I am thrilled to let you know that Marshall Goldsmith and I will be releasing a new book called Stakeholder Centered Coaching in May. It outlines his Stakeholder Centered Coaching® methodology with ideas from Coachmetrix in a fun and usable format.
But more on that later, along with my masterclass on Measurement in Executive coaching.
In the meantime, I wanted to share my story about how measurement in coaching and leadership development became important to me. Yes, it does involve Marshall. And, at the end of this blog, there’s a clip from a video interview I conducted with Marshall about why measurement in leadership development matters.
Thanks,
Sal
About 10 years ago, I started getting really interested in behavioral change measurement. Although I didn’t know it at the time that experience would lead to Coachmetrix.
I was running a 7-month leadership development program for a client with 12 high-potential leaders from a high-tech company in Denver, Colorado. The program combined assessment, workshops and coaching.
What it didn’t include in the mix, however, was measurement.
I’ll never forget the day the vice president of human resources asked me, “Sal, how is the program going?”
I was initially excited to respond enthusiastically with survey data that assessed the participants’ reactions to both the content and me as the coach. And the survey results were very positive.
I smiled. Which is, not coincidentally, what smiley sheets make you do.
But deep inside, I realized that I had no clue if my program was actually helping to create behavioral change. After all, leadership development, and my company’s purpose, was (and still is) to help leaders make meaningful and measurable change so that they can have a bigger and better impact on their people and organizations. (And I’ve seen consistent evidence that the results carry over to their personal lives too.)
So, I started doing some research about measurement. It wasn’t long before I came across work by Marshall Goldsmith that laid out what is now known as Stakeholder Centered Coaching, a methodology where the emphasis shifts from the coach to the coachee or participant. In it, the participant receives ongoing feedback and feedforward based on how they are moving the needle against their leadership development action plan.
I loved it. Simple. Actionable. Measurable.
I set out to make the process scalable on larger leadership development engagements. I also started to incorporate other needs I saw in leadership development. For example, on the same client engagement, I noticed that 60–80% of the participants created insufficient action plans after receiving their 360 data or they never created an action plan at all.
The problem? Everything was paper based.
The paper problem surfaced again during a kick-off meeting with the same client on a later engagement. The vice president of information security looked down at his attractive and professionally printed participant workbook. He then looked at me and said, “I haven’t used a pen in years.”
The writing was on the wall. And it needed to get online.
Coachmetrix was invented.
I am now thrilled to have published a book with Marshall Goldsmith called Stakeholder Centered Coaching. It combines ideas from his coaching methodology with ideas from our Coachmetrix technology.
The book will be released in early May. And, I’ll also be conducting a master class on how to incorporate measurement into your coaching and leadership development process.
Stay tuned for those. While you’re here, check out this quick video clip of Marshall and I talking about the need for measurement in coaching and leadership development.
As always, I welcome your comments and feedforward!
