A significant number of organisations use coaching to support wider management development programmes.  The coaching element is usually used to:

• Add a personal development element to an otherwise largely business-focused development programme;
• Provide skilled feedback to participants from assessment tests like psychometric questionnaires and 360° feedback surveys; and
• Provide participants with one-to-one support in tackling personal barriers to successful completion of the programme.

However, a number of our clients additionally use this coaching element to help with ensuring their programme content is correctly focused on meeting their clients’ specific learning objectives and managing how their programmes are evaluated.

The tool they use to do this is the Bullseye Coaching methodology.  This is typically how they go about it:

• The coaches hold their first session with participants prior to the programme starting.  The session is used to help the participants set development goals, both for the programme itself, and for their wider personal future;
• The coaches feed the main emergent development themes back to the programme designer/facilitator so that the programme content to be tailored to meet the participants’ needs;
• In-programme feedback on the content and whether it is meeting the participants’ needs can be assessed at the end of each programme element but also via the one-to-one sessions with coaches should participants not feel happy speaking out in public;
• The coaches help the participants track and assess progress against their goals during the course of the programme; and
• At the end of the programme, the coaches use the Bullseye Coaching methodology to evaluate the impact of both the wider programme and their individual coaching input.

The advantages to this evaluation method are numerous and highly significant:

• The four quadrants of the Bullseye evaluation model are ideally suited to capturing the full outcomes of a development programme – personal achievements; business performance improvements; impact on the participants’ wider life and well-being; and what they plan to do in the future to maintain and further build upon their progress;
• The data you get from this form of evaluation is markedly richer and more complete than any other methodology because it is founded on a long-term relationship with the evaluator and is the result of an in-depth discussion focused solely on the issue.  Questionnaires, however cleverly designed, cannot do this;
• Each participant is left with a personal Scorecard detailing what they have achieved and recording what they have committed to do in the future to maintain it;
• The Scorecard data can easily be collated into a Programme Evaluation Report that includes a sound, verified Return on Investment (ROI) element (which can be so vital in securing support for further programmes); and
• Evaluating in this way adds almost nothing to the programme costs.  The Bullseye Coaching training manuals are free upon registration as a Bullseye Coach and the Scorecards cost as little as £20 each when buying 10 or more.  The only other cost, depending on how the programme is set up in the first place, would come from whether you needed to expand the coaching element by additional session or not.   

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