What is coaching and why does it matter?
Almost everyone has had experience with something called coaching. While this is great, it can also cause confusion as coaching has many different faces.
Coaching, in the corporate world is not the same as the coaching you experienced on your school sports team. Yet, as you’ll see lower down in this article, the corporate or executive/leadership coaching we know today grew out of sports coaching.
Let’s simply our discussion of what coaching is and isn’t.
The coaching we’re talking about and the coaching we offer is leadership or executive coaching. It is not directive coaching (also known as consulting), it does not give advice, or problem-solve for you, but rather facilitates personal curiosity and learning that leaves you with a higher EQ, more adaptable, and with improved decision making and relational skills. It builds inner confidence and agility that produce life-long benefits.
It has significant overlap with mentoring [a good mentor will usually be very coach-like] however, unlike mentoring, a leadership/executive coach does not need to have “been there – done that”. Their value is not in having walked the path before you, but in listening intently and asking the questions that unlock your learning and success.
It is also different from business coaching. We love this simple, clear distinction from Sherpa Coaching:
- business coaches work to develop client’s knowledge and skills
- executive/leadership coaches work to permanently enhance business behaviour
Business coaching is an alternative term for consulting, as research shows: “Many business coaches refer to themselves as consultants, a broader business relationship than one which exclusively involves coaching.”
Lorber, Laura (10 April 2008). “Executive Coaching – Worth the Money?“
The Wall Street Journal
For the purposes of this article, unless otherwise indicated, coaching refers to executive/leadership coaching.
What are the origins of coaching?
Coaching is a relatively new profession with very old roots.
At the heart of coaching is the Socratic art of asking questions to facilitate learning. Socrates lived 470-399BC and is the father of using disciplined questioning to explore complex ideas and get to the truth of things.
Fast forward to the 17th century where Blaise Pascale, an influential philosopher and mathematician, noted that “We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”
Current day coaching combines these age-old truths in a modern context.
Timothy Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis, caught the eyes of the corporate world when they realised that its principles were transferable to business leadership. The thesis of his book is that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. … In short, the inner game is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.”
And so, the profession of corporate coaching, as we know it, was born.
If working on your “Inner Game” is something you’ve been meaning to invest in, take the first step and click on one of the buttons below to explore what it could mean for you.
Where is Coaching Now?
When I received my coaching certification in 2002 coaching, in Canada was still far from being a core practice and many leaders were still unfamiliar with what coaching (outside of ‘little league’) was and many who knew of coaching still saw it as primarily ‘problem solving’, ‘fixing people’. It has taken almost 2 decades for that way of thinking to be entirely replaced with an understanding that, while it may help when dealing with “problem people”, the real value of coaching is investing in high potential people – those you hope will have a long career with your company.
The last decade has seen leadership and executive coaching firmly established as a core tool in securing senior leaders’ success. It is no longer considered with suspicion by those offered coaching but is now a reward and a validation of the leader by their superiors.
I first entered the business world 30 years ago. In that time there has been a significant shift in what people expect from leadership. Organizations are much flatter than their hierarchical forefathers and leading people as if they are ‘cogs in a wheel’ is no longer effective. We have fully left the Industrial era behind and the Information era is fast being replaced by the Knowledge era.
“The Knowledge Age is a new, advanced form of capitalism in which knowledge and ideas are the main source of economic growth (more important than land, labour, money, or other ‘tangible resources). New patterns of work and new business practices have developed, and, as a result, new kinds of workers, with new and different skills, are required.
In this new era, knowledge is defined—and valued—not for what it is, but for what it can do. It is produced, not by individual experts, but by ‘collectivising intelligence’– that is, groups of people with complementary expertise who collaborate for specific purposes.”
Information on its own is no longer power, anyone can ‘ask Google’. Instead, it is your ability to apply information that is the new form of Capital. This brings with it a new requirement for how we motivate and get results.Daniel Pink’s research on what motivates us to be more productive concludes that ‘carrot and stick’ only motivates in repetitive, ‘mind-numbing’ situations (i.e. the Industrial era), “When the task called for ‘even rudimentary cognitive skills’, a larger reward ‘led to poorer performance’. Clearly not a solution for the Knowledge Era, where our primary asset is exactly our ability to navigate data, collectively. Pink says “This era doesn’t call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction”. In his book, DRiVE he outlines 3 factors that motivate increased productivity and effectiveness in our current era: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Where is Coaching Headed?
