Business Coaching International

Transforming Individuals and Organizations

Sunny Stout-Rostron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429911637
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

You simply must read this book if you are serious about being a top-notch business coach. It is an excellent guide to best practices based on clear theory, experience and business wisdom.'- Carol Kauffman PhD, co-founder and Director of the Coaching and Positive Psychology Initiative at Harvard Medical School, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Coaching: An International Journal of Theory Research and Practice. 'This is an extraordinarily thorough book. It covers a great range of practical guidance on matters that will concern the new coach and addresses a wide range of approaches to coaching while remaining firmly embedded in an experiential learning tradition.'- David Megginson, Professor of Human Resource Development, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

CHAPTER ONE

About this book

CHAPTER OUTLINE

• What’s different about this book?

• Where does coaching fit into the business?

• Who should read this book?

• Chapter contents

• Coach’s library

What’s different about this book?

Everything! This book is about the essential “practice” and “practices” of a business coach. The authors speak from their experience, with practical examples, analyzing the complexities of the coaching conversation—the basic tool of the business and executive coach. They believe that business coaching can make a huge contribution to leadership competence inside organizations and, in this book, comprehensively integrate their practical experience as business coaches with their own research and teaching.

Business Coaching International takes an in-depth, dynamic and integrative look at the coaching process, question frameworks, coaching competences, and how to use current coaching models. It examines key coach/client concerns such as ethics, contracting, supervision and the “relationship” between coach and client. The book also focuses on the hub of the coaching conversation—learning from experience. The authors believe this is crucial for individual, team and organizational transformation.

This book also explores:

• the diversity of the international coaching marketplace and how the business coach needs to adapt accordingly;

• how to handle existential issues that affect meaning and purpose for the over-stretched executive;

• where emotional intelligence fits into the matrix of core competences for the business coach; and

• the core theoretical underpinnings of business coaching that will transform your business coaching practice.

Although there are many excellent studies available about coaching, this book is specifically targeted to the diverse and multifaceted marketplace of coaching, coaching psychology and coaching research. Whereas the majority of publications look at coaching as a recipe, this book takes a deeper look at what it takes to become an effective business or executive coach.

Business Coaching International investigates the significance, meaning and structure of the coaching intervention within the coach-client conversation, and takes a look at what, how and who you need to be to coach. At the heart of the business coaching process, irrespective of the model or approach, is “the relationship”. This means that business coaching is not necessarily about “doing” for the client, but more about “being”—creating a safe thinking environment: a space where thinking, feeling, insight and creative decision making can take place. Applying the knowledge and techniques within this book will deepen your practice.

Some of the tools and processes explored in this book will help you to coach your executive clients in:

1. Business issues such as leading a team; thinking strategically; managing people, processes and tasks; maintaining relationships; promoting; networking; succession planning; and continuing professional development.

2. Emotional intelligence (EQ) issues such as developing self-awareness; managing oneself in the workplace; becoming aware of relationships, values and culture at work; and managing relationships in a complex and diverse environment.

3. Relationship issues, which dominate if executives do not lead a healthy lifestyle, thus diminishing their effectiveness at work. The anxiety of not coping, either at home or in the office, impacts on the other half of an executive’s life.

4. Body, mind and stress issues such as maintaining health and fitness, a balanced diet, and getting enough sleep.

Each chapter is designed to be a world unto itself. What we suggest to make it fun, useful and intriguing for yourself is to read the first chapter, then read those chapters most relevant to you right now. Immediately you can begin to apply new thinking that will help build the rigour of your own business coaching practice—whether you oversee a stable of business coaches or run your own individual practice.

As authors who coach, consult and lecture internationally, we have written this book specifically for practising coaches and coaching consultants, with tools, techniques, case studies and applications relevant to any business coach anywhere. We share with you from our personal experience as executive coaches—two of us having worked in organizations for nearly 30 years, much of that time engaged in coaching senior managers and executives at the highest level. We also share our various learning and research findings from coaching inside organizations in the UK, Europe, USA and South Africa. Marti and I have been involved in the Working Group on a Research Agenda for Development of the Field within the Global Convention on Coaching (GCC), looking at the development of the coaching profession worldwide. This book also explores several international developments that may have an impact on the supervision and regulation of coaching worldwide.

Where does coaching fit into the business?

Whether you are an external coaching consultant, head of Human Resources (HR) or Organizational Development (OD) within your organization, it is important that coaching is aligned with both the business and the talent strategies. Within most organizations there tends to be a unique combination of internal coach programmes combined with training and mentoring to develop the “manager as coach”, or the “leader as coach”, as well as team coaching—in addition to some kind of schema to recruit and bring in external coaches for senior executives. There is some confusion between “team coaching” and “group facilitation”. It is important for anyone coaching teams or groups to be skilled not just in facilitating group learning processes, but also in teaching coaching skills and competences for individual team members who need to develop their own direct reports in a coaching manner.

What we recommend is that both internal and external coaching programmes are in alignment with each other, and with the business and talent development strategies. It is crucial to be able to measure the efficacy of internal and external coaching programmes, and we would encourage some qualitative or quantitative measurement of all coaching that takes place in the organization. One of the ways to measure success is to have feedback sessions with the coaches two or three times a year, with the coaches giving feedback on what is working and not working within the system, and on that which impedes or supports the coaching and/or mentoring processes. Secondly, ensure that there is a process in place to adequately supervise internal and external coaches, and build a systemic coaching programme that is fully integrated with the company’s talent management systems and processes to create a feedback loop to senior management and line managers as well as internal and external coaches.

