Are you only coaching execs? Here’s why that’s a mistake

Coaching executives is a great idea. Nothing wrong with it at all. But to concentrate on only coaching your top leaders could be seen as a real error of judgement, as you’re leaving out all the middle management employees and below. Democratising coaching might just be the way to open doors that will lead to business growth and realising staff potential, as well as improving retention.

Tradition has it that coaching the top management level is the way to go, almost a perk of being up there at the head of the business. But it doesn’t have to be like that any more. With challenges such as high staff turnover, a distinct lack of engagement, and the requirement to develop staff across all levels, coaching in a democratic manner is the way forward. It can improve organisational resilience, drive a better return on investment (ROI), and set up future talent pipelines. Broadening the coaching scope across the company also supports staff engagement, retention, and succession planning.

• Cost – coaching staff is not cheap, so sticking to the coaching of executives is a natural way of keeping business costs down, hoping their newly-found knowledge will trickle down to the rest of the workforce
• Historical reasons – the prestige associated with only coaching the top layer of the business has historically been the way forward for most companies, associated with the development of C-suite, high performance, and personal leadership
• Potential ROI – as the senior leadership team is perceived as having a high amount of leverage, coaching them leads to business returns
• Market demand – most coaching services are specifically set up to coach only high level executives

Concentrating all coaching on executives can be limiting, so democratising coaching should be the way forward. Let’s delve a little deeper into why just focusing on execs can be restricting.

1. Risks reducing engagement and retention – excluding talent that isn’t at executive level can show staff that the company is elitist, and only cares about its very top talent, which can lead to a high turnover or complete disengagement from staff further down the career ladder. It also points to the fact that those employees who have real potential, but haven’t reached the top yet, will feel undervalued.
2. Creates a narrow talent pipeline – if you’re not developing staff below executive level, you’re going to struggle with filling future leadership roles by neglecting mid-level leaders who will need coaching support when they step up.
3. Limits the cultural impact – to cope with systemic change, you need democratised coaching distributed more widely, as coaching a limited amount of leaders won’t be enough to change cultural behaviours.
4. Uses budget ineffectively – coaching executives on a 1-2-1 basis is a high business cost that is part of the budget, but adding in peer coaching, group coaching, or blended coaching can scale up in a more cost-effective way.

Let’s set out the case for democratising coaching, so more people within the business receive this vital service in order to develop and grow professionally. In this section, we delve into the benefits, the frameworks, and the strategic reasons for broadening coaching access.

• Developing a leadership pipeline and succession planning, as coaching potential leaders of the future will prepare them much better.
• Transforming the culture at work, as coaching across all levels will promote shared learnings.
• Improving staff engagement and retention, as offering coaching demonstrates an investment in the future of your staff, which increases loyalty and reduces the risk of the quiet flight.
• Enhancing resilience and adaptability, as middle managers of an organisation are often viewed as the “change agents,” the ones who can adapt and shift in fast-moving work environments; coaching them cements an agile leadership core.

• Coaching should be a normal part of a career path framework, because if only the top level of management has access to it, the framework ignores the rest of staff members.
• When people leave, whether that is due to being laid off or for other reasons, transitions are made much smoother if there is a coaching infrastructure already in place.

• According to CJPI insight, 86% of organisations who invest in coaching report a positive outcome, with “58% of executives who receive coaching at C-level or senior leaders, while 42% are middle managers or Directors. This demonstrates the broad applicability of coaching, from top-level leadership to rising stars within an organisation.”
• Blending executive, group, and peer coaching reaches more people, without those prohibitive costs that can cripple a company.

This is an effective way in which you can democratise coaching, as it breaks down that mentality of working in isolation that some departments might have while championing peer collaboration and consultation. It’s a great option for accelerating learning capacity by sharing intelligence across different levels of employees, while simultaneously impacting an increased number of workers, provided you have an experienced coach who is qualified to manage group dynamics.

Training managers as coaches can be beneficial both to the manager, as it adds an extra skill to their toolset, and to the company as a whole, because a coaching culture improves the way staff interact with one another – as well as with potential customers. With managers as the coaches, relevant skills can be built as part of the routine on a daily basis.

If you don’t have the capacity to train up your managers, capitalise upon the wealth of experience you might have lurking around the building in the form of internal coaches. They will understand your organisation and its many systems and processes so much better than external coaches, so will be able to pinpoint what coaching methods and training programmes align with company values and are best for the workforce.

Coaching online has been the way forward since 2020, that fateful year that changed so many lives in terms of the way we work and interact. It works because it’s time- and cost-effective. Automating routine processes, such as the scheduling of sessions, tracking objectives, and storing coaching notes, is made so much easier and quicker.

Sometimes, there’s no need to offer a string of sessions set out over so many months. Sometimes all that’s needed is a one-off, totally focused session that drills down into a particular issue, such as training on mental health support or people management. Having these one-offs does ensure that as many staff as possible get to experience them.

You can overcome any objections to democratising coaching:

Cost worries – it’s no surprise that democratising coaching by not just coaching at the executive level is going to incur more cost, but using blended models or group coaching goes some way to mitigating this by securing a higher percentage of staff retention and building a more consistent talent pipeline.

Assurances over quality – this issue can be assuaged by ensuring you use accredited coaches or upskill those already within the organisation.

Scalability – starting small with pilot sessions and a large cohort is the way to go, before scaling it up. Remember to measure the impact of the coaching to prove its worth along the way.

Achieving buy-in – reveal data on retention and succession risk to build a case for coaching across the board, rather than keeping it just for executives.

Evaluate the current coaching programme available within your business and see whether it is disproportionately focused on the top tier. If so, consider adopting an inclusive and tiered coaching approach. Then you can invest in coaching at more levels of the staffing structure, to build leadership capacity, business resilience, and staff engagement.If your organisation is considering outplacement services, contact us at the earliest opportunity to find out more.