Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

45 The Leadership Success Definition Should Include Impact (and Maybe ROI)

Jack J. Phillips PhD

Jack J. Phillips, PhD, chairman of ROI Institute, is a world-renowned expert on measurement and evaluation. A former bank president, Phillips is author or editor of more than 100 books, including Measuring the Success of Coaching (ASTD Press, 2012), and has provided coaching and consulting services in 70 countries. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and on CNN .

Good Company grew from a small operation to a thriving business of more than $100M in revenue. This respected family company makes high quality personal care products.

The executives wanted continued success and thought coaching could help achieve this goal. The CEO engaged our coaching services for leadership development. When we asked, “What is the goal of the coaching?” the focus was primarily on behavior. They wanted to improve teamwork, communication, information sharing, delegation to team members, and performance issues. These responses focused on behavior change for their leaders.

Then we asked several questions, “If you do this, how does this help the business?” The executives were reluctant to talk about the business because they were still thinking “how can coaching really help the business?” With encouragement from the CFO, we persisted and got them to pinpoint key performance measures that would improve if they became better leaders through the coaching process. ...