Coaching for Executive Performance 

At Hanover Executive, our coaches are focussed on how to deliver enduring benefit through coaching and ensure value for our clients.

We have known for some time that any intervention, or change to a situation involving people will lead to an initial boost in performance. This is known as the Hawthorne effect and has been very widely studied in the 90 years since it was first described. This raises the issue of how this applies to coaching interventions and the important implications concerning the point at which benefit is assessed.

Potentially any benign intervention will lead to an initial improvement in performance. It won't be enduring or particularly in-line with the coaching objectives defined at the outset, but it might make people feel good, require less skilled coaching practitioners and perhaps even be cheaper in the short term. Arguably there can be benefit in this. However, most professional coaches and most buying organisations are looking for lasting and profound performance improvement: to achieve real personal growth and change that does not slide back to an earlier state when the intervention has ended.

One way to minimalise the Hawthorne effect is to extend the assessment period to a point in time after the effect is likely to endure. This would involve holding 3 reviews of each coaching programme;

       1.   A mid-point review, roughly halfway through a defined number of sessions

       2.   A formal meeting to review the outcomes and progress against the initially defined business objectives is held on
             completion of the programme

       3.   In addition, this progress is then reviewed at a later date, usually anywhere for 3-12 months after the assignment
             has ended, according to the situation and context

This approach helps to ensure that enhanced performance has been achieved and is enduring, thus producing business benefit and realised value.

Sarah Jaggers
Executive Coach, Hanover Executive