Understanding the Knowledge era and the shift in what is needed to motivate in this era explains why coaching is here to stay. In my 30+ working years, I’ve seen coaching have a much more profound and lasting impact on our ability to connect autonomy, mastery, and purpose to our every day than any other form of learning/training. I believe this is at the heart of why it has become an indispensable leadership development tool. Not only in the development of leaders, but also as a skill which leaders require to motivate those that report to them. (This doesn’t mean all leaders need to go out and get a coaching certification, however, companies who delay investing in understanding and integrating coaching skills into their leadership approach risk losing their top talent).
Leadership coaching has become a core leadership development tool and an important pillar of talent retention and development programs. The more AI shapes our future, the more routine work will be managed by AI and the critical coaching is going to become a tool to engage and motivate – the carrot and stick will be completely ineffective to motivate the complex, creative tasks requiring human execution, and coaching will become an indispensable tool to motivate mastery, maintain and enhance productivity. Already we’re seeing talent no longer asking if coaching could be available to them, but rather seeing the availability of coaching as an indicator of the value organizations place on their development, with a direct link to retention.
Leadership/executive coaching has proven its value and is now something most forward-thinking organizations have embraced in some manner. Unlike in 2002, when Advantage Management Consulting opened its doors, it is now rare to meet someone who doesn’t have at least some idea of what coaching is, and very common to meet leaders who have worked with a coach or have it on their bucket list to do so.
One-on-one coaching is well established as a core practice in talent development. Rather than the ‘passing fad’ some predicted in the early 2000s, we’re seeing coaching broadening in its form and reach. Two new coaching trends are emerging, which organizations would do well to plan for in futureproofing their people and performance strategy.The first I’ve already hinted at – Coaching skills as a core leadership competence. Not simply a shift in the language used, but rather a fundamental shift that understands and embraces what it means to coach rather than give advice. Leaders learn a whole new way of delegation and accountability using a Socratic questioning style to deepening learning and to engage the motivational principles from Daniel Pink’s Drive.
If equipping your leaders with coaching skills isn’t already in your budget, look for a way to get it to the top of the priority list and make sure you engage with a learning process that incorporates 6 to 9 months of practical application support, otherwise, you will not get the ROI you’re looking for.
The last decade has seen a further shift in Leadership – a shift from Individual Leadership to Collective Leadership.
As organizations notice this shift, they’re also seeing the value of investing in team coaches to work with the team leader and the team as a whole, moving them from a collection of high achieving (often competing) individuals to an added-value team, where they understand the exponential difference in outcome that is achievable when they spend the time identifying, designing and working out the structure, values, and accountabilities that exceptional results require. Like individual coaching, team coaching significantly leverages raw potential into a lasting, impactful benefit to leaders and the company they work for.
Click here to find out more about how Team Coaching.
Names like Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence & Primal Leadership) , Brené Brown (The Power of Vulnerability), Simon Sinek (Start with WHY), Marshall Goldsmith (FeedForward), and David Rock (NeuroLeadership Institute), among others, provide us with ample research to support why it is a logical conclusion to invest in coaching. The growing trend of organizations (including Fortune 500) incorporating coaching as a core component of their talent retention and development programs affirms the ROI.
During our 18plus years in business, we’ve seen organizations move from being skeptical about the value of coaching, to where coaching is now a core developmental pillar for their leaders where many also have an established focus on coaching skills training for leaders. This 2-prong approach is a strategic focus on establishing a coaching culture that infuses vitality, joy, and productivity into their business.
Team coaching is a newer trend that we’re seeing a gradual increase in and one we believe will soon become a 3rd prong in leadership development strategies.
We are passionate about coaching’s ability to transform leaders and cultures. If you’re curious about how to integrate the 3 coaching forms part into your organization’s strategy and/or how to increase the ROI you’re seeing, reach out and set up a free consultation by clicking the button below: