Coaching returns 5 to 7 times the cost of your investment.
That said, return on investment may not be the best measure of coaching effectiveness. It’s hard to measure the full cost of a senior manager whose coaching helps him avoid burnout, manage stress, and continue productively serving a company for years. The same is true for any employee. If an account manager improves in emotional intelligence, all their accounts may perform better for years to come.
Coaching produces different results for different people because people seek out coaching for different reasons.
Leadership Coaching and Employee Engagement
Leadership coaching returns a number of results for executives and decisions makers. It helps clarify business goals and imperatives, gives leaders who are often isolated a sounding board and objective feedback, and helps leaders engage employees in ways that make an organization more productive.
Employee engagement is the amount of voluntary effort employees put into their work. A worker who is committed and enthusiastic about their job will be more productive, produce better work, and be happier at work than workers who fulfill the minimum required for a job. Most workers look to their team leader or manager to give them the guidance and feedback they need to focus on priorities and put in their best work.
According to Gallup, only about a third of workers are engaged in their work. The two thirds who are not engaged cost the US economy an estimated $400 billion to $600 billion in lost productivity.
Employees who are engaged do things differently than disengaged workers. Besides being more productive, they have lower burn out rates and higher retention rates. They report being happier at work. It can cost 1.5-2 times a worker’s annual salary to replace them. With unemployment levels at historic lows and labor markets tight, retaining high performing employees needs to be part of every businesses plan for success.
Here are 6 ways Leadership Coaching increases leaders’ performance and employee engagement.
1. Offering opportunities for personal development.
87% of millennials say they would leave their job if the job lacks opportunities for personal development. Leadership and emotional intelligence coaching helps employees develop better customer and co-worker relationships, better results in finance, innovation, as well as better self-care and wellness.
2. Giving employees the one-on-one time they need.
Ninety minutes of a manager’s time can enhance employee productivity, focus, and quality for two weeks. Ninety minutes may sound like a lot, but 80 better hours for 90 minutes is a 153% return on investment. Managers and employees who can’t get a mentor’s time can get a coach who will clarify their thinking, reflect on what’s important, and energize them to focus on what matters most right now.
3. Improving goal setting.
According to McKinsey, effective goal setting increases employee engagement and satisfaction. The coaching process is goal centered. In coaching, clients identify and commit to clear goals and create actionable pathways with measures of success for achieving goals.
4. Giving More Effective Feedback.
Gallup reports that only 14% of managers feel good about their ability to give feedback. At the same time, over 89% of employees feel disengaged after receiving negative feedback. Coaching helps managers focus on the positive and help employees build skills and capacity through a coaching approach for more encouraging and engaged workplace.
5. Helping managers engage their direct reports.
Coaching senior and middle managers has ripple effects through an organization. Coaching helps managers develop a coaching mindset and apply coaching methods within an organization for greater engagement down the employee line. The result is exponential numbers of engaged workers as managers learn to coach and engage their direct reports.
6. Better hiring decisions and retention
HR coaching can help decision makers in all kinds of businesses learn best practices for hiring and evaluate candidates based on skills that are likely to lead to success in a certain organization or job. Rather than going by gut feelings, HR best practices can help businesses find ways to find candidates who are likely to succeed. Once hired, coaching helps employees stay in their jobs through personalized development plans that keep them engaged and happy in their job.
Emotional Intelligence Coaching
Emotional intelligence predicts success better than IQ or academic success. It is an essential leadership quality helping people in every job.
Emotional intelligence coaching begins with an assessment that measures how well a client uses emotions. Then the coach and client co-create a plan to develop new emotional skills that are relevant to the client’s goals.
Emotional intelligence can be developed with focused attention to the ways that emotional abilities play out in day to day life. Coaching increases the ability to use emotions through setting goals designed to attend to and improve use of emotions in everyday situations.
Over 50 years of research on emotional intelligence has proven that effective use of emotions leads to increased success and well-being. For people who seek coaching because they are not getting the results they want from others, or who feel stuck at a certain level of achievement, increasing emotional intelligence can make a big difference for improving life and work results.
Will Coaching Work for You?
The most important question is: will coaching work for you?
In order to answer that question, answer the following five questions for yourself:
1. What result are you are looking for from coaching?
2. What becomes possible for you if you achieve that result?
3. What is that outcome worth to you or your organization?
4. What will happen to you or your organization if you don’t achieve the result you are looking for? Or, to put that in monetary terms, what will it cost you if you don’t achieve it?
5. How long will it take for you to achieve your goal and when do you want to start?