How To: Use Coaching Analytics to See Whether Coaching Is Happening and Whether It's Working

Sooner or later, someone asks the question: is our coaching working?

It's a fair question, and a hard one. Sessions are on the calendar and Programs are running, but revenue is a lagging indicator. By the time results show up in the forecast, the behaviors that coaching shaped happened weeks earlier. To answer with confidence, you need to see those earlier signals.

That's what Coaching Analytics is for. It lives under Analyze → Coaching Data, and each of its five tabs answers one part of the bigger question. Taken in order, they tell the story of your coaching.

It starts with whether coaching is happening

Before you can judge whether coaching works, you have to know whether it's happening consistently across every team, not just the ones you check most often.

Open Analyze → Coaching Data → Accountability. Use the filters to set the Time Series, End Date, and Group Type, and you'll see each manager and Group's Due, Completed, and Expired Sessions week by week or month by month. Sort by Completion Rate, and the picture comes into focus. Most teams are probably on track, a few are ahead, and one or two stand out for the wrong reasons.

Those standouts are where the story continues.

What you need: A Coaching Analytics permission or Coaching: All Access, and the Coaching: Accountability feature turned on.

Then it gets specific

A low completion rate tells you something is off, but not what. For that, switch to Insights.

Set your Start Date, End Date, and Group to the team you flagged. The Weekly Coaching Activity graph shows the rhythm of their coaching: Sessions, Action Plans, and Notes created each week. Maybe it's steady and just fell off recently, or maybe it never got going.

Then scroll to Employees Without 1 Completed Session. This is where the numbers turn into names: the people on that team who haven't had a completed coaching Session in the time frame you chose. Next to each name is an Act button. One click alerts that employee's manager to create a Session, so finding a gap and following up happen in the same place.

What you need: A Coaching Analytics permission or Coaching: All Access. Utilization Metrics must be turned on by Ambition Support.

Then it connects to results

Once coaching is happening consistently, you can look at what it's doing for performance. That's the job of Attribution.

Choose a Program, the Employees in it, and the Metrics the Program is meant to move. Attribution draws a line graph of how those people are performing over time. This is where coaching stops being an activity you track and becomes something you can tie to outcomes.

What you need: A Coaching Analytics permission or Coaching: All Access, and the Coaching: Attribution feature turned on.

Then it looks at quality

Completed Sessions and rising metrics are a good sign, but they don't tell you what the conversations were like. Ratings fills in that part.

Here you'll find Session ratings from across your organization, each showing the employee, the manager, the Program, and the rating the Session manager or Co-Coach gave. If a rating catches your eye, click through to the original Session and read the conversation behind it.

What you need: Coaching: All Access and the Session Ratings feature turned on.

And finally, it gets shared

A story is only useful if it reaches the people who need it. When the data needs to go into a leadership review, a QBR, or a deeper analysis, go to Reports.

Choose the Employee Utilization report to see who is and isn't receiving coaching, Manager Utilization to see who is and isn't coaching their direct reports, or Program for a closer look at one coaching Program. Narrow the report with the field selectors, click Download, and you have the full picture to share.

What you need: A Coaching Analytics permission for the Utilization reports. The Program report requires Coaching: All Access.

Start with one question this week

You don't need to work through all five tabs on day one. Open Accountability, find the one Group that stands out, follow it into Insights, and click Act for the people who need a Session. That's one question answered and one gap closed.

Next time someone asks whether coaching is working, you'll be able to answer with data.

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