ABSTRACT
Evaluations are performed against a set of criteria. In a business setting, these criteria relate to business impact and achieving business goals. For coaching to count it must be focused on business impact and directed at achieving business goals. The evaluation strategy ties together all of the pieces and ensures that a clear line of sight is established from the business goals to the coaching initiative objectives to the evaluation objectives. Moreover, developing the evaluation strategy has value as a litmus test to ensure that coaching is positioned to produce business value. Specifically, there are five practices of an effective evaluation strategy, each of which must be in place for a coaching initiative to be evaluated, and even more important, for coaching to have the intended impact on the business. This lesson was learned the hard way at OptiCom (a fictitious name).
