How to Benchmark Coaching and Mentoring

We know executive coaching is an accepted business tool, we know that everyone from Bill Gates to Eric Schmidt extols its virtues, but is coaching a thing we can grade? What about mentoring too?

Is there a quantifiable process by which we can assess the best coach or mentor for our firm or even for a particular need?

The obvious answer is yes, but it's a tricky one to arrive at. Benchmarking within coaching and mentoring is difficult for a number of reasons, but if we apply some simple logic the process does become a little easier.

We need to take a good look at the term.

Benchmarking is essentially a method of identifying the best practice of a skill and a way of demonstrating the best example of that skill. For it to work in relation to coach-mentors we just need our own data. That done we just need a scale to act as a score from poor to good and then we apply our criteria.

The secret to benchmarking coaches and mentors is solid and objective record keeping. Now, the process would be very straightforward indeed if it weren’t for the fact that most of their work is done behind closed doors and in a confidential environment. So, collecting the objective data is likely to be your first challenge.

What’s the best approach?

Organisations that use coaching and mentoring programmes have long expressed a need for the assessment of coaches and mentors to ensure quality of provision. One solution to this need has been provided by professional bodies as part of accreditation using competency frameworks. This 'competency' approach potentially oversimplifies the art of coaching, breaking down a complex adaptive system into its component parts and then assuming that 'excellence' can be reconstructed from those same basic components. In our opinion, competency frameworks can only provide, at best, a crude indicator of basic understanding and, perhaps, an ability to follow a coaching process.

My business needed a solution that would reliably identify the UK's top coaching talent. We therefore devised the following ‘CoachGrade’ process to focus on the 'results' exceptional coaches achieve for their business clients and the 'capabilities' required to achieve them. It further analyses the components of 'credibility, capability and aptitude' that make those positive outcomes consistently more likely. It requires an ongoing process of painstaking verification, monitoring and meticulous benchmarking of each coach against their peers.

What’s the most important criteria?

It's a solid question and as every organisation’s need will be unique so too must our criteria be. The single most important factor in most coaching and mentoring is usually the outcome of the assignment. But again, these results will vary hugely. How can we assess this single factor when it could mean anything from an improved last quarter, maintaining the status Quo, stepping up to a new role or something as simple as improving the environment in the office?

How can we measure something as complex as results? In practice, it's a lot easier than it sounds. Since the coach, the coachee and the sponsor are the ones choosing goals and therefore results, part of the score will be based on their ability to define the challenge and therefore in setting the goal. The more precise a coach is, the more exacting the challenge will be and the more rewarding the result when it is achieved.

In short, vague goals will produce vague results and vice versa. The abler we are to determine whether a coach has indeed assisted their subject in achieving their goal and the desired result, the higher they will score.

Cost

Other factors are also important. Things like cost will play a part. Some professional coaches and mentors charge considerably more than others and therefore we would expect their results to reflect the higher cost. Therefore, a more expensive coach would have a more demanding set of criteria based on the financial element alone. In this way, we can find out if the coach is cost-effective when compared to their peers and this will give us the benchmark we need to know if it's worth paying those higher fees.

The process

Coach assessments start with a comprehensive online test followed by a minimum of three face-to-face meetings with assessors. Our focus throughout each stage is to accurately identify where each coach is currently placed on their professional pathway and benchmark them against their peers using the following main criteria:

• Executive Credibility – a mature, commercially-astute executive who has held senior business leadership roles
• Psychological Training – formally qualified in the philosophy of coaching, adult learning and change theories
• Coaching Expertise – appropriate experience, a successful track record and clear evidence of effectiveness
• Professional Commitment – accreditation in executive coaching coupled with ‘inner work’ & ongoing supervision
• Technical Competence – a distinctive model supported by a broad range of tools & psychological instruments

CoachGrade® particularly attempts to verify, measure, monitor and prioritise the following key elements:

• Maturity & Mindset – sophistication of coaching approach coupled with clarity of definition of target market
• Paid Hours – post-qualification ‘live’ experience coaching at appropriate seniority levels
• Business Acumen – relevancy of commercial experience appropriate to the sectors/seniority to be coached
• Market Price – realistic expectation of fees appropriate to the sectors/seniority to be coached
• Qualifications & CPD – quality and relevancy of coach-specific training and accreditation to the target market
• Results – Comprehensive 'Net Promoter Scoring' of each assignment via coach, coachee, client & sponsor.

Benefits

• Allows us to guarantee the quality and consistency of each coach
• Provides a transparent, logical and realistic framework for coaching fees
• Takes away the pain and uncertainty of interviewing, assessing and selecting executive coaches.
• Brings scientific rigour and consistency to the coach-coachee matching process.
• Possibility of benchmarking internal executive coaches against the same criteria