How effective is executive coaching in an offices setting?

As I was driving to the airport today to pick someone up, I thought about what I would like to post on my blog this week. Many people don't quite get the return on investment of hiring an executive coach. So, I thought maybe I should start describing some situations that people can relate to in order to see the effectiveness of coaching.  So here goes:

A small bank is being taken over by an investment group. The investment group sees the value of bringing in a coach to get a feel for what the current bank staff feelings and concerns are and create a plan of action to get buy in from the banking staff on the acquistion. I actually was the coach on this project earlier this year.

I first met with the leadership team of the investment group to get clear on what their roles and expectations were of the acquistion. I crafted a series of questions (with buy in from the investment group) to ask of the bank leaders (5 people) I met with individually. I also conducted a brief introductory meeting with the staff to share with them who I was and what my role was. At that meeting,  the investors introduced themselves to  the staff sharing limited information (as this was in the beginning stage of the acquisition and they had been working with the bank's leaders already). I asked the investment team what they would like to share with the banking staff and what they wanted the staff to know during the process. I asked this team to clarify how the staff would be impacted during the transition and what everyone on the team's roles were. I asked the staff to share with the investors what they needed to know and what they needed from them at this point. What showed up was a point person designated for keeping the staff informed when visitors showed up. The investment team acknowledged everyone for their hard work and shared they understood that fear of the unknownwas probably was present and that they would be as open as they could be and they asked for everyone's assistance during the transition which everyone agreed to.

From these meetings, I created a 10-question survey that was completed by the bank leadership team and the staff, with the results coming directly to me. The survey's focus was getting a pulse for what was going on, what they were proud of, what could be better, what they would like to see, what the challenges were in the current environment, what their fears were, etc. I compiled the results and built a matrix on key points that needed to be addressed. All this was confidential (no names shared) I included the good things that showed up as well, especially what people were proud of. (note - if this had been a bigger bank, a more formal assessment could have been more appropriate and I would have called in more coaching associates as well).

From the results of the survey, a plan of action was created between the investment team and the bank leaders. Meetings were scheduled to get buy-in from key people, staff meetings held to keep everyone informed and recruit volunteers who wanted to be part of future change. Committees were formed to keep the momentum going and included staff, management and leaders. This whole process created transparency and clarity in communication during the process, taking away some fear of the unknown and helped keep morale at a higher level.