, which I understand, but which I’m not sure really lands quite as intended from the awarding bodies and the training providers, when viewed in the context of internal coaches and in the emotional impact of the kind of issues which trainee coaches will have land in their practice from their clients.
We found that there was a really high attrition rate with people dropping out of the course during the training when I did it (around 2010), or completing the classroom part of the training, but not gaining the qualification at the end of the course. Some of this was around finding the coachees on which to practice (again covered in part 1), some of it was down to the slog of the paperwork (which can feel a dispiriting combination of answering by rote and exhaustive in its documentation, when most people want to get on with the ‘coaching proper’, eg the conversations. We improved this hugely by, alongside the training sessions themselves, pairing trainee coaches up with experienced coaches in the business and by offering regular (fortnightly) drop in sessions, in which the trainees could pop in and bug-check any stuff that had come up in their practice with the senior coaches in the business.
In the following cohort, I broadened the invites out to include all the coaches in the network, and they became a kind of peer-support route for the coaches in the network, to refresh their fundamentals (and also to build a coaching community). These simple steps first made the completion rate jump from barely one in ten, to two thirds, and then on to one hundred percent. If you’re starting a coaching network from absolute base zero, I’d usually recommend that you target a few high potential individuals who you see as likely running administering and supporting the network to ‘test’ the route first (confirm that the provider fits, experience the hurdles needed to qualify first hand and to support the subsequent cohorts). Who supports those guys? Well, if you can get them into a mixed cohort with trainees from other organisations, then they can find peer support from that route too.
Many of the queries that were brought to these sessions were essentially looking for reassurance and to recognise that it takes a while to build the muscle memory to be non-directive in your approach ( when your whole life up until then may have pushed counter to this).
I think I’ll wrap that up here for this edition. I’m writing the blog on a coach on the way to Kent and the table is really small and uncomfortable. More on that in a future blog perhaps. Perhaps written on the return leg…