MindGym research: does executive coaching really deliver results?
Coaching is a burgeoning industry, accounting for £11.5bn of business spend each year – and with an annual growth rate of 6.7% it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
The average company spends £270,000 annually on coaching, and the average hourly rate for an executive coach comes in over £1,000.
But is all the investment delivering against organisations’ needs?
New research from MindGym shows coaching delivers highly variable results – reported improvements range from 3% to 97%.
What’s more, the impact of coaching done badly can be seriously detrimental for companies and individuals: MindGym’s research shows more than half (57%) of coachees experience negative effects, and nearly 1 in 5 (17% of) organisations report negative effects including increased employee attrition as a result of coaching.[1]
So what’s going wrong?
“Lots of coaching out there falls into the ‘feel-good category’,” explains Sebastian Bailey PhD, President & Co-Founder of MindGym. “It looks good, it makes us feel good, it may even help some people make changes – but it’s what we call a ‘specious’ solution: it’s unlikely to work with the majority of people.
“A common failing is focusing primarily on the ‘chemistry’ between coach and coachee.
Studies show as many as 84% of coachees think their relationship with their coach is critical for success. With this in mind, many coaching companies invest most of their effort into matching coaches with coachees (and even paying coaches based on their ratings).[2]
“This is a fallacy: studies show 92% of the impact of coaching is completely unaffected by the perceived likeability in the coach/coachee ‘relationship’, and having a good relationship can even undermine intended outcomes.[3]
“Another common mistake is a belief that more sessions equates to greater impact. Again, this is wrong. Lengthy packages help line the pockets of coaching companies – but research shows that in fact, fewer, shorter sessions deliver greater impact – in particular when it comes to performance, work attitudes and employee retention.
“Another factor that holds coaching back is poor practice: one third of coaches fail to develop clear goals from the outset, and nearly one in five programme leaders fail to align coaching with business strategy.[4]
“But possibly the most common problem we see is coaching that suffers from an intention-behaviour gap,” says Dr Bailey. “It looks good, it feels good, it helps change our mindset – but it fails to translate into behavioural change. Research shows having good intentions only delivers change just one third of the time.”[5]
So how can companies get coaching right?
“Done properly, coaching can have enormous, positive impact,” explains Dr Bailey. “It can improve employee retention, confidence and job satisfaction, reduce stress, build coping abilities, and boost productivity and revenue growth.
“The key differentiator is a solid, evidence-based methodology proven to work with the majority of people, not just a small minority.
“Methodologies involving CBT (cognitive behavioral change) and SFT (solution-focused therapy) have been shown to have far greater impact than other popular approaches.
“Critically, the methodology used needs to acknowledge the intention-behaviour gap, and equip participants with the tools they need to turn intention into action.”
MindGym is this week rolling out a new scalable, one-to-one precision coaching platform, Performa.
Delivered digitally over just four 45-minute sessions with top-of-the-range accredited Master Coaches, Performa has been shown in beta trials to deliver behavioural change in 95% of participants within 1-2 weeks. 50% of participants saw changes within as little as one week, and 32% received unprompted feedback from others to say they’d noticed a change in their behaviour by the end of the programme.
Offering double the impact at half the cost, and in less time than the majority of coaching methods, Performa can be scaled across companies to solve major organisational challenges.
Drawing on MindGym’s 22 years’ experience working with companies including 62% of the FTSE 100 and 59% of the S&P 100, Performa can drive rapid, measurable transformation in areas including leadership development, change management, diversity, equity & inclusion and employee retention.
Janet Ahn, PhD, Chief Behavioural Science Officer & US President of MindGym, said: “In a world that is short on time, rapidly changing, and increasingly outcome-focused, the most popular coaching models, which are patient, episodic and relationship-focused, are struggling to deliver. Today’s business leaders and CHROs need an approach that is fast, goal-focused, performance-orientated, and which delivers observable, measurable behaviour change.
“That’s what we’ve created with Performa. We’ve already seen great success with an early beta roll-out, and we look forward to working with clients worldwide to drive rapid cultural and commercial transformation using Performa.”
The Performa precision coaching model:
Performa draws on a suite of behaviour change techniques using the proven COM-B scientific framework – diagnosing ‘blockers’ to behaviour change and identifying solutions based on three key factors: capability, opportunity and motivation.
Bringing together behavioural enablement with a solution-focused approach and ‘mastery’ experiences, Performa helps participants make little-and-often, iterative changes in order to rapidly progress towards a ‘big goal’ – leading to deeper knowledge and skill development, building self-efficacy (which accounts for almost 1/3 of the variance in work performance) and improving cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking.[6]
Performa coaches
Performa coaches are professionally accredited, are certified in precision coaching methodology, and are all ‘Master Coaches’ with a minimum of 100 paid coaching hours. As part of MindGym’s wider network of coaches, they are also able to flexibly apply 22 years’ worth of MindGym IP and content to their coaching sessions.
How Performa goes further: a robust way to measure impact
Measurement is a fundamental aspect of precision coaching. Here are the multiple outcomes Performa tracks to measure impact:
1. Reaction: the first level of measurement
Reaction is a commonly understood and used metric, and “it makes sense to care about it to a point,” says Dr Bailey. However, this is where measurement for many solutions stops, which is a fundamental mistake. Science shows “enjoying the experience” has very little to do with (and is sometimes inversely correlated with) impact. MindGym goes further to understand how Performa is leading to internal, and ultimately behavioural, change.
2. Internal change
This involves measuring the psychological constructs that predict behaviour change. These include self-efficacy, mastery orientation and behaviour enablement (have your blockers shifted?)
3. Behaviour change
This involves measuring whether the individual’s behaviour has changed in the real world. Is it a change others are noticing, or that is impacting the individual’s goals? Performa will incorporate 180-360-degree feedback from colleagues as part of the in-app experience, to measure whether behaviour change is discernible by colleagues.
4. Organisational outcomes
Every organisation measures success differently. MindGym partners with clients to understand what success looks like to them, and then works with their data to demonstrate a chain of impact all the way to top-level organisational metrics like engagement surveys, financial results or productivity metrics.
MindGym is calling for an overhaul to the corporate coaching market, bringing observable, measurable behavioural change to the forefront, and minimising wasted spend, time and effort.
“Coaching is an industry with such great intentions when it comes to individual, cultural and commercial progress and growth,” said Dr Ahn. “It’s time for a change in the market: one which translates into discernible, rapid action, sustained behavioural change and measurable results at scale. We think Performa is the answer.”
[1] Schermuly & Grassman, 2019
[2] Nagel & Green, 2021
[3] Theeboom, Beersma & van Vianen (2014)
[4] Laurence & Whyte, 2014
[5] Rhodes & de Bruijin (2013)
[6] Cook et al, 2013
For further information, please contact:
Rose Wilkinson, PR Consultant, MindGym
MindGym is a behavioural science consultancy that helps future-proof businesses by transforming their culture.
MindGym takes science and turns it into live experiences and digital tools that create company-wide behaviour change that sticks. With products like workshops and digital coaching, MindGym takes a holistic approach to address leadership challenges, affect mindsets and transform culture, driving lasting change for its clients.
MindGym has worked with more than half the FTSE 100 and S&P 100, equipping them with an invaluable human advantage and helping them prepare for tomorrow.
Behavioural science has become popular in the last decade, but MindGym has been using it for more than 20 years to deliver strong, measurable results - transforming the way individuals and companies think and act.
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