Organizational coaching and the EA Professional: helping managers make EAP referrals and address performance problems can lead to developmental coaching activities that will benefit all employees.(Employee Assistance Programs)

Organizationally based coaching has become quite common over the last two decades, reaching fad status at some companies. Many employee assistance professionals possess a skill set that might make them very competent coaches. It's only natural, then, to find some EAPs creating a coaching initiative to augment their existing offerings.

While something of a natural fit, there are some significant challenges and risks for EAPs and EA professionals in launching a coaching effort. I've had the opportunity to serve on both sides of the EAP and coaching worlds as well as conduct research into organizationally based coaching over the past decade.

In this article, I'll share some of what I've learned about organizational coaching, particularly in "best practices" companies, as a way of illustrating some of those challenges and risks but also as a way to suggest one opportunity for EA professionals as a place to begin. The observations shared here are based on research conducted at organizations such as Children's Hospital Boston and the Whirlpool Corporation and reported in The Coaching Organization: A Strategy for Developing Leaders (Sage Publications 2006).

ORGANIZATIONALLY SPONSORED COACHING Organizationally sponsored coaching is, or should be, quite different from coaching that is provided privately to individuals, often referred to as "life" coaching. Unfortunately, there is tremendous confusion among many organizational leaders about the nature of coaching, the options for coaching, the way to assess coaching and coaches, and related matters. As a result, there is still a great deal of what might be called "ad hoc" coaching taking place in which an external coach is called in to help an employee, often a very senior employee, with a problem.

Such "remedial" coaching is no longer visible in best practices companies, for very good reasons. First of all, …