Coaching staff to achieve their full potential is both challenging and rewarding. It is increasingly being recognised as a powerful method for increasing business performance, improving staff retention rates, increasing motivation and commitment, and enhancing a firm’s leadership capabilities. If successfully implemented and managed, it will ultimately increase profitability and the effectiveness of individuals and practices.

Although a relatively new phenomena in the legal world, coaching in its various guises has been around for many years. It has developed significantly from merely being used on athletes to being directed at chief executives in the boardroom and, to a lesser extent, making its presence felt in the legal profession.


This change in emphasis has been recognised by many organisations and trade magazines so much so that Personnel Today recently predicted that ‘future demand for coaching will increase and with it, the need for a more structured and rigorous approach’.


Although there are various coaching models doing the rounds, one of the most widely used was pioneered by Graham Alexander, European senior vice-president of the Center for High Performance. Mr Alexander is one of the most well-recognised and cutting-edge thinkers in the coaching sphere, and developed the GROW model which is used by a wide variety of coaches: Goals, Reality, Opportunity, Wrap up/will.



It is, perhaps, the last factor that is the most important in assessing whether coaching is really going to work in a firm, both from an individual and organisational perspective. If there is no will or commitment from the individual being coached, it is very hard for the coach to encourage and guide his coachee to help them achieve his or her goals. If there is no commitment from the organisation, the initiative will be very difficult to get off the ground, since as Simon Taylor, ex-Sinclair Roche & Temperley and now coaching specialist, puts it: ‘It is very difficult to make significant progress in less than six months.’


Overall, if coaching is to be a success, the person being coached must want to be coached, the organisation must be willing to invest in the initiative, and any coaching partner must be given time to effect change. Whether coaching will continue to be part of future talent development, only time will tell but, as far as we are concerned, a successful coaching programme will boast a significant return on investment for any law firm and will hopefully be here to stay.


Charles Boyle is managing consultant and head of legal and professional services at Hudson Human Capital Solutions. Adele Callaghan and Charlotte Stokes are directors in Hudson’s legal team