Coaching World Issue 20: Industry Trends & Insights | Page 21

A Self-sustaining
Model
Prior to 2010, GSK’s use of coaching
was reactive, with spiraling costs and
dispersed and limited accountability.
Leaders realized they needed to
make a change in order to attract,
develop and retain talent with the
confidence and skills to challenge
the status quo and make change
happen. The organization reoriented
coaching as a strategic tool in the
transformation and success of its
business. Coaching is now integral
to GSK’s talent, leadership and
organizational development strategy.
Since GSK wanted to make its
coaching offering a truly global
initiative, the organization looked
to ICF as a model for consistent
standards and ethics in coaching
across all regions of the world. One
of the first priorities was to build
an internal coaching structure to
ensure high standards across the
global organization. The Coaching
Centre of Excellence (CoE) was
created. The CoE standardizes
coaching globally throughout the
organization by improving access,
ensuring quality and efficiency, and
creatively containing costs. It is a selffunded unit without a direct budget
from GSK; rather, all coaching costs
are charged to the business units
using coaches’ services.

The structure also includes a Job
Plus Coaches (JPC) program, where
employees volunteer as coaches. All
JPCs go through a rigorous training
process and are assessed by trainers
in the classroom, by peers through
peer coaching, through professional
quarterly supervision and through
observed coaching sessions.
GSK’s leadership sees the JPC
program as a worthwhile investment
for the organization and its people.
Because of that, the majority of
coaching happens on company
time even though it is a “volunteer”
activity, and JPCs have access to
continuing professional development
just as other coaches and managers/
leaders do. GSK openly discusses the
value of the JPC program, and other
organizations are beginning to adapt
the model for themselves.

Developing
Leaders Internally
Coaching has strong support from
leaders within the organization,
and more than 60 percent of the
corporate executive team uses
coaches on a regular basis.

Leaders are such believers in
coaching that they have pushed
for specific coaching programs. A
few years ago, CEO Andrew Witty
wanted to ensure he had more
internal employees ready to take
on C-suite positions, so GSK created
the Enterprise Leadership program,
which includes 18 months of
Executive Coaching for employees
identified as having the potential
for higher leadership roles. Ribeiro,
a past Enterprise Leadership
participant, says, “There’s nothing
more powerful than when senior
leaders stand up and say, ‘I’m doing
coaching, it’s helping me develop
to be a better leader, a better
manager.’ This is having a huge
impact on the organization.”
Designated CEO Emma Walmsley,
who will become GSK’s first female
CEO in March 2017, was one of
three founding sponsors of the
Accelerating Difference (AD)
program, which aims to promote
more women to senior levels within
the organization through coaching,
sponsorship and dialogues.
Walmsley says, “Having women
at all levels allows us to see role
models at all levels, allows us to
see the possibilities that we have
ahead of us in terms of our careers.
It creates coaching and mentoring
opportunities and frankly some
very practical guidance around our
career and life journeys that many
of us face.”
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >

21

Rogerio Ribeiro, senior vice
president and area head of
emerging markets and Asia Pacific,

GSK’s coaching structure is a mixedmodality model, including more than
200 external coach practitioners,
1,000 internal coach practitioners
and 16,000 managers/leaders
using coaching skills. All external
and internal Executive Coaches are
credentialed, most through ICF.

“They’re very much supporters
and talk about it openly,” says Sally
Bonneywell, PCC, vice president
of coaching for GSK. “The way that
they position coaching is that it’s for
success and for people who want
to become the best versions of
themselves. … It’s not positioned as
being anything like remedial; it’s very
much about saying how it can help
us be even more successful.”

Coaching World

Coaches and business leaders
view the CoE as a sustainable
structure. Adrian Machon, PCC, the
organization’s Prism nominating
coach and an external coach
practitioner for GSK, explains that
the CoE must offer a high-quality
service because it is a business. “It
must manage its efficiency and rigor,
its capacity and creativity against
costs,” he says.

says that this model makes the
program even more valuable than
if it were budgeted because it really
makes him, and other business
leaders, evaluate how this cost will
impact business. “We’re not using
it because it’s something that is
centrally available or funded,” Ribeiro
says. “We’re using it because it’s
the right thing. You must believe
that coaching is the way to develop
better leaders.”