THE BENCHMARKING MODEL IN COACHING MASTERY

When we first created the benchmarks for the core coaching competencies (2003 London), we also began actually teaching and training The Benchmarking Model itself. In fact, until 2007 we also gave each of the teams a benchmarking project to do. That is, they were to identify a value or skill and then, as a team, to benchmark it. In that way the group members would learn the process of taking an intangible experience and finding the behavioral equivalents that show up in the external world indicating the experience.

Now we still have much of that material in the Coaching Mastery training manual and you can see it there. But we no longer teach the Benchmarking Model as such. There’s two reasons for that.

The first is because most of the coaches will not be creating benchmarks and so will not need that skill set. The second is because the skills required for creating benchmarks are advanced skills and is best developed after a person has mastered the seven core coaching competencies. So today we focus primarily on those core skills.