Do you recognize the feeling of being powerless in executing the ultimate strategy simply because your teams aren’t up to the task? They have the ideal mindset, but they need a boost. That’s when you lean on your coaching program. Although, this assumes you have the right KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
What are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in coaching?
Japanese engineer and businessman, also the father of the lean Toyota Production System famously said, “having no problem is the biggest problem of all”. It’s too easy falling into the trap of thinking that we are the best at what we do and forgetting our blind spots.
A successful coaching program doesn’t just help people become more aware of their blind spots. With the right KPIs for coaching and mentoring, you also make a major impact on business priorities by building on strengths. This isn’t about measuring just the length and frequency of coaching sessions. This is about measuring real ROI.
A top coaching vendor works with you to define the optimum development targets to suit your business needs. In fact, ideal clients share their strategies to align with their coaching partners. From there, the team creates custom-made KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
Before you implement your coaching program, ensure you work through the following data points:
- Business priorities – the best KPIs for coaching and mentoring are based on top priorities such as culture change, innovation focus or increased productivity.
- Skills gap analysis – you first need to know the difference between the current state and desired state of leadership skills before implementing a coaching or mentoring program.
- Real-time assessments – the coaching experience is important to enable learning but so is the data from, for instance, peer reviews and 360 feedback surveys. This data also helps you define KPIs for coaching and mentoring
5 typical examples of KPIs for coaching and mentoring
Many independent coaches advertise on social media. Although the best ones are affiliates of a coaching program or professional provider. Coaches then have the resources to more easily align with any Learning and Development initiative, alongside this typical example KPIs for coaching and mentoring:
- Employee engagement = coachee satisfaction rating
- Team performance = reduced turnover or improved customer satisfaction
- Innovation = increased number of actionable ideas
- Conflict management = greater number of team-generated work or ideas
- Promotion = number of people promoted
How do you measure the effectiveness of a coaching program?
Various frameworks and tools exist to measure the impact of any form of learning and development, including KPIs for coaching and mentoring. The most commonly used methods to evaluate a coaching program are the Kirkpatrick Model or the Brinkerhoff Success Case Method.
The Kirkpatrick Model is the most widely used for individual or group coaching because it’s simple and effective. With the model, you work through 4 levels of specific metrics during the coaching program, as we’ll see below.
Naturally, a successful program doesn’t just need good KPIs for coaching and mentoring. You also need a professional coach with external credentials such as being ICF accredited. It’s also important for coaches to have vast experience both professionally and personally.
The best coaches know that they need their own coach to keep developing as well as their specific set of KPIs for coaching and mentoring. Many also have peer coaching groups to keep their approach fresh and optimized. This further pushes their self-awareness to the level such that they provide the secret ingredients of coaching.
Such a mix of traits is unique to each coach and coaching program so as to ensure the KPIs for coaching and mentoring programs are met. Although, coaches usually embody qualities such as presence, wisdom and the ability to step outside of oneself and care for someone else. Any top provider or group of coaches can explain both their methodology and style confidently and with humility.
Once you’ve met your ideal coach or provider, the next step is to set the KPIs for coaching and mentoring across the 4 levels of the Kirkpatrick Model. A bonus would be to include them in a reports-view that shows real-time results for your coaching program.
Level 1: Reaction
The first step for any international coaching program is to understand how much value the coachees experienced by conducting a survey. Your KPI then becomes, for example, at least 80% were satisfied.
Level 2: Learning
Coaching programs offering skills development start by assessing current skillsets both before and after. A good example is to use skills tests that can also help define the KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
Level 3: Behavior
Both leadership and life coaches focus on behaviors. So, a 360-feedback survey at this stage works well to show trends of improvement throughout a coaching program.
Level 4: Results
Leadership development needs to align with business goals. For a coaching program, you measure business data, such as work output, both before and after coaching.
What are the 5 key aspects of coaching?
Once the KPIs for coaching and mentoring are set, it’s important to understand the characteristics of coaching. These details help you understand the journey and how the coaching program works.
Many coaching techniques are used to meet KPIs for coaching and mentoring. Interestingly, the preferred methodology also indicates a coach’s own development maturity level. Furthermore, highly developed coaches easily adapt to their potential clients and choose the right method to meet them at their own stage of development.
So, for example, at the first level, you could compare a coaching program to mentoring success. Essentially, the overlap occurs because the coach shares their experience just like a mentor. At the highly experienced end of the range, you get integrative or transformational coaches who view their coachees as part of a system. So, the KPIs for coaching and mentoring are defined around the ecosystem of a coachee’s context.
A transformational coaching program enables coachees to see all the interlinks in their reality. They can then better understand how they impact their world and vice versa. The behaviors become clearer and it’s easier for coachees to see their path and to make their own choices to maximize their potential.
Overall, coachee awareness becomes aligned with action due to the 5 key traits that a top coaching program brings:
Aspect 1. Formulation – A good practice when working with clients is to meet them where they are. This means exploring difficulties with the coach to start making sense of them. From there, coachees define their KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
Aspect 2. Goal setting – Clear goals with an action plan need to incorporate the KPIs for coaching and mentoring. These are then also both achievable and manageable for the whole coaching program.
Aspect 3. Reflection – A certified life coach is an expert at encouraging self-reflection although it’s important for all forms of coaching. Only then can self-awareness deepen and behaviors change around the KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
Aspect 4. Practice – Mentors and mentees, just like coaches and coachees, need to practice applying the frameworks and techniques they learn. Applied learning is still the most powerful approach for adults to meet their KPIs for coaching and mentoring.
Aspect 5. Feedback – Continuous high-level feedback is important as is more detailed observation for the duration of the coaching program. Coaches provide a safe space to do that, encouraging growth and ongoing self-reflection.
Next steps for establishing your coaching program
If your retention rate and employee satisfaction are dropping, among these other 5 telltale signs, you likely need a coaching program. That’s how you increase engagement and develop specific skills within your teams to suit business needs.
Professional, certified coaches create a safe space for self-reflection and deep learning to shift behaviors and mindsets. They’ll also work with you to define specific KPIs for coaching and mentoring to create the game changer your business is looking for.
“It takes courage [and a high level coach] to grow up and become who you really are” courtesy of E.E. Cummings.
Lingo Live helps organizations drive innovation and revenue and improves employee engagement and retention through skills-based coaching and applied learning. We do this by creating custom coaching programs by mapping our Skills Catalog and KPIs to the needs of L&D teams’ unique program design. Each coachee up-levels their skills through coaching, and then applies those skills in the workplace to achieve tangible behavior change. Contact us today if you are looking for a coaching partner.