Is Coaching Really Effective for All?

“If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.”

Yogi Berra

My 85/10/5 Rule of Coaching

Most of my executive coaching engagements have been largely unsuccessful in terms of positive “outcomes.” My coaching track record is easy to measure and I refer to it as the “85/10/5” rule.

It is important to define the most typical categories of “outcomes” commonly described in evidence-based coaching studies. Not all “outcomes” are the same or easy to compare when evaluating the coaching literature ((Nowack, K. (2003). Executive Coaching: Fad or Future?. California Psychologist Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, 16-17)). These coaching “outcomes” might be conceptualized as:

• Behaviors/Habits–establishing new behaviors or habits (e.g., health/wellness, interpersonal relations)
• Skills–developing new skills or abilities (e.g., managing stress, oral presentation, delegation, involvement oriented leadership)
• Development–increasing self-insight, self-esteem, meaning, values or mindfulness (e.g., hope, optimism, self-awareness)

My 20+ years of executive coaching experience has been that:

• 85 percent of my clients have increased insight and awareness about their strengths and/or potential development areas by the end of our coaching.
• 10 percent of those who are now more aware actually try to practice and implement some new skills or behaviors.
• 5 percent of those who try, actually seem to sustain it for at least a few months—the rest have relapsed or had some great stories about how they were no longer really practicing the new behavior or habit they were trying to change or improve.

The question “does coaching work?” is really not the right one to be asking. Rather, we should be asking: “For whom is coaching most beneficial and under what circumstances will coaching be optimized”?

Who Benefits Most from Coaching?

Different individuals are more or less likely to change, regardless of the intervention prescribed for them. Lambert & Barley (2001) summarized over 100 studies concerning the therapeutic relationship and therapy outcomes. They found that 40 percent of clients’ outcomes are attributable to factors that are outside of therapy.

Surprisingly, only 15 percent of clients’ outcome was due to expectancy effects, 15 percent to specific therapy techniques and 30 percent was predicted by the therapeutic relationship. ((Lambert, M.J., Barley, D.E. (2001). Research summary on the therapeutic Relationship and psychotherapy outcome. Dean E. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 38, 357-361)).

Coaching effectiveness also depends on a variety of coach, client and environmental factors such as the level of motivation of the client, readiness to change, personality factors associated with successful change and the organizational culture that can reward and support new behaviors.

Evidence for Coaching Effectiveness

Tim Theeboom and colleagues (University of Amsterdam) have recently published a comprehensive meta-analysis on the effectiveness of coaching ((Theeboom, T. et al., (2013). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology: Dedicated to furthering research and promoting good practice, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2013.837499)).

Their meta-analysis of 107 peer reviewed studies using “effect sizes” as a measure of impact of coaching found that coaching has significant positive effects on all coaching outcomes with effect sizes ranging from g = 0.43 (coping) to g = 0.74 (goal-directed self-regulation). Overall these are moderate size effects which provide strong support that executive coaching, under the right circumstances, with clients that are motivated and using sound techniques produce significant change in client’s skills, engagement, and ability to cope with work (and life) situations).

Interestingly, these research also found that although a larger number of coaching sessions was beneficial for both coping and goal-directed self-regulation outcomes, the reversed pattern was observed for work/career attitudes and performance/skills (higher effect sizes for a smaller number of sessions). For developing and enhancing specific skills and abilities, shorter coaching engagements seem to be even more effective than longer ones.

Coaching seems to be optimized for those who are most likely to improve in a self-directed fashion and least likely to work when performance is poor and readiness to change is non-existent. We can take a look at our own Envisia Learning Inc. performance coaching model as a way to identify with whom and under what circumstances coaching might be most effective.

• Performance Improvement Coaching –Very Low
• Performance Enhancement Coaching – Low
• Performance Management Coaching – High
• Performance Acceleration Coaching –Very High

We have seen too many times with Performance Improvement coaching that organizations really want to “vote the person off the island” but are exploring “one last attempt” at helping the employee. In our experience, not only is executive coaching ineffective, it also opens the door to messy and complicated relationships with the client system (e.g., if the employee is terminated and they sue the company believing that information gathered in the coaching engagement “sealed the deal”).

OK, maybe you can be a savior to some small number of poor performers and get them to improve to a small extent but often times it is still “too little and too late” to really make a difference. Our recommendation is to refer to other coaches you don’t like and them work their magic.

Of course we love high performers who are interpersonally competent–these coaching assignments are what we call Performance Acceleration engagements. Coaches can only really slow their growth down if they are bad but most of these individuals will naturally get better on their own anyway. In my doctoral program in psychology we used to describe these clients as the “YAVIS” patients that were ideal for therapy (young, attractive, verbal, intelligence and successful). Coaching will work almost despite what you do in the course of the executive coaching engagement.

When specific skills are missing or in need of sharpening, executive coaching can be quite effective (we call these Performance Management coaching engagements). Most coaches have great success in working with clients with very narrow and specific developmental needs (e.g., becoming a better delegator, presenter or better listener).  The coaching may be a bit shorter in length but the metrics of success (i.e., specific behavior change) are quite visible and easier to measure in most cases.

Finally, a very challenging type of coaching engagements is what we refer to in our model as Performance Enhancement.  If you have been coaching long enough you tend to get our share of “competent jerks” that organizations pray and hope will spontaneously become more interpersonally competent and social skilled. These high performers are hard to get rid of as they make money for the organization and consistently produce positive results. However, it is not realistic to expect that even the most magical executive coach will be able to convert a competent jerk into a lovable star. We all have our “set points” and enhancing personality based interpersonal skills is rather challenging. So, if the organization is looking for a large magnitude of change, coaching is likely to be seen as largely ineffective for these clients.

So, we aren’t arguing that executive coaching isn’t successful but we are saying it doesn’t work for all clients even if you are skilled and experienced as an executive coach. Here are some suggestions for ways to increase coaching effectiveness:

Ways to Optimize Executive Coaching Success

1. Refer assignments to colleagues you don’t like when coaching is being sought out for performance improvement related issues (poor performance and poor interpersonal skills where termination is highly likely or working with competent jerks).

2. Contract around outcomes and not just process (and put it in writing in the form of a coaching agreement with your client and those hiring you).

3. Explore what information, data and insight would be most beneficial for your client to learn more about. Consider incorporating one or more assessments into your coaching engagement to support these goals such as 360-degree feedback, personality/style tools ((Nowack, K. (2010). Leveraging Multirater Feedback to Facilitate Successful Behavioral Change. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 61, 280-297)).

4. Involve the client’s manager and engage them as an internal performance coach. Coaching outcomes are magnified when you have internal champions and your client’s manager reinforcing and supporting new behavior change.

5. Measure perceived change by those who are important stakeholders of your client at least 3-6 months after you are done with your formal coaching engagement.

6. Keep client session notes and summarize: 1) Key issues discussed; 2) Perceived client challenges and barriers; 3) Client successes; 4) Your working theory on what makes the client “tick” and 5) Goals/Actions for the next session.

7. Learn how to be the best “professional nag” for your client. Research supports the use of friendly reminders and follow up so consider the best ways to “get in your client’s face” in a constructive and positive manner to help them initiate new behaviors (adopters) and encourage them to stick with them over time (sustainers).

8. Solicit feedback from your coaching client about what you could have done more, less or differently in the coaching engagement and what was seen as helpful.

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)