For me, the highlight of the AC conference this year was a talk by Dr Anthony Grant, a guy who specialises in research around measurement of coaching outcomes. It was great to here someone with academic credibility be as scathing about ROI as I am!
But unlike me, he could not only explain why ROI was a spurious measure, he also had a better suggestion - the Demonstrated Value (DV) approach. This involves looking at how coaching has shifted the coachee along two axes - one dimension about goal attainment, the other about the individual's sense of well-being (ie confidence, energy, etc). Incorporating well-being as the second dimension seemed to me an extremely elegant way of articulating what I've always felt was an important part of coaching.
So that in itself was helpful. What was even more helpful were the ideas about measuring along these two dimensions before and after coaching. On one axis you can use a simple goal attainment scale (ie a 1-10 rating). On the other axis you could use a similar subjective scale, or he suggested various well-validated scales from the world of mental health.
I am starting to to use this approach to see how it works for me in practice. Anyone got any good tips from their own experience?
