Mastering Executive Coaching

Jonathan Passmore, Brian Underhill, Marshall Goldsmith, Jonathan Passmore, Brian O. Underhill, Marshall Goldsmith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351244657
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book aims to enrich the knowledge and toolkit of executive coaches and help them on their development path towards mastery. Edited by three leading practitioners, it brings together the expertise of an international range of Master Coaches, and provides evidence-based practical chapters across a broad range of topics, including contracting, ethical dilemmas, coaching board members and non-executive directors, and the use of psychometrics.

Mastering Executive Coaching will be essential reading for executive coaches, consultants and trainers who are looking to develop their practice. It will also be highly relevant for Masters-level students of coaching and coaching psychology.

Part I

Mastering themes

Chapter 1

Mastering executive coaching

Jonathan Passmore, Brian O. Underhill, and Marshall Goldsmith

Imagine my surprise (Underhill) as I walked into Marshall Goldsmith’s office in the mid-1990s to find him on speakerphone with a client of a cell phone service provider. Many of us worked for Marshall, conducting thousands of 360 debrief sessions up until that point – generally one session by phone or in person to review a leader’s multi-source feedback from their key stakeholders.

This client – the VP Marketing – was saying, “Marshall, I loved that one feedback session you did with me. But I want more! Can we do many more of those, perhaps for 1 entire year?” Marshall quickly agreed. And she went on, “And can some of your consultants coach other members of my team?” Marshall agreed again.

Soon I found myself assigned to two leaders, armed with their feedback report and a mandate to coach them for one year. But there was just one problem; I wondered to myself: “What were we supposed to do with these people for one entire year?”

Our 360 debrief work morphed into full-year executive coaching, literally overnight based on client demand, and we had to figure it out as we were going along. This, and a score of other similar conversations around the same time, and the coaching industry was underway.

Origins of coaching

Coaching as a profession has a fairly recent history compared to other professions (Brock, 2015). The years 1995–1996 are identified as critical in the life of the coaching profession, according to industry historian Vikki Brock (Brock, 2015; Brock, 2018). During these years, Thomas Leonard formed the International Coach Federation (ICF) as an alumni association for graduations of his own Coach U academy; graduates of Coaches Training Institute (formed by Laura Whitworth) would join the Professional and Personal Coaches Association (PPCA) in northern California. At this point, there were already eight professional coaching schools. A 1996 Newsweek article may have been one of the first mass media acknowledgements of the arrival of coaching (Hamilton, 1996). A special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal devoted entirely to coaching also appeared in 1996. And coincidentally (and somewhat comically), 1996 is the year I (Underhill) began working for Marshall Goldsmith, who had just put out his first of what would become over 30 books (Hesselbein, Goldsmith, & Beckhard, 1996).

In the UK, John Whitmore, Graham Alexander, and Alan Fine had been working with clients, helping them reflect on their performance. From these conversations, starting in the 1980s the GROW model emerged. Others joined the wagon train spurred on by John’s book Coaching for Performance (Whitmore, 1992). This led to the development of several coaching programs in the UK, including one of the most popular, a distance learning course, from Newcastle College. I (Passmore) and many other UK coaches started here in the late 1990s, with this first step into coaching, applying these skills inside my organizations to help develop individual and team performance. In parallel with this, the EMCC (European Coaching and Mentoring Council) was being formed by David Megginson, David Clutterbuck, and others, and by the early 2000s the UK saw the formation of the Special Group in Coaching Psychology – a group within the British Psychological Society – by Stephen Palmer, Alison Whybrow, and Jonathan Passmore, and the formation of the Association of Coaching by Katherine Tulpa and Alex Szabo.

This process of coach development was being played out in a dozen or more countries across the world, each with its own unique pathway.

Since 2000, the pace of growth has continued in the coaching industry (e.g., Abel & Nair, 2012; Dunlop, 2017; Passmore, Brown, & Csigas, 2017). The number of coaches in the marketplace has exploded. The International Coach Federation boasted 400 subscribers in 1996, 7,900 in 2004, and 25,000 members in 2014 (International Coach Federation, n.d.). ICF estimates a total industry of 53,300 coaches in 2016 (up from 47,500 in 2012), with 1,500 new coaches per year in the past four years (International Coach Federation, 2012; International Coach Federation, 2016). An “executive coaching” search in the PsycINFO database produced 238 citations between 2012 and 2017, compared to just 32 between 1995 and 2000 (Dunlop, 2017). Twenty-three coaching associations were identified in 2014 (Maltbia, Marsick, & Ghosh, 2014), which rose to 37 professional coaching associations just four years later (Peer Resources, 2018). As early as 2007, universities were establishing coaching degree programs, with 19 such programs emerging in Australia, UK, US, and Canada (Grant, 2008) at institutions such as Columbia, Queens University of Charlotte, Sydney, East London, Oxford Brookes, and Henley Business School. In its 10-year study on the profession, the Conference Board noted, “the story of executive coaching in organizations over the past 10 years is one of remarkable growth” (Abel, Ray, & Nair, 2016, p. 7).

This has brought on immediate concerns regarding widely varying coaching methodologies, practitioner backgrounds/training, uncertain results, and disparate costs. Anyone could hang out a business card and declare, “I am an executive coach.” A 2004 Harvard Business Review article dubbed the new profession ‘the Wild West.’ The authors noted, “like the Wild West of yesteryear, this frontier is chaotic, largely unexplored, and fraught with risk, yet immensely promising” (Sherman & Freas, 2004).

