Executive coach sought-after hire
More companies turning to trainers to groom designated employees for management posts
JORDAN ROBERTSON
Dallas Morning News
September 5, 2005
If you find yourself on the fast track to a management job, make room for company.
Executive coaching or one-on-one business mentoring is no longer reserved for a company's top officers.
Companies are hiring executive coaches -- who tend to focus on improving communication and time management skills -- to groom their high-potential employees, changing the way firms train executives-to-be.
Coaching, in personal and business capacities, has become a $1 billion a year industry in the United States. Some surveys indicate that half of all businesses employ coaches.
Kasey Bell, a Coppell, Texas-based operations manager with International Business Machines Corp., tapped an internal coaching network before taking a promotion that increased her direct reports fivefold.
"There was a lot I wanted to change about my management style," said Bell, 41. "But I didn't want to go to my boss with stupid questions. I needed a penalty-free environment where nothing was off-limits."
The Kentucky-based International Coach Federation, the closest thing the industry has to a governing body, now claims more than 8,300 members, a more than fourfold increase from six years ago.
Some estimates place the number of working coaches at nearly 40,000 worldwide.
Hiring by business has been a major driver of that growth.
Dell Inc., based in Round Rock, Texas, with operations in North Carolina, has provided coaches to top executives for years, but now lower-level managers can tap them for candid feedback on their management styles, said spokeswoman Amy King.
"It's difficult (at any level) to have those discussions in a classroom setting or a direct report situation," King said. "But you have that direct, meaningful input through coaching."
New return-on-investment research shows that hiring business coaches can lead to increased productivity and significant financial gains.
In one 2004 study, executive coaching at Booz Allen Hamilton, the business consultants firm, returned $7.90 for every $1 the firm spent, according to MetrixGlobal LLC, the Iowa-based consultancy that conducted the study.
The more than 40 managers who received coaching said advances in team chemistry, the quality of its consulting and retention rates among senior managers added dramatically to profits.
"The most important benefits are intangible in nature," said Merrill Anderson, chief executive of MetrixGlobal, which has found similar results at three other clients. "But companies are realizing that there are substantial monetary benefits that can be identified as a result of executive coaching."
That's not to say they are cheap.
Most coaches charge between $100 and $500 an hour, and highly regarded academic and business consultants can demand $1,000 per hour to take on top executives, said Aldrich of the human resource society.
But HR departments are starting to view coaches as a necessary complement to existing training programs, Aldrich said.
"It is really becoming ingrained into the culture of many companies," she said. "The stigma is gone. It used to be that you only got a coach when you were in trouble -- time to develop an exit strategy. Now it's really used more often to help top performers become even better."