Coaching for Organizational Change
Written by Mariateresa Romeo
Professional coaching is widely recognized as an effective talent development tool in corporate environments. It assists individuals and teams in enhancing their performance, acquiring new skills and behaviors, and advancing their careers to align with organizational objectives.
As Gallwey highlights in the well-known book The Inner Game, “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
For many, coaching is simply about learning and development. However, they often overlook the crucial role of coaching in helping organizations navigate significant changes. This includes mergers and acquisitions, implementing new operating models, business transformations, or shifts in organizational culture.
Internationally validated change management methodologies and frameworks, such as Prosci, include coaching programs as a best practice for overcoming people’s resistance and building capabilities to realize the benefits of change initiatives.
As an organizational development consultant, I experienced how professional coaching, if well planned, delivered, and integrated with the overall change management project, can make a significant difference in managing the so-called “people side of the change.”
No matter what changes an organization is undergoing—be it the adoption of a new structure, a new line of business, new technology, or a new strategy—individual, team, and group coaching can provide significant value in facilitating the transition.
Empowering change champions and leaders
When embracing an organizational change, leaders must often communicate what is changing and why to the employees in their department or business areas. Along with the change champions – designated individuals responsible for inspiring, facilitating, and leading successful transitions during a change – leaders must engage their team in the initiative and win their resistance.
Engaging change champions and leaders affected by the change in individual or group coaching sessions can effectively enhance their communication skills to facilitate that change. It includes improving their ability to handle difficult conversations and their capability to motivate others. Such coaching can prepare them for their roles in the transition.
Fostering stakeholders’ sponsorship
Research shows that one of the main reasons for organizational change failure is poor or lack of sponsorship.
Organizational change initiatives usually impact a wide range of leaders from different departments and entities who are directly accountable to organizational executives for the initiative’s success, provide support and resources, and set the tone for the change. Sometimes, sponsors lack time and resources or underestimate the importance of the people side of change. Quite often, they show support at the beginning of the project but then tend to decrease their engagement and participation in the long term.
In these cases, individual or team coaching programs can help those leaders focus on the organizational goals, navigate competing priorities and decision-making, and maintain a proper level of support for the initiative over time.
Managing change resistance
Change resistance and so-called “organizational cynicism” are the main obstacles to introducing change. Best practices teach us to develop change strategies and plan to prevent and neutralize resistance through several initiatives, including coaching.
Once the organization identifies individuals or teams that may be more resistant to change and assesses their readiness for it, a professional coach can take the field to develop targeted interventions.
A practical and structured coaching program can assist people in adopting new behaviors in response to changes, abandoning obstructionism, recognizing new ideas and innovations as opportunities for themselves and their teams, and realigning their personal goals with the organization’s objectives.
Which coach is the best choice for organizational change management?
Now that we have explored some fields where a professional coach can support organizational change management projects, we must address an outstanding question: Can anyone with a license and certification as a professional coach support an organization in this project? My answer is no.
Coaching has several specializations in the business and corporate environment, such as performance coaching, team coaching, and career coaching. All of them imply that the professional coach has the skills and competencies to support individuals and teams navigating changes affecting their professional lives.
However, to be effective in this context, the coaching process must be appropriately planned and executed within the most significant organizational change project. Coaching is not teaching or consulting; it enables people to learn new skills and behaviors to achieve personal or professional goals.
So, to support the organizational change, a coach doesn’t have to be fully knowledgeable of the company’s strategy or all the nuances of the new structure or business the company wants to implement. Still, they need to understand the whole picture. They must be aware of the organizational goals behind the change management initiative to support individuals and teams in aligning with it.
Nevertheless, they must have experience working in large project settings, which differs from working solo as a leadership, career, or executive coach. The professional coach must act as a project team member and coordinate their effort with the change management lead, project sponsors, and other internal or external resources.
It is essential to hire a professional coach with an educational background in organizational development and first-hand experience managing changes in corporate environments. To be effective, the coach must understand the complexities and dynamics of navigating changes and leverage adequate tools and techniques to develop adaptability and facilitate transitions of individuals and teams.
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