Track Manager .:. Rachel Amato

When exploring the benefits of coaching in organizations, it is useful to adopt a systemic perspective and go beyond the practice of coaching individuals, to look at the wider impact of individual coaching, and also to look at the coaching of teams and whole organizations. Through a series of illustrations of individual and organizational coaching interventions, we will discover ways in which coaching contributes to leveraging organization-wide change, accompanying sometimes painful transitions, turning around dysfunctional psychosocial dynamics, and developing the strengths of organizations. We will have the opportunity to explore coaching practices which can improve the functioning of “unhealthy organizations”, going further than treating the symptoms – burn-out, stress, individual or team misalignment, bullying, … - resulting from dysfunctional systems. We will see how coaching can help individuals and groups to break out of counter-productive cycles in organizations. The presenters will share their experiences of specific organizational contexts in which it was possible to develop the “life bits” of organizations, to enable the broader system to take on new, more “virtuous” circles or to weather a difficult transition.

The second aspect of this topic is then the issue of how the benefits of coaching are anchored in organizations and the return on investment. How can one measure the impact of coaching on the performance of an organization, in both human and economic terms? How do we define success in the first place in this field? Are there conditions that have to be met for a coaching intervention to be successful in an organization? Is there a need to distinguish between the shorter and the longer term outcomes of coaching in organizations? What are ways of qualifying and quantifying the improvements reached in the way organizations function? Are these related to a typology of coaching practices? How to ensure that the benefits of coaching – the “return on investment” – continue to operate over time?

The sessions in this track will be run by selected facilitators from a variety of backgrounds and national origins, representing different angles on the debate, proposing different arguments and practices, and sharing experiences of several types of organization and issues. They have in common that they are able to describe the observed benefits of coaching for those organizations.


Track Speakers

Carole Pemberton PCC and Andrea Close

Georgina Jaffee

Katrina Burrus MCC, PhD

Kim Gørtz and Dennis Rasmussen

Laura Crawshaw PhD

Stephen Daltrey PCC