Case Study: Executive Coaching

Business Challenge

To gain insight into the question of whether executive coaching helps to create better leaders—and if so, in what ways—we conducted a study of thirty-two executives, each of whom had been coached by one of our consultants within the previous four years. The executives worked for several large, multinational organizations (including MasterCard International), and the majority were at the level of director or vice president.

Process

• The executives began the coaching process by using results from our comprehensive, 360-degree-feedback instrument that measures leadership strengths and development needs and encourages and guides change strategies for leaders.
• Each executive was rated by their direct reports, peers, and boss.
• The feedback results were used to identify strengths and weaknesses and to create development plans.
• These personalized plans provided the focus during the subsequent coaching interventions, which lasted from six months to a year.
• After the period of coaching the executives were assessed again by the same people who had provided the pre-coaching Benchmarks feedback.
• The targeted post-coaching survey assessed only the areas that each executive had focused on during the coaching process.

Results

• Coaching participants demonstrated a 24-44% increase in their soft skills, especially in the areas of building and mending relationships, composure, and participative management.
• They showed a decrease in career derailers of 25-34%, like problems with interpersonal relationships and difficulty adapting to change.