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These are stressful times for chief executives. When they are
not being blamed for recording poor results, they are being blamed
for not recording poor results. Branded failures or cheats, they
are looking for a shoulder to cry on. If their spouses' sympathy
is exhausted, they are turning to executive
coaching, a one-to-one, high-cost service (running to thousands
of dollars a day) that companies increasingly offer their top-tier
executives. Executive coaching is growing by about 40% a year,
says Susan Bloch, head of coaching at the Hay Group, a human-resources
consultancy. Its rapid growth has led some to worry that coaching
is attracting the wrong sort--too many boffins from the classroom
and hulks from the gym, says Steven Berglas, a psychotherapist
whose website describes him as "the authority on narcissism
and burnout among the highly successful".
In an article in the June issue of the HARVARD
BUSINESS REVIEW (HBR), Mr Berglas writes that some of the "former
athletes, lawyers, business academics and consultants" who
have become executive coaches "do more harm than good".
That is because, unlike Mr Berglas, they cannot spot "the
difference between a problem executive and an executive with a
problem". The first needs training; the second needs help.
Nigel Nicholson, professor of organisational behaviour at the
London Business School and author of "Managing the Human
Animal", distinguishes between training, coaching and counselling,
and says that executives need to think carefully about which they
want before they start paying so richly for it. Coaching should
be a matter largely of listening. "I'd rather coaches were
too passive than too active," he says. Those executives who
can't afford one should try keeping a diary, or a dog.
One of the biggest problems for top executives
at the moment is the absence of mountains to climb. Mergers are
out, the Internet is old hat, and risk-taking is off the agenda.
"Successful people are conquerors," says Mr Berglas.
Take away the adrenalin of business conquest and bosses will seek
it elsewhere. Why else, he asks, did Jack Welch, just retired
from the top of General Electric, risk his marriage by launching
into an affair with the then editor of the HBR, somebody from
a profession not noted for its discretion? And why did Dennis
Kozlowski, at the time the boss of Tyco and a man worth several
hundred million dollars, allegedly risk a long prison sentence
just to avoid a sales tax of $1m on his new art collection? Not
for the money, surely? You can't train away that sort of behaviour,
says Mr Berglas. It's psychotic. It needs a couch, not a coach.
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