CASE STUDY
A consulting company had key people worth a lot of money to them. Every one of their senior consultants was
bringing in a million dollars a year of revenue or more. The company noticed that they were losing a large number of
these people every year. In revenue terms, this was around $20 million revenue a year walking out the door that had to
be regenerated and required rehiring.
The company introduced a coaching program for their high performers with coaches from the CEO to the C Suite and
the next level down providing development, support and interactions with their top performers at the next level down.
All coached non-direct reports, so they coached people that they were not directly managing - essentially coaching
each other’s people.
One of the big findings in this area (similar to on-boarding coaches) is that it’s really helpful to set both personal and
business goals.
The mix is about two business goals and one personal goal or a 50/50 mix but over and over the personal goals
people set have a really big impact on their work performance. Some personal goals were “be as inspired at work as
when I started” or “get home at 6pm three days a week” or “be as energised at work as I am on the weekend”. The
goals are always expressed in a solution focused way helping people to grow and develop. Personal goals provide
significant benefits to people’s business performance, which may at first seem surprising but makes a lot of sense in
many ways when you think about it, e.g. valued in a holistic way, and patterns and habits in one area of our life flows
across other areas.
The research of 30 internal coachees at one site shows a real impact on how valued people feel by the organization.
One study found 90% of clients felt significantly more valued; 80% felt more motivated at work and 60% reported
greater engagement on average.
By providing a coach, their level of motivation, engagement and how valued they feel is significantly enhanced. These
things in turn improve retention and performance. Extrapolating – if each client sets two business goals and you have
30 people being coached, that is 60 business goals that are being set, and the nature of coaching is that people set
bigger goals than they would without a coach. So, you have 60 really challenging business goals that people are
going to achieve. Tracking the success of these, we find on average 85% of the goals are achieved. Coaching
stretches and develops people and the organization. Here follows a quote from one client inside this organization:
“As a result of coaching I feel generally a lot more positive, I have become more self aware about what I need, for
example, I noticed my own negative self talk and I know that I need specific targets and goals to remain focused now.
I have also learnt that I am very hard on myself, I am asking myself the question, would you congratulate your best
friend if they achieved this, has really opened my eyes”.
The goal was “to be as motivated at work as when I started” and the client was a consultant in this consultant
company, being coached by a senior manager. This person has really learned about themselves, and has further
understood how they work and what they need to win and it’s really helped them improve their performance – and the
company has enhanced its retention.