Forget the business guru in a dark suit: today’s corporate motivators are trainers, modelled on the world of sport, writes Ian Wylie
Sometimes they fall out, sometimes they get fired, but no one wins the soccer World Cup or Wimbledon without a coach.
Every good athlete has a coach, helping them to break through barriers and achieve goals. Often the battles are in the mind rather than in the arena.
Seven-times Olympic swimming gold medallist Mark Spitz had a coach who couldn’t swim a stroke.
Players in the competitive world of business have been much slower to accept a helping hand up the corporate ladder.
Asking for help used to be considered a sign of weakness. However, the old era of command-and-control has passed and business leaders are now willing to admit weaknesses and seek help.
CEOs and managing directors are just as fashion-conscious as the next person and are switching their allegiance away from business gurus at whose feet they used to sit, to personal coaches who are always on call and watch over their protgs’ careers.
Not surprisingly, the use of coaches is American-inspired. Gore-Tex manufacturer WL Gore has replaced all its managers with “coaches”, while managers at General Motors’ subsidiary Saturn Cars sport sweatshirts with the logo “coaching staff”.
Coaching is more than just a fad. In the United Kingdom, blue-chip employers such as Guinness and BP have led the way, and a recent survey by seminar organisers Crawford Associates reckoned that 75% of the largest companies now use coaching in some shape or form to train staff.
Yet a separate survey by the British Industrial Society suggests that only one in 20 employees has access to a coach. Coaching has been a privilege restricted to only the top players – senior executives and directors.
Thanks to downsizing and flatter organisations, it’s now even lonelier at the top and some coaches help executives balance work with family conflicts while others act as sounding boards for new ideas.
While the work of a coach differs from that of a psychologist, the increase in demand for coaching may have been triggered by a parallel interest in behaviour therapy outside the workplace.
However, a more likely reason is that bosses working long hours simply have too few friends with whom they can share their problems.
Executive coaches are well rewarded for their patience. Typically, the executive will meet his or her coach for two or three hours a month, an arrangement which can cost the company anything between R100 000 and R250 000 per annum.
In the United States having a high- charging personal coach has become almost a status symbol, a sign that the company has bigger things in store for the executive.
However, a growing number of employers are making coaches available to employees at all levels.
This new wave of coaches is also shifting the focus away from the employee’s personal needs and concentrating instead on how workers can achieve what the company expects of them.
While most sessions are on a one-to-one basis, group coaching is also practised as a means of helping departments or project teams step back from their day- to-day chores, refocus on their goals and identify ways of moving forward with renewed energy and enthusiasm.
Coaches can be appointed from within the firm, but more often than not companies choose to seek outside assistance. Confidentiality and trust are crucial and employees often feel more comfortable with hired coaches who are not involved in promotion or salary decisions.
The coaching business has already spawned several specialist coaching firms, or “resultants”, in the UK, such as Gardiner-Hill Needham.
Recruitment consultants, psychotherapists, counsellors and behaviouralists are all adding coaching to the list of services they provide. A number of actors supplement their income by coaching senior managers in presentation techniques.
As even the practitioners agree, the term “coaching” covers a multitude of orientations and styles and some fear that inexperienced coaches could do more damage than good.
“Coaching is very flaky in some places. People can just put a brass plaque on their door and claim to do anything from coaching to acupuncture. There is no standard of excellence,” says Myles Downey, a director of the British School of Coaching.
“Amateur psychologists can do immense damage. Some can appear credible and build up trust with clients who make themselves vulnerable. But their `coach’ may not always be able to put the pieces back together again.”
Downey and the Industrial Society are about to announce the first accredited course in coaching at one of the Scottish universities, where MBA students will be able to add coaching to other business skills.
Graduates will earn a certificate of professional development, but Downey doesn’t think it too fanciful to believe that coaches will one day earn chartered status and qualify for membership of an association of business coaches or the like.
The School of Coaching has already run a couple of three-month courses and combines formal teaching and workshops with sports coaching sessions at Queen’s Tennis Club in London.
The school advocates a “non-directive” approach: coaches are encouraged to unlock potential through skilful questioning, empowering the workers to find their own solutions.
According to Downey, the perfect coach would possess, among other attributes, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s self-control and self-awareness, Virgin chief Richard Branson’s flexibility and the analytical and conceptual thinking skills of lateral thinker Edward de Bono.
However, the essential underpinning skill is an ability to listen, as Andrew Pearson, training and development manager at De Beers Central Selling Organisation has discovered.
“I used the skills I learned at the school with someone who was in a `political fix’ at work. I did nothing but listen and reflect,” he says.
“But it was amazing – she worked through the whole problem herself and then turned to me with a `thanks for all your help’. From that point on, I really believed in what I was doing.”