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What is my response when asked to coach someone out of a really bad performance gap?

From time to time I have been asked to coach someone who has a performance problem or attitude or skills gap in the work role. They are sometimes presented to me as a “remedial” person who needs to improve in certain areas of their work, often accompanied by these sorts of words – “see what you can do with him/her”, “can you try to work your magic on them”, “I have done everything I can with them but is hasn’t worked – can you now have a go with them for me.”
Those last few words seem to sum up and capture the nature of this type of coaching request. “I have tried and they aren’t improving. I have come to the end of my road with them. I don’t expect that you will make any difference to them but can you have a go any way.”
At its most positive it can be that the sponsoring manager recognises that what they have tried with their employee has not proved successful and has not provided the key to open the door to their effective performance – indeed they may even think that they themselves as the manager are a fundamental part of the problem, By providing them with a new approach from a different person with a completely different role and relationship with them could be the catalyst to help them to improve i e to think and act differently.
So how readily do I take on these sorts of coaching engagements?
How can I tell if they have any likely prospect of being successful?
What process do I use to establish the probability of success for us both in our roles as coach and coachee?
It is the awareness, commitment and responsibility of the coachee to think and act differently that is paramount to the success of any coaching assignment. It follows therefore that after the line manager or HR representative has briefed me about such a “remedial coaching” assignment that the first meeting with the potential coacheee is cruxial. It needs to be direct with the employee involved so that I can check out their understanding of the situation, which may or may not be same as it was from their manager, and then to establish what their level of awareness, commitment and responsibility to change is. If this is OK then I am prepared to go ahead with the coaching and to use exactly the same C.O.A.C.H. process model and approach that I would normally employ. Sometimes the coachee’s agenda and objectives for themselves are bigger and more extensive than that from their manager and sometimes it is the relationship between the manager and employee itself that is a significant part of the problem. This is OK with me – provided that I have a three way meeting with the manager and employee (coachee) at the start of the coaching process to get all of these aspects out into the open. It is at this stage that all 3 parties need to make a mature judgement about the appropriateness of this coaching support. If the employees objectives are opposed to those of their manager or if the issue is primarily about the nature of the relationship between the employee and manager themselves then it is unlikely that coaching will help improve the coachees performance. In this sort of situation some sort of mediation process may help but this is a quite different process and piece of work.