Coaching, like many other professions, is not without its share of challenges. One in particular being how do you measure the success of a coaching engagement? This question can be difficult to answer because it’s not always clear what metrics are important and which ones aren’t. In fact, even when there are metrics available, they’re often hard to find or inconsistent across organizations. As a result, we’ll take a look at why evidence matters and why it’s so hard to find – and some ways that both coaches and clients can make things better for everyone involved.
What is Evidence?
So, what counts as evidence and how do you go about finding it? Before considering this question, we need to first think about what ‘evidence’ means. Most people’s definition of the word evidence would include facts, statistics, and other information that helps support an idea or argument. When looking at evidence in coaching there are two broad categories that count as evidence.
Evidence about what is happening in the coaching relationship itself.
Evidence about whether or not what is happening in the coaching relationship has an impact on some other aspect of life outside of the coaching session itself.
The first category counts as evidence because it can tell us what’s going on inside a coaching relationship. The second category counts as evidence because it tells us whether or not coaching is having an impact on life outside the coach-coachee dyad.
Understanding these two categories will help focus our discussion and analysis of any issue related to the effectiveness of coaching. With that in mind let’s take a look at some common outcomes related to coaching and how they fit into these two categories.
Outcome 1: Clarity of Purpose or Direction
Coaching is often used to help people figure out what the next step is in a career, personal life, or other area of interest. The idea being that gaining clarity on this point will provide some guidance on how to proceed with their efforts and actions. In order to improve the client’s clarity of purpose, coaches will often look to get a better understanding of the coachee’s desired outcome(s). When assessing this kind of outcome, it makes sense for us to focus on what the clarity is around as well as any changes that are occurring in terms of plans and actions taken.
Outcome 2: Personal Development
Coaching is also often used as a tool to help people develop personally and professionally. However, personal development can be very difficult to measure because there are many different types of growth that might occur during coaching. That said, when assessing this type of outcome, it’s best to focus on the skills being developed, the behavior changes that are taking place, and the types of experiences the coachee is having.
Outcome 3: Improved Performance
Coaching can also be used to help improve professional or personal performance. Areas of focus might include how well a person deals with stress, manages their time, communicates with others, or any number of other areas related to work (or life) performance. Since most organizations have at least some level of KPIs or other metrics related to how an individual is performing it’s often possible to also measure any changes in these areas over the course of coaching as well.
These three outcomes are common ones that coaches assess all the time. Each one can be assessed using a variety of different metrics and levels of evidence. This is where the trouble starts because if we’re going to improve as coaches it’s important for us to know what actually counts as evidence and when we can rely on intuition or anecdotal information instead.
The Research Question
Given the importance of using research-based practices in our field, I think that one way to approach this issue is by defining a question that researchers could investigate related to coaching metrics. What are some good ways to assess coaching effectiveness? This question would provide an excellent starting point for any researcher interested in investigating how people go about assessing the impact of coaching engagements. However, this question isn’t quite perfect yet since it doesn’t consider some other factors that might be important depending on who you’re asking. For example: Is it possible to assess coaching effectiveness in a casual setting without much evidence? Is it possible to efficiently assess coaching effectiveness using minimal effort? Answers to these questions might lead researchers into different directions. That said, I think that this is an excellent place for us to start since it helps us focus our discussion and provides some potential avenues of investigation.
As you can see there’s a lot we need to consider when assessing any aspect related to the impact of coaching. Coaching is such a broad field that it can be difficult sometimes to know where to start looking for answers. In my opinion this means as coaches we really have no other choice but get out there and start talking with people about what they’re doing so we can begin piecing together each area involved in assessing and improving our practice.
