ROI of Coaching

As it is understood today executive coaching is an entirely, or largely, non-directional conversation with the purpose of facilitating the coachee identifying which goals are most important to them, the options available to them in moving towards a goal or goals, the realities they face in this process and their desire to executing whatever strategy they undertake. 

One question is whether the goals of the individual are aligned with the goals the organisation may have for them and how any conflict will be managed by the coach who is being paid by the organisation. 

Another question is whether the organisation is able to measure the success of coaching. What has the impact been with regard to the individual. What is the ROI ?

Only a few studies exist which have undertaken a rigorous review of coaching impact and none are particularly conclusive, but as executive coaching has already become a key tool in the executive development toolkit, learning and development specialists should consider how they can track the impact of coaching interventions.

This is more easily done where performance changes are direct and objectively measurable. For instance a correlation between coaching and increased sales revenues may suggest causation but other reasons for increased sales should be considered before any conclusions are drawn.  It becomes more difficult if the coaching is to help with team leadership as the impact is indirect and causation that much harder to identify.  However, it is certainly worth monitoring the hard data and interviewing team members whose performance has increased to try and identify the extent to which the team heads approach has contributed.  Engagement scores are another source of data.

The advent of people analytics will help learning and development professionals compare disparate data sources as they seek to conclude on the effectiveness of coaching and which coaches have most impact.