Coaching for Engagement and Performance Certification Program, The Human Capital Institute
Written By: Mahmoud Mansi
HR practitioners act as internal consultants and business partners, are also responsible for leading both the business and the people. Leading the people of the organization is a key indicator to later on lead the business and the market. Therefore, the Human Capital Institute (HCI) has worked closely with leaders from the International Coach Federation (ICF), the ROI Institute, and Springboard International, in order to form a new certification program (Coaching for Engagement and Performance – CEP) that helps HR leaders to sustain a coaching organizational culture.
The certification program gradually answers simple questions as why organizations need coaches, do we rely on internal or external coaches, how to get buy in from top management, into more complicated topics on building internal partnerships, learning about different coaching models, preparing managers into becoming coaches, using change management to spread the coaching culture, measuring the Return on Investment and the Return on Expectations, and most importantly is sustaining the coaching culture across all levels of the organization.
When the HCI Faculty Instructor asked the participants about how coaching can impact organizations in the first place, Amanda highlighted that coaching makes organizations “more productive and providing better customer service,” while Natasha responded that “better engagement” would lead to such results, in addition to “strong performance” as Pleasure explained. D’Adra joined and explained that coaching makes engaged employees produce “more innovative ideas,” while Cris added that coaching impacts the culture where there is “more listening, more collaboration and understanding,” and therefore leading to “more action to ideas.” Jolene had a very interesting perspective where coaching helps employees and leaders become “problem solvers.” In the end, coaching is essential in organizations and all the benefits of coaching will eventually cause “acceleration in business results” as Athena described. I personally believe that as consultants – internal or external – we do a lot of planning, changes and project management, but without the right coaching many initiatives might not be sustainable and reach their highest impact. HCI’s CEP Tool Guide Book simply summarizes the impact of coaching by explaining, “Organizations need managers and leaders who use coaching skills to empower employees to achieve organizational goals…”
HCI shares three Coaching Modalities where the organization can rely on professional certified coaches who will act as consultants or “external coaches”, or the organization can hire fulltime professional coach practitioners who become “internal coaches”, or the organization can develop its managers and leaders with extra coaching skills in order to apply with their subordinates and across the organization “manager/leader using coaching skills – MLUCS”.
Each of the Coaching Modalities has its own pros and cons, therefore there is no one way to implement coaching across the organization. After discussing several HCI approaches for coaching implementation, the HCI Faculty Instructor divided the participants into different workout groups where each group developed a coaching strategy.
As a research institute, HCI has conducted interviews with leaders from different industries, and organized conferences with case studies from NASA, NeuroLeadership Institute, International Coach Federation, Management Possible, Shawna Corden Coaching, NIKE, and Rogers Communication, which were all part of the CEP certification program.
Throughout the training program, the HCI Faculty Instructor applied the principles of coaching in delivering the content. The two days were entirely interactive where there was room for brainstorming, sharing case studies, and working in groups. By the end of the course, participants thanked the instructor for being a great “coach” to them.