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Ask Jeff Immelt (the new CEO of General Electric)
about coaching and you will probably get a resounding thumbs up
for the concept. After all, in Jack Welch, it's not every day you
are given the opportunity to be coached by one the most famous and
successful business figures of your generation! Read perspectives
on coaching to discover the benefits coaching could offer your business.
Ever had the feeling that you were stuck in your
professional life? Do you often think that your problems are too
large to overcome? Are you struggling to assert yourself or plan
for the future?
All of the issues described above can be addressed
through coaching. Coaching usually refers to a relationship between
an individual and a trained professional who work on a set of pre-defined
objectives with the aim of achieving particular goals or targets.
Coaching protagonists believe that as a result of this relationship,
greater results can be achieved and an individual can go on to do
things that would otherwise have been impossible.
Of course, coaching cannot be summarized as easily
as that! It is recognized as having many guises and is applicable
to many situations. Because it can take on many forms, most authors
are reluctant to offer a single definition of the concept, as can
be explored in The coaching network: a program for individual and
organizational development.
It is important to remember that coaching can be
used at all levels of an organization and is not necessarily confined
to middle or lower levels. Many high level executives have benefited
from it in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
"I see coaching as a gift and a positive
and energizing experience which above all enables an executive to
shake off what may in fact be deeply held automatic beliefs and
behaviours that are inhibiting performance and career development.
I spent twenty-six years at my previous employer and my confidence
increased so substantially as a result of coaching that I declared
an ambitious commitment to the directors to win additional business.
I estimate that I was able to add more than £15 million of
extra value through interventions I initiated directly linked to
what I had learned in coaching."
-Head of Organizational Development at a large bank
One of the fundamental principles on which coaching
is based is that nothing is ever so good that it can't be improved.
In Executive coaching: the route to business stardom Steve O'Shaughnessy
believes that the same applies to people. In fact, it applies to
people with all the more force the better people get at a particular
activity. The reason for this is that the higher up the skill hierarchy
one goes, the more important marginal improvements in performance
become.
O'Shaughnessy argues that improvements in individual
and organizational performance usually come incrementally. It is
inspired leadership that helps to improve the performance of an
organization, and so incremental improvements in executive performance,
through coaching for example, are crucial for business success.
However, O'Shaughnessy is quick to highlight the "stigma"
which is attached to coaching in the UK in particular, and the negative,
almost school-like connotations that are attached to the term. He
believes that Europe has much to learn from the United States on
this matter - people are actually often proud to admit that they
are being coached in the US because they see it as indicating the
importance their employer attaches to them.
Despite the negative connotations, it is widely believed that most
of us do actually recognize the need for outside help with many
issues as there is a limit to everyone's understanding of themselves.
O'Shaughnessy explains how in essence we are all prisoners of our
own abilities and we have trouble finding the many keys that can
release us from the limited perceptions we have of ourselves. Frequently
we cannot recognize our own potential and we are the first to put
ourselves down. The argument is that coaching can be likened to
one of these missing keys and when used in the right circumstances
can provide useful benefits.
Taking the coaching concept one step further, The
coaching network: a program for individual and organizational development
introduces the relatively new concept of a coaching network. The
article describes how an organization-wide community of thinkers
and learners can be fostered in order to benefit organizational
innovation and creativity as a whole, thus leading to competitive
advantage.
Coaching networks tackle the issue of incremental
growth in a broader sense, and aim to build individual and organizational
development in an ongoing way through a particular form of dialogue.
They allow employees from across an organization to come together
in pairs as performers and coaches who can help create a community
of practice and knowledge creation. An example from Canada reports
how participants in a coaching network felt that they achieved a
great deal, principally because of the fact that everyone can be
better than they are. After all, we are only human and we should
take the opportunity to learn from each other both for our own benefit
and that of the organization.
The value of coaching is often all too visible
in the form of big achievers and successful people in many walks
of life. In Forty things every manager should know about coaching
the author uses the examples of famous sports figures. Apart from
sheer talent, these individuals share common elements of success:
a desire to be the best, a belief in their own ability and, of course,
hard work. They also share one more characteristic regardless of
their sport: none of them have done it on their own.
The author argues convincingly that sports at the
highest level offer a comparison from which those in business have
been slow to learn. He states that by looking behind any successful
athlete you will find the quality of performance is matched by excellence
of the system that produced the results. For this reason he states
that coaching remains the secret weapon of many outstanding organizations.
There is only so much that a business can productively do by way
of downsizing, restructuring, focusing on the core business and
the like. Ultimately, it comes down to personal drive and building
winning teams.
Whatever your own opinion may be, the general consensus
is that coaching is here to stay. In its many guises and styles,
coaching will continue to contribute greatly to personal and organizational
development in the future.
©2002 TABIC. All rights reserved.
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