Also crucial is some kind of qualitative and quantitative measurement of the coaching process, identifying the return on investment (ROI) for the organization. We recommend clearly specifying the aims and objectives of the coaching process, both internal and external. This requires the development of criteria for external coaches that you recruit, as well as building a bespoke training programme for internal coaches to cover the basics: the coaching process; an understanding of coaching models and question frameworks; and the theoretical and psychological underpinnings of coaching, including the competences required for the coach.

These competences range from attention, active and deep listening, intervention skills such as questions, reframing and giving feedback, and experiential learning techniques, to an understanding of ethics and confidentiality, psychological processes and organizational systems. Equally important are the ability to interpret and understand management and/or psychological profiles, an understanding of and ability to work with diversity and cultural competence, and the requirements of continuing professional development.

Who should read this book?

If you are a business coach working within a business, entrepreneurial, organizational or corporate environment, then this book is for you. If you are a practising business coach hired externally into organizations, an internal organizational coach working with junior, senior and executive managers, a managerial leader who uses coaching to develop your team, an HR manager/director setting up an internal coaching programme, or if you are facilitating coach-training programmes within an organization—then this book is definitely for you.

No manager or executive leaves their personal life behind when they walk into work. It is simply another role or function that frames who they are. So it follows that business coaching cannot be effective without looking at clients holistically. Even if business coaches primarily help clients to identify their core purpose, strategies, developmental objectives, strengths, weaknesses and obstacles to be overcome, business coaching also takes in all aspects of an executive’s life, from the meaning and purpose of the work that they are doing, to managing people, processes and systems, as well as creating a balance between work and personal life.

This book is for you if you are:

• a master business or executive coach with an existing, successful practice wishing to deepen your competence, knowledge and skills because you believe in your own continuous improvement;

• a practising business or executive coach with varying levels of expertise;

• a business coach new to the field keen to develop your expertise;

• a business coach who wishes to expand and improve your skills and competence in the coaching process with a deeper understanding of the coaching conversation and its impact in the workplace;

• a coach who wants to understand the coaching process within the coaching conversation more fully, as well as the entire coaching intervention over a period of time;

• an HR professional responsible for setting up the coaching interventions within the organization, and often find yourself in a coaching role;

• a senior managerial leader who wants to understand the principles of business coaching because you are experiencing coaching or considering it as a profession;

• a senior leader who needs to understand the role of the business coach because you are responsible for leading, managing and coaching your team or organization;

• an experienced external and/or internal business coach actively engaged in business coaching;

• a coach or coach researcher actively engaged in business coaching-related matters, for example, one-on-one coach training or leadership/management development programmes;

• a coach who has one or more years of business coaching and who needs an in-depth understanding of the coaching process and coaching models;

• someone at the beginning stages of coaching in business, with over five years’ business and organizational experience; or

• a coach practitioner who has delivered coaching services to small, medium and large organizations, including public and private institutions.

We hope the following chapters will give you a broader perspective on your practice and the challenges that you face when coaching individuals and teams. This is a growing field built on the cumulative experience of business coaches, and we firmly believe that our most powerful learning comes from experience. As a business coach, you are helping your clients to learn from and interpret their own experiences, and to understand the complexity of the environment in which they work. We hope that our learning will make a substantial contribution to your competence and practice.

It is critical in any organization that the coaching strategy is in alignment with both the business and the talent strategies. Often the HR department is not in alignment with the Coaching and Mentoring unit, and often neither is in alignment with Organizational or Leadership Development. Only when these are all working together in an integrated way will you be able to develop a successful internal and external coaching programme and process with sustainable and measurable outcomes.

Chapter contents

Chapter 2: The business coaching process

Chapter 2 takes a brief look at the origins and foundation-stones of business coaching worldwide. Examined here are the core theoretical and psychological underpinnings of coaching, with an overview of the current reality for business coaching in the USA, UK, and Australia, as well as in Argentina, India, China and other East Asian countries, and South Africa. We outline modern management theory from the 1970s to the twenty-first century, from transformational leadership to the learning organization, managing complexity and talent development—and the way it influenced the beginnings of corporate coaching.

Business coaches encourage their clients to think for themselves and to develop an awareness of their own conscious and unconscious behaviours, which may influence performance in the workplace. Business coaching is essentially about the results experienced through the dynamic relationship between coach and client, and how those results impact on individual, team and organizational performance.

This chapter addresses the influence of adult learning and experiential learning on the business coaching process, where coach and client probe the essence of an experience to understand its significance and the learning that can be gained from it. Ultimately, however, business coaching needs to be aligned with all the leadership and management development initiatives within the organization.

Chapter 3: The coaching conversation

This chapter explores the purpose and focus of the “coaching conversation” and the competences useful to the business coach. The “coaching conversation” is the face-to-face or telephonic interaction between coach and client. It is a “thinking partnership” (Kline, 1999/2004) where coach and client reflect on the client’s experience, transforming it into potential for learning and action. How the client takes responsibility for change can emerge from the coaching conversation.

The focus of a coaching conversation is to help the client work towards achieving their desired outcomes. The coach primarily explores with each client what it is that is holding back or stopping the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CHAPTER ONE About this book
• CHAPTER TWO The business coaching process
• CHAPTER THREE The coaching conversation
• CHAPTER FOUR Working with question frameworks
• CHAPTER FIVE Exploring and understanding coaching models
• CHAPTER SIX Diversity, culture and gender
• CHAPTER SEVEN Existential and experiential learning issues
• CHAPTER EIGHT Supervision, contracting and ethical concerns
• CHAPTER NINE Developing a body of knowledge—coaching research
• CHAPTER TEN Integration and synthesis
• APPENDIX Competences in business coaching
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX