Coaching has blossomed in booming times. With the economic downturn, will it continue to bloom? Gil Schwenk offers his predictions for what 2009 will hold for coaching.

Peter Hawkins recently gave a keynote address at the 2008 Association of Professional Coaches and Supervisors (APECS) and Henley Annual Conference. Peter said to the conference that we are in danger of riding a wave of enthusiasm about coaching. Unless coaching begins to connect the personal benefit to the organisational benefit, the wave will lose its power and coaching will become a past flavour of the month.

Download:  Developing an Effective Coaching Strategy 63 Kb

Action Learning was formulated and developed by Prof Reg Revans during the 1940's and 50's.  He traces its roots to, among other things, his experiences in the Cavendish Laboratories in the 1930's, where he met the great minds of that generation, such as Einstein and Rutherford.  He refined and developed the method through his work with the newly created post-war organisations of the National Coal Board and National Health Service through the 1950's - 70's.

A team should be more than the sum of their parts. But this does not happen automatically; it must be worked at - regularly. In sport, a team of individual stars do not between them make a great team. High quality team coaching and time on the training ground is essential for improving the team's success. The same process is important for organisations.

This self-assessment questionnaire affords you the opportunity of getting some 360° feedback from supervisees, peers, tutor and supervisor.  Each person is asked to rate each area of skill on a one to five scale.  To create some common understanding of how to use this rating scale the following definitions are offered:

1.                  professional learning need - don't know how to do this

2.                  personal learning need - know how to but unable to make it happen

3.                  sporadically competent - occasionally do it fine

4.                  consistently competent - this has become part of natural way of doing things

5.                  role model for this - can teach it to others

    Download:  Self-assessment Questionnaire for Supervisors 67 Kb

Further reading on the above can be found in Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith - Chapter 12 - Core Skills and Capabilities.

Bath Consultancy Group develop four key areas of an effective coaching strategy

With coaching fast becoming the focus of many leadership development programmes, Gil Schwenk, principal consultant at Bath Consultancy group, discusses the four key elements of an effective coaching strategy.

Download:  Four Key Areas of an Effective Coaching Strategy 113 Kb

An invitation for organisations to join Bath Consultancy Group in Action Research into Harvesting Organisational Learning from Coaching

Are you concerned about these issues...

• How can we ensure greater return on our investment in coaching and be more strategic in how we deploy our resources?
• How can we use the individual development in thinking and behaviour to get a wider organisational development?
• How can we harvest the learning from the many coaching conversations to reap the organisational learning, while still preserving appropriate confidentiality?
• How can we ensure the organisational client benefits as much as the individual clients?

Bath Consultancy Group has just published Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development and recently conducted research for the CIPD Change Agenda - Coaching Supervision: Maximising the Potential of Coaching. During our research we spoke to a large number of organisations who expressed a strong commitment to the individual benefits of coaching but also the above concerns.

Bath Consultancy Group has now developed a method of harvesting the organisational learning from coaching through the integration of our pioneering work in coaching supervision research, practice and supervisor training with our 20 years of leading practice as an organisation development consultancy.

We are looking for a select number of organisations who are coaching leaders to join with us for an action research project that will test and hone this groundbreaking methodology. The project will include joint inquiry amongst all organisations with customised field work in each participant organisation.

By participating in this unique action research project, your organisation will:

• Be pioneers in harvesting organisational learning from coaching.
• Benefit from the organisational learning to optimise the value of coaching for both individual and organisational benefit.
• Learn from other organisations.
• Gain publicity as a leader in coaching excellence and organisational development. We will publish this research and will publicise it widely through journals and conferences. Participant organisations, if they wish, may also be featured in our next book on using culture for sustainable organisational advantage.

The project consists of:

• 1 day workshop for all participants to discuss their use of coaching and the return on investment. We will candidly explore what is working and what is not. We will explore what organisations have already done to harvest learning and their ideal scenario regarding coaching and organisational learning.
 
• Harvesting Feedback in each participant organisation including:
- 1 day consultancy to customise the harvesting process to your organisation.
- 2 day unique harvesting learning event where your coaches (internal and external) will be facilitated to identify and capture the key learning that they have experienced from coaching in the organisation. These will be distilled and presented to the organisation's executive team in dialogue with the coaching community. We will conduct a facilitated inquiry with the executive team about the organisational challenges, the systemic patterns and collectively agree how the organisation can learn from these and move forward with its overall coaching and development strategy. Action plans for both coaching strategy and other organisational developments that build on the learning will be developed and documented.
- 1 day consultancy to the organisation's Executive Team, HR/OD and leaders of the coaching community to further develop and plan the implementation of the learning and take forward the emerging coaching strategy. 
 
• 1 day workshop for all participants to share and capture the joint learning:
- for their organisations,
- for the action research cohort,
- for the method and approach of harvesting organisational learning from coaching.

We are seeking commitment from organisations by 31 July, to commence the project in September 2007.  Interested organisations should call Gil Schwenk who would be happy to discuss in further detail regarding details including the cost of involvement.

For more information, please contact Gil Schwenk by e-mail This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or phone 07976 154192

An extract of Chapter 4 Team Coaching from our book "Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy" by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith - available from January 2007. Click here for more information on the book.

Download: Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: extract from Chapter 4 - Team Coaching 315 Kb

• an overview of what coaching supervision is and why it matters
• a summary of the current state of supervision in the UK
• guidance on good practice.

The text is illustrated by case studies showing how very different organisations are using coaching supervision to support their coaching services. 

Download:  CIPD Coaching Supervision: Maximising the potential of coaching 275 Kb