Creating high coaching standards at Jaguar Land Rover
About Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover is a British automotive business. Currently owned by Tata Motors of India, the company is responsible for producing some of the world’s most iconic fast cars, SUVs and 4x4 vehicles. The organisation currently employs roughly 16,000 UK staff.
The challenge
Like many other companies at the time, in 2004 Jaguar Land Rover had been using coaching predominantly as a remedial measure to tackle under-performance. As a result coaching had developed a poor reputation within the company. Sandra Goddard, then Business Psychologist, sought to develop coaching company-wide based on a strong vision that coaching could be used to support and develop all Jaguar Land Rover employees rather than focus primarily on those perceived to be underperforming.
At the time Jaguar Land Rover was going through a great deal of organisational change, having been bought by Ford in 2000. Sandra wanted to give employees access to coaching that would help them cope with this change, while simultaneously building their personal and professional effectiveness. A basic skills level programme for line managers already existed. However, this was insufficient to satisfy the coaching calibre required. Rather than become reliant on external coaches, Sandra intended to develop an internal coaching capacity that would both reduce costs and help create a transformational shift in Jaguar Land Rover’s internal mindset towards a culture of facilitated dialogue and progressive leadership development.
The Performance Coach
Jaguar Land Rover commissioned Charles Brook of The Performance Coach to design a two-tier coaching programme that would train twelve coaches to an intermediate level of knowledge and a further three coaches to an advanced level. The style of both programmes was practical and all coaches were required to gain certification from the University of Strathclyde. The programme was such a success that Sandra soon began to run regular coaching programmes. That accomplished, she could turn her attention to putting processes in place that would ensure a continuing high standard of coaching within the company.
Programme design
Although using internal coaches has benefits, one possible risk is that coaches may find it difficult to consistently navigate the boundary between coach, counsellor and manager. An external coach will rarely know their client outside coaching sessions. However, an internal coach works within the same organisational context and may have had a previous relationship with their coachee, whether as line manager or peer colleague. These blurred boundaries might undermine the standard of coaching sessions or adversely impact the performance management processes. They could even be dangerous if problems that need to be addressed by a professional counsellor are masked.
In order to keep the coaching at Jaguar Land Rover safe and professional, Sandra Goddard decided that supervision must become integral to their coaching programmes. She asked The Performance Coach to train the advanced coaches in coaching supervision so they could become internal supervisors. This training comprised an intensive two-day workshop for the three advanced coaches and ongoing support and supervision from Charles Brook. Participants also undertook action learning sets where they learned and applied supervision tools and techniques using the framework of Hawkins and Shohet’s 7 Eyed Model.
Afterwards, Jaguar Land Rover were able to implement a supervision process whereby trainee coaches were ‘buddy coached’ by their peers on a monthly basis, and received more experienced feedback from one of the internal supervisors at least once every second month. Charles Brook was also on hand when particularly difficult coaching issues emerged. This guaranteed that all coaching taking place within Jaguar Land Rover reached a professional benchmark, and standards were maintained over time.
The results
For Sandra Goddard, the programme had a great effect. For the first time ever within Jaguar Land Rover demand was outstripping supply, as coaching became seen as positively developmental rather than a punishment. The level of coaching offered had changed too, becoming transformational rather than transactional. Two participants soon began coaching at board level and now, several years on, the coaching programmes are still continuing to run and create benefits for Jaguar Land Rover as a whole.