Indeed, this promise has been materializing over the past two decades with the massive adoption of corporate-wide executive coaching programs, the rise of internal coaches, increased recognition of international accreditation standards, and a slow but gradual shift from ‘magic’ and ‘art’ towards ‘science’ and ‘evidence-based practice,’ as coaching has followed the development pathway of many other emerging professions from case study towards meta-analysis (Passmore & Fillery Travis, 2011). The early days of coaching’s focus on poor performers has largely been replaced with a focus on coaching the brightest and the best. Executives increasingly view working with a coach as a status symbol. A US study found the use of coaching for performance problems has decreased by 10% during the five years from 2013 to 2018 (Underhill et al., 2013; CoachSource, 2018).

Why coaching – why now?

Many industries have emerged with the advent of new technologies, which when built upon themselves further expanded multiple applications of that technology.

But given that coaching is not particularly reliant on the advent of any new technology, why would now be the time for coaching to reach full stride?

We believe that there is now a good evidence base (Bozer & Jones, 2018; Jones, Woods, & Guillaume, 2016) and that there is increasing collaboration between professional bodies around ethics and coach training. Clearly more needs to be done in both camps of science and practice.

Alongside this, the challenges of a global economy, increasing migration, and technological change all make for a world of work that is more dynamic and in which there is a blurring of home and work. Coaching has a role to play in helping people to navigate these boundaries and make the right choices for them, their families, and their organizations, while in other domains – from safety to driver development, prisons to healthcare – coaching can play a role in helping individuals to take greater personal responsibility and become more ‘choiceful.’

Towards mastery

In 2016, we (Underhill) made special arrangements for seasoned senior coaches in our network to finally get their ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) training. Many had been coaching for 10–20 years, often with doctorate degrees and other relevant trainings, but simply had not pursued (or even needed) an official credential in the field. ICF rules were changing in the fall, so if there was ever a time to get this training, it would be now.

Worried that no one would sign up, we negotiated a liberal cancellation policy with our PCC trainer. Though our clients were beginning to favor certified coaches, it was still a minority view. Most of these coaches were quite successful already and really had little need for additional training of this nature. We put out the announcement with fingers crossed.

The class sold out in seven days. We quickly added a second class, which sold out in four days.

Perhaps this is as great an example as any of the openness toward a senior coach furthering their own growth and development. Practitioners in this field often speak of “continuous learning,” “self-development,” etc. Coaching conferences have been increasing in frequency, with increasing numbers of practitioners in attendance. Much like our desire to assist clients toward greater mastery of their craft, we as coaches also desire to further our own growth and development – our mastery.

Towards the future

As we have noted above, various forms of coaching are emerging, with coaching being used for driver development (Passmore & Mortimer, 2011), on offshore oil rigs (Passmore, 2013), in prisons (McGregor, 2015), and in the armed forces (Passmore & Rehman, 2012). In reality, coaching can be used in any situation where there are opportunities for learning and time pressures are not critical. The evidence is that coaching is a far more powerful style, than instruction. It enables individuals to make choices about what would work best for them and how to vary principles to individual circumstances. It thus may be of little surprise that it has become the tool of choice for development in organizations.

The journey to mastery

As three active authors in the field, we were conscious of the proliferation of coaching titles. Each has something to offer the reader, but most books remain focused on the new or emerging coach. We wanted to offer a titled aimed at more the more experienced practitioners, helping them on their journey towards mastery, and at those working at the senior leader or c-suite level in organizations. To do this, we have invited a range of voices, with different experiences and with different perspectives, to contribute their insights. In addition to the normal chapter and references, we have asked our contributors to also include a series of resources. These are designed as a resource for those wanting to take their knowledge deeper. They typically include YouTube video clips and links to articles or books.

In Chapter 2, Eve Turner and Peter Hawkins discuss the issue of contracting and how master coaches can enhance the way they contract to improve client outcomes for individuals and organizations through the use of tripartite and multi-party contracts.

In Chapter 3, Eve Turner and Jonathan Passmore discuss the issue of coaching ethics. They note how ethics is central to everyday thinking, as well as coaching. They discuss the emergence of ethics in professional bodies and offer an ethical decision-making framework to complement the professional ethics codes for use by professional coaches.

In Chapter 4, Rebecca J. Jones and Brian O. Underhill provide an overview of the training evaluation theory and evidence and translate how this can be applied to evaluating coaching. Using a framework of coaching outcomes, they show how coaching can be evaluated at multiple levels.

In Chapter 5, Rebecca Turner, Howard Morgan, and Charles I. Story explore behavioral change. This chapter introduces executive coaching approaches and techniques for working with senior leaders who exhibit ‘unhelpful’ and ‘negative’ behaviors that can lead to dissatisfaction or unhealthy relationships at work.

In Chapter 6, Mary Wayne Bush and John Bennett explore how coaches can contribute towards wider organizational change. Their chapter focuses on how coaching supports those who lead change and can contribute toward more successful change outcomes and includes key approaches and tools for working with change managers.

Ole Michael Spaten and Suzy Green focus on the role of meaning, purpose, values, and strengths in Chapter 7. They argue that by providing senior leaders the opportunities to engage in executive coaching, not only can they increase their own levels of meaning but they may, through their influential roles, also assist their organizations to create greater levels of meaning for others in their organizations.

In Chapter 8, Doug Riddle explores what coaches can do to make the value to the organization more obvious and direct rather than depend on anecdotal evidence from their clients’ expressing satisfaction with the quality of their work.

In Chapter 9, Philippe Rosinski discussed how senior teams can benefit from cross-cultural team coaching. In the chapter, Philippe introduces the 10 co-steps process for coaching intercultural executive teams and discusses the application of his cultural orientations framework (COF) for use with more senior clients.

In Chapter 10, David Clutterbuck and Colm Murphy explore ‘internally resourced coaching.’ The contributors note the growth of...