Sunday Independent - 24 February 2008

Lead to Succeed

Gaining in popularity in Ireland, executive coaching helps senior managers improve their soft skills and develop their emotional intelligence, which in turn leads to better business performance. Roisin Burke reports

A relatively new term in Ireland, executive coaching has been around in the US where it is a widely used practice and where the industry is maturing, since the Seventies. It also seems to be thriving here -that's if the Google search of the term which throws up some 47 pages worth of organisations offering versions of executive coaching in Ireland, is any indicator.

Executive coaching can be defined as the personal and professional development of managers in order to improve business performance. The current trend is towards leadership development, in particular, and less towards using executive coaching to problem solve or trouble shoot.

The executive coach is a (usually external) trained facilitator, working on a peer level with the manager; he or she is not a mentor or counsellor. The coach meets with the business leader, usually in person, over an agreed period of time in order to work with them.

Irish executive coaching firms are reluctant to give figures on costs in isolation but the Sherpa Global Executive Coaching Survey 2008, which included firms in Ireland, gives the international average paid by companies is €200 per hour of coaching services. It also calculates the financial return on investment (ROI) as 144 pc of initially outlay. Other research gives varying figures for ROI, but it is usually rated at several times the cost of the initial executive coaching investment.

Maureen Hewitt of life coaching company The Positive Success Group has seen organisations attach increasing importance to retaining their talent by investing in it. "What they realise now is that investment needs to be put back into their people. Firstly, it's a much better ROI than recruitment; secondly, by keeping your people, you're not spending money on building up your talent again and again." Also, senior executives looking to make a career move are seeking this emphasis on their development from the company they work for, Hewitt claims.

"They're asking: 'Where's the investment in me as a senior leader? I don't want to be just put into a position and left to it - I want to be coached to enable me to enable my team.' These people are being measured on how well they motivate their staff, with 360-degree feedback (peer reviews) and all the rest of it."

The University College Dublin Michael Smurfit School of Business Report 2007, a survey of top firms on the training and development needs of managers, found that 42pc of Irish mangers rate coaching as their preferred choice for training. The survey was commissioned by Momentum Business Coaching,
"Executive coaching is seen as a way of customising the needs of the individual with what the organisation wants to achieve." says Maria Betts, Director of Momentum Business Coaching. While there is no 'one size fits all' strategy, Betts says the usual approach is to start by meeting with the manager and working one to one with him or her for maybe fortnightly sessions, usually over six months. These sessions are totally confidential.

"A questionnaire is completed in advance to highlight areas the client would like to examine during the coaching. Early on, we look at what the manager's goals are over the six month's what's critical to his or her success in that role' what the role demands of him or her; and what we need to focus on. Perhaps this person has been promoted and has a big challenge to face - maybe handling a large team for the first time. The manager is moving into a new area and the coach is there to help put a strategy in place to help him or her take on this challenge, develop staff, communicate effectively - really to had the role for the first few months."

One of the big areas of importance, according to many in the industry, is emotional intelligence. "We've recently developed a programme entitled Emotional Intelligence for Leaders," says Betts. Emotional intelligence assessments gauge non-cognitive skills, showing whether a manager is good at decision-making or with people - essentially the stuff of leadership.

Both Hewitt and Betts see these 'soft skills' as important. Says Hewitt: "What we find is that it's not just about their technical ability to do the job, meet targets and do presentations; it's about how managers carry themselves forward and enable the people below them to succeed. That's a completely different angle for them. Usually managers are about number crunching and getting the best out of the teams they have from a sales perspective, for example. Now they're looking at getting the best out of the people they have from a leadership perspective."

Hewitt finds that high self-regard or emotional awareness might not be strong in Irish managers. "They could be very good at delivering figures, but don't feel confident about themselves. We want them to be decision makers, to have great interpersonal relationships, to have good empathy - but not to be driven by it - and to have high self-regard," she concludes.