Managing Coaching at Work

By Jackie Keddy andClive Johnson, published by Kogan Page at a RRP of £24.99, US$26.37 ISBN 978-0749461362.

‘Managing Coaching at Work’ is the new book from Jackie Keddy and Clive Johnson, promising to offer guidance for coaches, managers, HR professionals, OD specialists, training professionals, coaches and others with responsibility for sponsoring coaching “exactly as it says on the tin”. It follows on from the pair’s previous Kogan Page title, ‘Managing Conflict at Work’ (see companion website:

The book’s scope spans the breadth of coaching management - from initial implementation and normalising through to sustaining and assessing the impacts of coaching. It also puts coaching management in context with the needs of organisational strategy, demonstrating how adopting a proactive approach to howcoachingis applied can radically increaseits value for any business.

The book offers a practical approach for determining whether, what and how to implement workplace coaching. It allows a compelling business case for continuing coaching to be developed and offers a powerful approach for assessing organization impacts, and allows confident decisions to be taken on how to develop, source and maximise the use of coaching to meet an organisation’s strategic objectives.

Jackie Keddy is rare amongst coaching practitioners in having seen life from both sides of the fence–having had responsibility for implementing and managing a major coaching initiative whilst herself on the payroll of a large organisation and subsequently helping other companies in her capacity as a consultant.

Factors to be considered when reviewing how to take a coaching initiative forward are also described, and attention is given to coaching in its many different guises - for example, as a professional practice, as a skill for line managers and as a combined development intervention with training.

Key topics include:

  • The agenda for coaching - organisational contexts, objectives, contribution relative to other interventions, integration with organisation strategy and other initiatives
  • Implementation choices
  • ‘How to’ embed coaching
  • Coaching evaluation
  • Sustaining and developing coaching.

The book shows how coaching can have real impact in fundamental areas of business operation, including examples of companies that have even found that coaching was the linchpin in their survival against failure–a long way from the ‘nice to have’ idea about coaching that some may hold on to, a belief that its only value is to keep staff happy when the time and lack of pressure to perform allows.

‘Managing Coaching at Work’ covers many topics that are often overlooked or covered in only scant detail elsewhere, including the difficult task of sustaining enthusiasm for coaching amongst managers, recognising when coaching may not be the best alternative for meeting particular needs and taking a serious look at the task of auditing and evaluating what coaching is delivering.

The book explores what ‘coaching' means, emphasizing the role it should play in supporting individual development and people management strategy. The business context of coaching is given special attention, whilst an approach to ensure that investments in coaching remain properly aligned with changing needs is described. The book considers approaches to implementation based on differing definitions and business contexts for coaching, providing readers with practical tips and techniques for avoiding pitfalls and implementing change effectively.

Keddy, who led the Metropolitan Police Service’s in-house coaching programme, is a big fan of making sure that the right approach is chosen for making coaching work - the book describes no less than five different approaches to implementation, and doesn’t take a ‘one size fits all’ view of coaching either. “We might sometimes be called heretics, but the fact is that much coaching at a grass-roots level doesn’t take place at a pre-arranged time in a nice, quiet room,” says Keddy.

The text especially aims to help individuals charged with responsibility for coaching in their organisations as well as those who are curious about what role coaching may have to play in its people management needs to take coaching to new level, considering topics such as how to ensure that coaching remains aligned with organisational needs, being realistic about aspiration levels and integrating coaching with other management disciplines.

The guidance offered is aimed at SME’s as well as at large corporates, public sector organisations and not-for-profit concerns, packing in powerful case studies from around the world from companies whose staff base can be counted on a pair of hands to some of the largest multinationals.

The book presents a simple, proven approach for evaluating the contribution coaching makes within an organisation. Offering a practical method and illustrated examples, the book shows how to address the apparent difficulty of evaluating the outputs of a discipline which often aims to change individuals’ mindsets and behaviours rather than fill skill/knowledge gaps or offer answers ‘on a plate’, and for which objectives are often kept private.

Commenting on this often neglected area, Clive Johnson (who pioneered an approach for evaluating coaching) says: “This is a topic that many shy away from," he says, “but it's critical to ensuring that the value of coaching is properly understood by others in terms that have direct meaning to them." The model used for evaluation also incorporates investigation principles used by Jackie Keddy during her police detective work.

Whilst tackling the theory of good coaching management practice, the book puts the emphasis on describing ‘how to’ address differentneeds, drawing on practical, real experience and insight shared by the book's many contributors. To this end is supported by a website offering a range of templates that can be downloaded, as well as including a comprehensive appendix of similar information and rich illustration of case study examples. Comprehensive appendices include useful reference sources and templates too.

Prior to coming into a senior HR role at the London Metropolitan Police, Keddy served as a police officer for nearly 30 years. She believes that her experience in managing large departments, as well as supporting victims through the homicide and domestic violence unit that she headed up before becoming a DCI, equipped her well for becoming a coach when she moved into the HR field.

Johnson gained experience as a coachwhilst working as a management consultant, and went on to specialise in career coaching. He quickly found that self-discovery and conflict were common themes for his clients, whilst his work with organisations revealed the difficulty many faced in proving the worth of coaching to their peers and sponsors. The pair met when Johnson was commissioned by Keddy to undertake an evaluation of the Met’s coaching programme.

In addition to their writing, Keddy and Johnson co-founded the specialist conflict management consultancy The Janus Partnership ( and created the International Conflict Management Forum (ICMF) ( the UK’s leading organisation for sharing organisational learning on conflict. Both are regular contributors of press editorial and conference speakers.

Jackie Keddy also founded the specialist coaching management consultancy Keddy Consultants ( Clive Johnson heads the specialist training & coaching evaluation consultancy Proactive Style (

‘Managing Coaching of Work’ by Jackie Keddyand Clive Johnson is published by Kogan Page at a RRP of £24.99, US$26.37 ISBN 978-0749461362.

Keddy and Johnson are interviewed on the website supporting the book,

For more information, contact Jackie Keddy on +44 (0)20 7870 1080, e-mail: or Clive Johnson on +44 (0)7956 942980, e-mail: . Publicist: Helen McCusker, Booked PR, +44 (0)7951 078388.Kogan Page Publicity/Marketing (UK): Shereen Muhyeddeen, +44 (0)20 7843 1952,. Kogan Page Publicity/Marketing (US): Kim Leichner, +1 (215)-928-9112,.