September 24, 2024
What Internal Coaches Need
By Ken Giglio, Principal of Mindful Leadership
According to the 2023 International Coaching Federation (ICF) Global Coaching Study, the number of coaches jumped 54% from its 2019 estimate of 71,000 to 109,200 worldwide in 2022. Internal coaches have also increased in number as more organizations intentionally build coaching cultures and offer coaching to wider populations of managers and leaders. The ICF estimates nearly one in five coaches (16%) works both as an external and internal coach, and these coaches spend most of their time doing internal coaching.
Internal coaches come in many different variations from business leaders taking on clients as a side gig to HR and OD professionals coaching as part of their responsibilities to full-time coaches hired specifically to coach leaders and teams. Coaches working internally in companies all share the same core needs: adequate training (with a coaching certification being the gold standard), organizational sponsorship and support, and opportunities to learn and grow and build resilience. When these three needs are met, the conditions are in place for internal coaches to do meaningful work and fulfill their organizational purpose—that is, to provide coaching to leaders and teams in support of their development and business goals.
All internal coaches share the same opportunities to be more in the know and in tune to their organization’s culture and business, which makes them uniquely positioned (unlike external coaches) to be very effective in their coaching work. They also share common challenges, most notably how to walk the tightrope of coaching leaders in the same system in which they are also employed.
Since we know from numerous coaching studies coaching doesn’t work without transparency and trust, coaches who both work in and coach in the same organization need an increased awareness of boundaries to guarantee safe coach spaces for their clients. As one of my internal coach supervisees shared in our session, “I know the leaders my coaching client is in conflict with, and I feel fearful for my job with the latest re-organization, just like my client.”
Scenarios like this are not uncommon, so a key question for organizations that use internal coaches is – what are the resources available to your coaches to support their emotional well-being, development, and the quality and integrity of their work?
Coaching Supervision – Adding Value and Mitigating Risk
Coaching supervision has many good definitions (see the EMCC’s definition and guidelines). ln brief, it is reflective practice for coaches for their betterment and the betterment of their coaching clients and organizations. As noted by Katherine St John-Brooks, author of Internal Coaching: The Inside Story, in an excellent six-part podcast series on internal coaching supervision, organizations that provide coaching supervision for their internal coaches are “protecting their investment.” Too often a company will pay for a leader or HR professional to get training as a coach and then leave any ongoing development and support to the coach themselves.
In short, very few organizations offer their internal coaches supervision, and this gap in support leaves coaches at risk of
- Stalling when it comes to their development, including not receiving valuable feedback
- Losing their confidence and perspective by becoming enmeshed in the system, with no way to work through conflicts of interest and confidentiality boundaries
- Becoming emotionally fatigued and burnt out in high-stress, high-demand workplaces.
Leaders and teams are dealing with increasing complexity in their businesses and an evolving workforce. Internal coaches can play an essential role in building leaders’ competence and confidence to advance business strategy and motivate people to high performance. Organizations hire and train internal coaches to add value by supporting and challenging their leaders to become the best version of themselves. Those organizations committed to their leaders’ ongoing development must also be focused on ensuring the coaches who work with their leaders are fit for purpose by offering coaching supervision.
For internal coaching to deliver on its promise to elevate leaders, a increasing number of organizations are investing in coaching supervision as a resource. A growing number of studies shows supervision adds value by offering reflective dialogue—1:1 and in groups—which can build an internal coach’s confidence and competence by supporting them in in how they
- Navigate systemic dynamics and manage boundaries
- Gain perspective in complex and shifting organizational environments
- Build resilience within themselves and their leaders in an often hyper-driven workplace
- Continuously learn and grow from their coaching experiences
- Maintain the highest levels of coaching quality and integrity.
Internal coaches work in dynamic, constantly changing organizations and face multiple, unique challenges not common to external coaches. In our current challenging business environment, coaching supervision offers an oasis for internal coaches to pause, reflect, and then re-engage with renewed energy to coach their leaders to become who they need to be for their own success and for the success of the organization.
Mindful Leadership Consulting offers internal coaching supervision by qualified external supervisors to support coaches in navigating complex organizational environments. Our supervision approach empowers internal coaches to be their highest functioning selves, balancing out the boundaries of their individual needs as coaches and those of their leader clients with their organizational context.
Our company’s global coaching supervision team has extensive experience designing and delivering customized executive coaching and coaching supervision programs for internal and external coaches from Indonesia and Asia Pacific to Europe and North America and the Middle East. All team members are coach educators and have taught and participated in leading coaching supervision programs in the Americas and Europe.