-"Coaching may be the wave that carries the future of corporate training and development. But if that wave is ever to crest, corporations must be able to determine a financial return on their investment. Only if early adopters can truly demonstrate an ROI in dollar figures will coaching wash over corporate culture and change its landscape." -HR Today

Measuring ROI
The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) consistently alerts its members and readers about the survival tactic of evaluating, documenting, and quantifying the return on investment ( ROI ) of training and coaching initiatives within organizations. Coaching clients want to see a numerical scorecard -the measurable results that coaching has brought to their organization. Business and executive coaches today are now required to prove the measurable value and return on their client's investment in coaching. Gone are the days when coaches could not cost-justify their work. By measuring carefully the results of coaching and tying coaching to the strategic metrics a company uses to measure its business success, a coach must be able to demonstrate the financial return on the coaching dollars spent. 

Business Coaching and Executive Coaching and the need for a ROI scorecard:
Traditionally it has been difficult to demonstrate an increased value of a company's human capital. However, clients have increasingly become frustrated by the lack of rigorous methods employed by coaches for measuring the impact (the ROI - return on investment, the bottom-line increases in business activity, production and profitability) of their work. Today's clients are better educated about coaching and not only require real, clear statistical evidence of the bottom-line value of the coaches work but they also need coaches to better justify the methodologies they employ. 

More HR, Learning and OD leaders are also requesting proven processes to determine ROI. This is placing greater emphasis on learning from ROI evaluations and using the data to continuously improve how we design and deliver coaching programs. What is new, is that coaching initiatives are being held to the same standards as other business initiatives. It's becoming "Show me the monetary return or I'll close the door."

Traditional deployment of leadership coaching skills training initiatives fail to produce measurable and sustainable change: Traditional coaching curriculum and delivery around topics such as Effective Listening Skills and Interpersonal Communications fall short of developing behavioral competencies. Participants engage in activities, perhaps role plays, and are given feedback about how to do it better, what to change, what the standard is for high performance. The "one size fits all" approach to developing a person's competencies is ineffective as it ignores our individual complexities. Just as importantly, this traditional out-dated approach to coaching cannot generate an objective and reliable scorecard and a quantifiable lasting result.

Businesses are still plagued with the challenge of developing sustainable, measurable coaching programs that are able to target an employee's individual perceptions, self and social awareness, self and relationship management, and commitment to approaching people and situations differently than in the past. Individually tailored behavioral-based coaching initiatives are able to target and develop key behavioral competencies and provide clear statistical evidence of a real return. Quantifying data to support this approach is now surfacing in the many studies around behavioral-based coaching.

Behavioral-based or Psychology-based Coaching provides the ROI key:
One of the reasons why Behavioral-based or Psychology-based tools and techniques are employed by professional (full-time) coaching practitioners is that they allow for data to be gathered on specific, targeted behaviors impacting the application of a professional skill. By using appropriate validated, behavioral change instruments, these targeted behaviors can easily be measured and evaluated in a rigorous manner. Behavioral based coaching, with its emphasis on research and evidence, also provides individuals and organizations a validated and proven system that greatly increases their chances of effecting lasting behavioral change. 

Many vital practice assessment and measurement instruments a professional coach requires are only available to coaches trained and mentored by a facilitator who is also a licensed clinical psychologist. Dr Skiffington's Certified Master Coach Course is the only international coach training program that provides personal instruction in how-to-use the necessary validated tools for obtaining and measuring lasting behavioral coaching outcomes and producing a ROI scorecard.

ROI (return-on-investment) - Participants in the Certified Master Coach course (world's top-rated business coaching course -ICAA Survey 2004) learn how to:
- develop an evaluation ( ROI ) architecture that includes business goals, initiative objectives, and evaluation objectives
- calculate the ROI and ROE
- use various types of hard and soft data collection plans
- use intake and outcome assessments
- calculate ROI for both observable (behavioral) and inferable (developmental) changes
- convert data to monetary, production values and, 
- identify direct bottom-line program effects and flow-on intangible benefits etc..

NOTE: The Behavioral Coaching Institute's invitational, fast-tracked, 4 Day, Very Small Group Certified Master Coach course (conducted in New York, London, Sydney etc) is personally conducted by Dr Skiffington.