Over recent years there has been a significant rise in individuals within an organisation who hold a coaching qualification and go on to operate as an ‘internal coach’ (this is often in addition to another, more sizeable, role held within the company), together with leaders who receive training to develop their coaching leadership style, often referred to as ‘leader as coach’.
Both approaches can provide a huge asset to an organisation and have benefits such as: increased employee engagement; enhanced employee performance; improved leadership development: and a greater engagement with change programmes.
In this article we review the unique challenges that internal coaches / leader as coach face, together with how to get the most return from this significant investment, whilst keeping everyone involved safe, through the provision of supervision.
The unique challenges of internal coaches (Clutterbuck, Whitaker and Lucas)
- Power distortions. Even a very experienced, confident coach can be affected internally by ‘power distance’ when the coachee is more senior than they are.
- Knowing the organisation and its politics. The internal coach can often better contextualise their coachees’ issues, because of a greater understanding of the organisation and its culture.
However, this is a double-edged sword. Such shared knowledge can promote collusion between the coach and coachee or simply create a genuine blind spot because of shared connection to the organisation.
- Refusing a coaching assignment. It is relatively easy for an external coach to turn down a coaching assignment when they feel the relationship isn’t right, or the coachee’s motivations are inappropriate. It is not so easy for the internal coach who has less choice over their coachee base.
- Boss-subordinate politics. It can be more difficult for an internal coach to confront ‘political coaching’, for example, when a poor boss wants to deflect attention from their own deficiencies by focusing attention on ‘fixing’ a direct report, or when the covert intent of coaching is to edge someone out of the organisation.
- Changing hats Many internal coaches have a day job connected to the HR or L&D function, where they are often seen as the technical expert. When coaching, they must remember to leave this ‘style’ behind. This can be challenging when coachees appeal to ‘the rescuer’ in them, or when they see the coach as a gatekeeper to closely guarded organisational information.
In a similar vein, the internal coach may have multiple relationships with their coachees because of a shared history in the organisation or perhaps even formal and dual roles.
- How to ‘not know’. In organisations people move roles and divisions all the time, and no matter how ‘clean’ an internal coach matching process might be, it’s possible for someone to end up with functional responsibility for a former coachee.
- Human curiosity can challenge confidentiality. As an internal coach, it is highly likely you will pass the line managers of your coachees in the corridor. Despite being clear with contracting that the coaching relationship is protected by coachee confidentiality, the line manager’s natural curiosity will inevitably lead to the question, ‘How is the coaching going?’
It can be personally difficult to maintain a boundaried stance when the question comes from a good intent.
- Timeframe. As internal coaches often know their coachee’s over a longer period of time than external coaches, they may need to work harder to establish appropriate boundaries between work, coaching or friendship.
- Formalising the relationship. Unlike their external counterparts where the ‘contractual’ nature of the relationship leads to an expectation to contract for the coaching at the start, these ‘starts’ and ‘ends’ can be less clear-cut for the internal coach.
A simple glance at this list of differences demonstrates the need for on-going support for internal coaches beyond the initial training that they receive.
How supervision can help
‘If you don’t provide supervision for internal coaches… the sustainability and return on investment of your coaching initiative is in jeopardy’ (Hawkins and Schwenk).
The key functions of supervision, as described by Proctor, are:
- Normative (Managerial)
The supervisor accepts and shares with the supervisee responsibility for ensuring that the supervisee’s work is professional and ethical and operating within whatever codes of ethics they apply.
- Formative (Educative)
The supervisor develops the skills, theoretical knowledge or personal attributes that will enable the supervisee to become an increasingly skilled practitioner of coaching.
- Restorative (Supportive)
The supervisor listens, supports, champions, inspires and challenges the supervisee when doubts or insecurities arise.
The reported benefits of supervision are also well documented (Humphrey and Sheppard):
| For the coach | For the coaching organisation | For the coachee |
| Increases rigour | Generates generic issues | Keeps the coaching clean |
| Enhances professionalism | Highlights the development needs of the organisation | Provides quality assurance |
| Extends coaches’ repertoire / development | Builds confidence in the coaching profession | Protects and represents coachees’ interests |
| Acts as a safe pair of hands | Maintains confidence in the process | |
| Builds confidence | ||
| Provides challenge |
Supervision by an internal vs external supervisor?
In addition to internal supervision, offering your pool of internal coaches / leader as coach access to regular supervision from an external supervisor can have the following benefits:
- Offers an enhanced sense of confidentiality.
- Increases objectivity and perspective through the provision of a different kind of challenge (they won’t have the same blind spots as internal supervisors and won’t take things about the culture for granted).
- Provides a potentially greater range of access to continuous learning and development.
- Offers quality assurance and help to keep your organisation safe through adherence to professional codes of ethics.
Supervision can take many different forms: for example, group supervision or one to one supervision. If you would like to find out more about how our qualified supervisors can help you and your organisation, then please do get in touch.
