Do You Evaluate?

Evaluation of our group coaching programs, and other programs in general, is an often overlooked, but critical activity.

There has been a lot written about evaluation of programs in the training realm, and several professionals such as Donald Kirkpatrick have led the way in providing us with frameworks to understand the importance of evaluation of programs. Kirkpatrick's Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels is an industry classic and standard.

I would be interested in finding out how many coaches actually evaluate the impact of their coaching programs, both in the short and long term, for both individual and group coaching programs. This issue is very much linked to the ongoing discussion within our professional community related to ROI (Return on Investment) and measuring the impact of our coaching interventions.

Evaluation is so important from many different perspectives. It initially allows us to know if we are on the mark, it can be useful in re-designing future programs or sessions to better meet the needs of our clients, and it can be a very useful marketing tool.

I'll be writing more in a future post about one of the quick mini-eval tools I use for my group coaching work. It only takes a few minutes, and gives me feedback immediately of what's working and what's not for my clients. That way, I can make changes as needed between our group coaching sessions.

So...do you evaluate? And, if so, how?

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, CPCC
Potentials Realized
http://www.potentialsrealized.com
Email: jennifer@potentialsrealized.com