Coaching Metrics & Evidence
Metrics are a useful tool that can enable us to measure and encourage effective coaching practices. However, we should also keep in mind that particular metrics might be more useful than others depending on who the client is, what coaching session focuses on, or what external factors might be affecting each engagement with the coachee. That said, I think it’s important for us as coaches to realize that sometimes there simply isn’t any “hard” evidence available to provide insight about our actions. Sometimes this means we need to rely on anecdotal information instead of something more formalized (like a questionnaire) in order to gain some insight into certain aspects of coaching effectiveness. However, I do believe (as the research suggests) that this is where we should be turning more often to provide coaching metrics whenever possible instead of just relying on intuition. So, in short, if you can use good evidence for your assessments I strongly suggest doing so but only using anecdotal information when necessary.
The Methods Side of Coaching Metrics
It seems that most researchers agree on a few different methods used to assess coaching effectiveness. These include:
Client satisfaction surveys
Client performance measurement (KPIs, etc.)
Coaching session evaluations (questionnaires, etc.)
For example, Chen et al. (2012) surveyed their clients to measure coach impact and found that client’s perceptions were not associated with pre-coaching measures but were in fact related to the improvements made by the client after coaching. In another study qualitative interview data was collected from participants who had been coached; this provided additional insight into how participants perceived changes resulting from coaching, what specific behaviors were improved as a result of those changes other findings. This type of information seems particularly useful in individual coaching engagements where the coach and coachee develop personalized goals and action plans.
On The Subject of Evidence
In this case, there is sufficient evidence on which to draw a conclusion about coaching outcomes, as both coaches and clients agree that change has occurred. -Robyn M. Dawes et al., (2001)
I think it’s also important for us to realize just how much anecdotal information can help build up our data over time. Anecdotal knowledge is all we have at times since even hard evidence comes with limitations and isn’t always applicable outside of its particular context or situation. Even when you have one or more individuals willing to provide feedback it may not be enough due to biases that could exist within each individual’s assessment. So, if you didn’t have much evidence to work with in the first place, it would be very difficult to gain a clear picture of what’s going on from just one perspective, which is why collecting multiple sources of feedback whenever possible is so important. Sometimes this means asking coachees, other coaches, and even clients for input. For example Maurer et al., (2013) used supervisor ratings within their research in order to test coaching outcomes; but they also utilized client generated performance data as well (rate of promotions and salary increases) .
How Can Coaching Metrics Help?
I think one obvious way that metrics can help improve coaching practices is by allowing us to assess areas where improvement seems needed. For example:
Do clients report improved performance levels?
Are KPIs rising due to coaching?
Have client perceptions changed as a result of coaching?
If any negative changes have occurred then it can help us explore possible reasons why this is the case. This in turn allows us to make positive changes that benefit all involved. Metrics can also allow us to conduct more rigorous research studies regarding coaching and determine the effects of specific variables on outcomes, which helps inform our training programs and design protocols for future research studies. Finally, metrics are also particularly useful for measuring ROI (return on investment) when calculating costs associated with coaching or determining how much money is being generated by each coaching engagement. So even if you’re not actually interested in assessing coaching effectiveness, metrics can still help guidelines that can be used to provide a greater return on investment for your organization.
The Drawbacks
With so much being written about coaching metrics I feel like I should mention some of the limitations associated with this type of information as well. One obvious limitation is that not everyone will agree on what data from which sources should be gathered and how it should be analyzed. Some may argue that client satisfaction is the best method whilst others claim that performance improvements and specific behavioral changes are the most important indicators when determining coaching success. Another problem would involve how you would actually go about collecting data in order to analyze fluctuations (or lack thereof) if any have occurred over time. Furthermore, there are certainly times where coaches do not believe that their clients have benefited from coaching and some of them may even discourage the use of metrics since they do not want to be held accountable for things outside of their control.
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s not easy to measure success. But if you’re a coach and want your clients to feel satisfied with their coaching experience or as though they’ve reached their goals, then the best thing you could do is show them that evidence matters by giving them results – even if those are just progress towards a goal. It doesn’t matter what metric(s) we use for this – whether it be reaching an emotional goal like feeling less anxious in social situations or attaining some tangible outcome like finishing college on time- but rather how we present these metrics so that our clients feel heard and validated through data. If either of us has any questions about how to make things better for both parties involved in a coaching engagement please feel free to reach out.