Two trends have emerged in organizational development. One is the growing acceptance and use of executive coaching to help develop people. The other is the human resource professional’s role shift from a staff to a strategic partner. These two trends put together infer that the HR professional is increasingly expected to play the role of an internal coach/mentor to colleagues.
In organizations that have started to use internal coaches, results have been positive. For example, GE Capital reported that its HR professionals did just as good a job as external coaches, if not better. Furthermore, using internal coaches save money otherwise set aside for external coaches.
How prevalent is internal coaching? Many HR professionals will profess that they have been playing this role all along. Yet, most of their professed coaching is informal, with little to no expected outcome or formal parameters.
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