A month ago, I published an article on HR.com regarding how we measure the value of coaches and hold them accountable. 

It’s been an ongoing discussion in the tiny world of coaching – this challenge of showing value and ROI on what are typically “soft skills” and items difficult to measure. 

But what’s rarely discussed is how we hold coaches accountable for the promises of development that they make. 

We’ve seen the news recently of layoffs and changes happening across numerous industries. And what I’m seeing based on this is an increase in individuals looking to pay for coaches out of their own pockets – either they are looking to better position themselves amid layoffs within a company, or are looking for a career coach to help them land their next gig. 

If you happen to be in this camp, or, if you work with coaches or a coaching program in your organization, I would encourage you to move beyond just the ROI conversation (it’s still needed!) and move the discussion to accountability as well. For any coaching engagement to be truly successful, all three parties need to be accountable: coach, client and organization. 

Vulnerable people often look for a guru, and there is no shortage of those in the coaching world. However, when everyone claims to be an expert or offers a promise to the yellow brick road, they should be held accountable for what they can and can’t deliver. 

As always – happy to chat about how Bellwether approaches this philosophically and realistically – we guarantee success in our coaching engagements. 

Thanks and have a great week!

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And, um, and it’s an important topic because a lot of people need it. And it’s, it’s, you know, I’ll tell you why. Let me just tell you why the world is, is buckling and it’s a difficult place to be right now. And there are a lot of people, I’m having a lot of conversations from a developmental standpoint. Um, people are either looking to invest in themselves to paying outta pocket for coaches, uh, to make sure that they’re positioned well before layoffs happen.

It’s a little too late for that, but people are making that investment right now. How do I do it? Who do I talk to? I’m having a lot of, uh, conversations like that. They’re also people looking for career coaches who I don’t typically work with, but I, I’ll refer them if you’re looking for that. Um, who unfortunately were wrapped up in the layoffs, all kinds of layoffs. I get a lot of those phone calls as well.

Um, and so I, I recently wrote an article, um, I I, I called it Fire All the Coaches and they, they very prudently changed the name of it to questioning the ROI or, or something along those lines. Um, I’ll put a link to it under this on, on the Bellwether Hub site. Um, but basically it was the argument of, as we look at what everybody’s looking to do and needing a coach, and there are a lot of vulnerable people, and I’ve, I’ve harped on this a lot and I apologize, but it’s very important, and this aligns very much with the previous episode on advocating for yourself is, um, there are a lot of vulnerable people who are looking for gurus.

And we need to make sure that we’re holding these gurus accountable, right? For the promises of development that they’re making. There’s the old saying, if you can’t do something, you teach. And if you can’t teach, you coach. Um, and I remember when I first got started in coaching, people were like, Oh, really? You’re a coach? Okay.You know, my half idiot cousin, um, who didn’t graduate college became a coach. Uh, I’ve seen all kinds of coaches.

There’s, there’s career coaches, executive coaches, women’s empowerment coaches. I just saw a social security coach the other day, wellness coaches, retirement coaches. There is a coach for anything and everything that you could possibly need and that’s great . But, but, but, and I see this a lot in organizations and I get a lot of blank faces and I can’t believe it hasn’t hit them yet. Um, and I will drive this home for you.

If you are looking to spend money on you to invest in a coach, you’re actually, it’s not an investment in a coach. It’s an investment in you. And that coach needs to deliver you an ROI that’s acceptable to you, you that warrants the amount of money that you’re paying them. If you want to pay someone a hundred bucks an hour to listen to your problems, to give you advice, that’s fine, but you’re getting a hundred dollars an hour kind of advice, right?

Good coaches are a lot more expensive than that. Um, but anyway, so that’s what what spawned this conversation is I was talking to the head of field development at a bank and they’re spending buku bucks on coaches. And I, I knew this guy from when I worked in corporate, he was very gracious with his time. I just wanted to hear his perspective. I wasn’t pitching on anything. It was purely a, a friendly conversation.

And um, and he told me he was firing all their coaches, all the coaches that, that this, this company had, had hired to get their people all set up. And I said, Good, tell me more. That’s great. Awesome. Fire. All the coaches, um, basically everyone that was going through coaching was doing worse than everyone who wasn’t doing coaching. And I said, That’s a good reason to fire the coaches, right? Um, not only are you losing the productivity because they’re going off to sit in these coaching sessions, but they’re also now doing worse.

So they’re actually doing damage, right? Whoever these coaches were, then he told me how much he was paying for the coaches, and I almost choked. I laughed at him a little bit, um, cuz I didn’t think he was serious. And then I realized he was serious. And then I tried to back it back a little bit and I think I kind of pissed him off. Um, I couldn’t believe the amount of money they were spending on coaches.

