Four Essential Ways That Coaching Can Help Executives

Witherspoon, White

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9781882197262
• eBook ISBN: 9781604916935
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Some executives use coaching to learn specific skills, others to improve performance on the job or to prepare for career moves in business or professional life. Still others see coaching as a way to support broader purposes such as an agenda for major organizational change. To an outsider, these coaching situations may look similar. All are based on an ongoing, confidential, one-on-one relationship between coach and executive. Yet each coaching situation is different, and these distinctions are important to recognize--if only to foster informed choice by everyone involved. This report explores key distinguishing factors among coaching situations, and defines four distinctly different coaching roles. Case examples explore how these roles apply to common coaching issues facing executives and their organizations today.

The Roles Coaches Play

One way to think of executive coaching roles is in terms of client need. Does the executive need to learn a new skill, to perform better in the present job, or to prepare for a future leadership role? Does the executive understand and acknowledge these needs? Is he or she willing to seek and accept coaching? Or is the executive looking for a confidant to talk through issues and receive constructive feedback before taking action? These questions suggest client need—or primary coaching function—as one key dimension for distinguishing among different coaching roles.

Coaching role refers to the coach’s primary function in helping an executive learn, grow, and change. These coaching functions may focus on imparting specific skills, addressing performance issues on the job, or supporting broader changes in the executive’s behavior.² There are often several coaching functions in any situation, but unless one is defined specifically as primary, there tends to be considerable confusion about expectations and resulting loss of time and effort.

Executive coaching entails several distinctly different roles, based on the primary function:

• coaching for skills (learning sharply focused on a person’s current task);

• coaching for performance (learning focused more broadly on a person’s present job);

• coaching for development (learning focused on a person’s future job); and

• coaching for the executive’s agenda (learning focused on the executive’s agenda³ in the broadest sense).

Early in the process, these different executive coaching roles should be clarified and discussed for several reasons.

• It is important for both executive and coach to recognize the distinctions between the various roles, if only to foster informed choice by everyone taking part in the process—the executive (and possibly family members), the executive’s boss, the human resources representative, and the coach providing the service.⁴

• These role distinctions provide a common language about coaching for both executives and practitioners and a useful way to orient all parties to the process of assessment, feedback, and action planning.

• These critical distinctions represent a continuing choice through the life of the coaching relationship, but particularly during the early stages. The choices define behaviorally how executives and coaches work together and can make the difference between meeting or not meeting the executive’s expectations.⁵

• An open discussion of these matters is helpful in creating some ground rules and a feedback system to be used in the coaching process.

Each of the coaching roles has a different contribution to make when it comes to enabling the executive to act. Role clarity is also key in sizing up the situation: how to approach an opening for coaching; what to emphasize; what to leave alone for the time being; where to start. In practice, of course, these coaching roles may overlap over time. A coach contracted to help in skill building may end up working on performance issues. In the process, a longer-term relationship may be forged that contributes to the executive’s overall development. Changes in role, however, should be acknowledged specifically by all parties so the coaching contract can be changed accordingly.

Executive coaching might be defined as a confidential, highly personal learning process. Typically, the coaching is designed to bring about effective action, performance improvement, and/or personal growth for the individual executive, as well as better business results for the executive’s organization.⁶ More than other forms of organized learning (for example, workshops or traditional classrooms), coaching is personal in several senses. First, it is individualized. In working one-on-one, there is the recognition that no two people are alike. Each person has a unique knowledge base, learning pace, and learning style. Consequently, executives progress at their own pace, although holding people personally accountable for their progress is often a key element of executive coaching. Coaching can be personal in a second sense—by uncovering blind spots and changing one’s personal style.

Coaching for Skills

Coaching for skills is learning focused on a person’s current task or project, typically in the context of the present job. (“Skill” is used broadly to include basic ideas, strategies, methods, behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives associated with success in business.) Sometimes the executive needs conceptual clarity—“I’m not familiar with the basic principles” or “I don’t understand why these skills are needed or when to apply them.” Other times the executive needs to build or sharpen a skill associated with success in business or professional life—“I’ve never learned how to do it” or “I know how, but I don’t always do it well.”⁷ Usually this coaching is needed for the short term (this week, this month) and is clearly identified and agreed on by the executive and others in the organization. Further, coaching for skills represents little or no threat to most learners.

Given that, clarity about the skills to be learned is typically high as perceived by the people considering coaching for skills (the executive, the boss, and others). Coaching goals tend to be clear and specific, at least in the present context. Executives know what’s expected of them. The business reasons for coaching are also clear and thoroughly understood by all relevant parties. Consequently, coaching for skills tends to occur over a relatively short period of time.

Compared to other coaching roles, coaching for skills has high clarity, high consensus (people tend to agree about the need for coaching and be strongly committed), and high control (people believe they have a good chance of achieving their learning goals). But of these three characteristics, clarity can be the single most powerful factor to distinguish among coaching roles and can affect the time needed for coaching in many important ways.

Coaching for skills helps people learn specific skills, behaviors, and attitudes—often over several weeks or months. Situations well suited to this coaching role include:

• to support learning on the job (for example, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Roles Consultants Play
• The Roles Coaches Play
• Conclusion: Some Similarities in Coaching
• Notes
• References
• Suggested Readings