A Strategic Coach

Training & Development, Apr 2005 by Zweibel, Barry

Having a coach isn't just for executives. Here's how a coach makes sense for you.

I LIKE THE ASTD discussion boards. They provide training and development professionals who are scattered across the globe a place to gather, ask questions, and share ideas. In a recent thread, someone asked if an external coach might be a good way to help an employee deal with not receiving a promotion. Excellent, I thought-more and more coaching is becoming a top-of-mind option.

The next post caught me by surprise. It suggested that a coach should be considered "only for extremely senior roles," such as a CEO candidate who didn't get the job. While many valid reasons exist for not enlisting the help of a coach, job status isn't one of them. In fact, hiring a coach-with or without company sponsorship-can be one of the more strategically savvy moves an employee at any level can make.

Coaching is not...

When speaking with people who aren't familiar with the concept of coaching, I find that they often base their views on several misconceptions. To clarify, let's make a distinction between business coaching and the "Extreme Makeover," Dr. Phil-type life coaching you see on TV.

Business coaching, also called executive coaching, management coaching, and leadership coaching, requires no plastic surgery. It doesn't necessitate that you quit your job, divorce your spouse, or move to a foreign land. Here's a list of other things coaching is not:

Not a replacement for training. Coaching is an adjunct to training, not a substitute for it. Coaching, which occurs on an ongoing basis-usually weekly or biweekly, continues over the course of several months. As such, coaching readily reinforces the lessons learned from training through the structure and follow-up inherent in the overall process.

Not therapy. Most people who hire business coaches are already quite successful or well on their way to becoming so. Organizations that sponsor coaches for employees typically see those employees as high performers or contributors who have the potential to be a "HiPo" with a little extra care.

Not just pleasant chitchat. Give extended attention to a topic of interest, and an invigorating intensity naturally develops. Although coaching conversations can be quite animated, a coach's job is to facilitate deep learning and lasting change. The good moods and high spirits that typically result are value-added byproducts.

Not about giving answers. Coaching is about asking questions that will support the discovery of answers. It's about helping a person learn to communicate better with herself so that she doesn't always need the coach. It's about helping people naturally work harder and smarter so that they can maximize the value they provide to their employer, their co-workers, the customers they serve, and themselves.

Coaching is...

The Worldwide Association of Business Coaches, an international professional association dedicated to the business coaching industry, defines business coaching as "a highly interactive partnership for the purpose of reaching professional and personal goals and objectives within the context of the business's or organization's goals and objectives."

Newsweek magazine describes a business coach as, "Part consultant, part motivational speaker ... coaches work with managers, entrepreneurs, and just plain folks, helping them define and achieve their goals." The Haniard Business Review notes that "(t]he goal of coaching is the goal of good managementto make the most of an organization's valuable resources." Anyone who hasn't been "made the most of is ripe for experiencing the benefits of working with a business coach.

But, how does coaching work?

All about focus

FOCUS serves as an excellent acronym for how a business coach can help you-or an employee of your company-better achieve professional and personal goals.

F: Face it. People too often sell themselves short in business by avoiding what they don't know how to do. It's a natural tendency, but one that makes you increasingly averse to risk. Coaching allows you to learn new skills in a safe, supportive, and confidential way. So when you're given a new assignment or seemingly impossible challenge, you have the confidence and resolve to face it head-on.

O: Openminded. The traits that made you successful are often what keep you from continued success. Attention to detail may have solidified your reputation, but it may now be what's stopping you from improving your delegation skills. Your natural ability to work independently may have helped you achieve recognition in the past, yet now it's undermining your efforts to become a better team player. A coach helps you recognize your default behaviors and augment your success strategy to be more appropriate for your current challenges.

C: Choices. A coach challenges you to reconsider previously discounted possibilities and to develop new ones. Using thought-provoking questions, comments, role-playing, and a variety of other techniques, a coach helps you break out of the rut of indecision.