Um, and ultimately I told them in a very nice way, it’s your own fault, right? They were holding, there was no accountability on the coaches that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on for these coaches, for all these advisors and all these other people. Um, not one success metric was defined. Not one way that they knew that this was a good investment. And the only way they figured it out was that they decided to take a look and said, Oh, these people are actually doing worse.

Okay? There was no set goal for, for the engagement. And, and then it formed a lot for me as I was setting up my program, um, because I’ve had similar conversations over time. Is there are these promises of what we can do. And you say, Well, how do you measure and say, Oh, well you can’t really measure leadership. Well know when we see it. You know, they say all these things, but there is, you know, if we’re making an investment, especially individuals who are paying out of their own pocket right now, you are the one who’s responsible for dictating success and what you expect of the coach.

If you hire someone to fix your computer, you have an expectation that they’re going to fix your computer and you’re gonna know that it’s fixed and it’s very clearly defined. My computer now works. It’s a little more difficult when we’re dealing with these intangible types of things. And so you have to tie it to behavior and you have to tie it to all these different things. And there are ways to establish an ROI for these intangible things that you’re not able to really measure.

Um, so I put this out there for those in hr, those executives who are looking for coaches for their teams, those individuals looking for coaching for themselves. Um, I don’t take clients unless I know that you could be helped, that I can help you. Um, I have fired three clients because it didn’t work and I gave them the money back. Um, and, and again, this is, you know, we’re dealing with vulnerable people right now who need help.

And so I think it’s very important for you to go into any kind of coaching engagement. And this is an advocating conversation for you. And this is for beyond coaching, right? This is a metaphor. Everything I talk about could be a metaphor you can go into so many different things is you are spending money. How are you going to know that this was money well spent? And how are how are you going to measure this?

Coaching works? Coaching works, it works. Uh, and it’s very good and it’s necessary. Coaching is necessary right now because the world is changing so incredibly fast. Um, we need someone to push our boundaries. We need someone to challenge our thinking. We need someone to question our judgements. We need someone to teach us how to move up in an organization, how to communicate and behave at much senior level, uh, senior levels of the organization, how to think in more of an enterprise fashion versus the smaller teams that, that we’ve been working in.

Um, how to communicate at different levels. Uh, and so we need coaches, we need good coaches. And if you are thinking of getting a coach, if you are thinking of doing any other kind of investment in you, which I think more people are going to be doing, and I think people are gonna be smarter and a little more tighter with their purse strings. Um, we have to figure out a measurable way to know that your coach is good.

Uh, anybody could promise anything. And there are a lot of, of snake oil salesman out there. And so I would encourage you to ask for the guarantee, ask for them to guarantee success. Uh, we guarantee success. And if you don’t hit it, you get the money back. So what I told the guy at the bank who was so angry, I said, Here’s how you should have structured your, your coaching engagement. The organization’s paying the bill, so they’re being held accountable, The person being coached, you should hold accountable in some way because you’re investing in them to change some kind of behavior.

And the coach has to be held accountable. So what you do is you have the individual pay the coach half, and if the coaching individual can figure out and get to whatever they gotta do, then the organization comes in and pays them both back. That’s how you do it. Coach doesn’t get paid, uh, the full thing. If they don’t hit their goals, the individual gets their money back. So it actually is cost, it costs neutral to them, and then the bank gets the ROI because they’re changing the behaviors and getting the revenue and doing all that other stuff.

So, um, for those, I don’t wanna spend, I don’t wanna harp too much on that little philosophy, but if you are thinking about coaching and setting up a coaching program, I’m happy to go into a lot of details on that and the way that we structure our contracts and everything else. Um, but it’s the wild west out there and, and everyone’s capable of doing great things. We just need a little bit of push and hold people accountable for the promises of development that they’re making.

It’s the only thing I’m gonna say. And we, we need to hold everybody accountable for the things that they’re saying people aren’t really thinking. And, um,you know, if you’re gonna make a promise, you gotta deliver. And that’s what I’ll leave you with . It’s a quick episode today. I hope this thing doesn’t die again. Um, it’s a little zoom recorder, but uh, have a great week. Um, think about your coaching, think about your development, and think about ways that you can invest in you and get a really big roi, whether it’s for you or for your company, for anybody else.

And I’m, as always, I’m happy to talk about it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for listening to my little rant. And next week I’ve got an interview, uh, with a very incredible individual who’s overcome some incredible stuff. Uh, Dan McQueen will be on the episode, uh, The Bellwether Hub Podcast, so more on that and more blog posts and everything else on bellwetherhub.com. As always, I’ll talk to you soon.