English | EN Is coaching in the world of business just the last new trend?
Dec 16, 2013
Since the last few years coaches are very often mobilized to help managers or teams to improve their performances. Far from the business world, coaching is also the last fashionable solution to everything: everywhere in the press, coaching is mentioned as THE solution : from “life coaches” to “ fashion/beauty advisers, they’re everywhere.
Is this just “the last trendy way of doing things” or is this a real “new way” and approach ?
At first, when facing the new challenge of meeting performance while helping personal development in the organizations, enterprises used to buy missions of consultancy (providing immediate expertise and turnkey solutions ) or trainings (for knowledge transfer). In a more innovative approach, coaching is now also requested: no predefined solution, but a co-construction with the coachee(s).
To me, this is now just an evidence that this new posture is the future of any consultant who wants to implement long lasting and more efficient solutions!
Let’s explore what coaching is, and how it can help.
In the business world, coaches are mobilized for two ranges of missions
- individual coaching for managers : stress management, changes in the organization of work, improvement of managerial responsibilities
- team coaching to help achieve collective goals : give common values to the team, help to find the means to implement the strategy put in place by the direction.
In both cases, the objective is to increase performance, from the economic standpoint, but also to enable social development inside the enterprise.
Is professional coaching just a new way to develop consultancy ?
The confusion between coach and consultant is still very frequent – but this is not the only one: confusions also exist with training, with specific expertise, etc.
So could the coaching be only a smart mix of all these practices, and where is the innovation in the coaching approach? As a first response, two major items are to be underlined: the posture of the coach, and the benefit for the coachee and his organization.
The difference between the coach and the consultant is mainly a question of posture: in order to reach the goal defined in common, the consultant provides solutions (s)he proposes (often based on his previous expertise), whereas the coach helps the coachee to develop his own solution.
The difference between the consultancy and the coaching is also the way the coachee is involved in the definition of this solution – the key in the approach is the engagement that the coachee will put to build his own strategy to meet the objective that is put to him by his direction.
The specificity of coaching: help find your own solution and keep focused on the goal to be reached
Everything is there: find and build your own solution – the coach doesn’t know, (s)he helps you find solutions!
(S)he doesn’t look backwards, (s)he helps looking forward! (S)he doesn’t try to explain past issues, (s)he helps develop new strategy to solve current difficulties or to reach crucial challenges. The action is developed to achieve a defined target – do not embrace too much, but work to transform one very specific issue.
Therefore, the coaching finishes as soon as the defined objectives have been reached or at any time decided by the coachee or the coach. In the ideal case, the result is not only the successful implementation of change, but also the new way the coachee is acting toward any issue : (s)he has learned to make the best out of his/her own resources, and should know how to develop his/her own strategy to build a realistic solution.
From a consultant standpoint, the coach could be seen as a “thief” : nothing delivered but questions! but from the coachee standpoint, questions are gold, as soon as they are asked to help and to move toward the right direction. Because once the move is on-going, this is his own move, and the result is his result – solution, his solution. No need for assimilation, for this is “self-designed”.
While the consultant often needs to convince and help to conduct change, the conviction is immediate in the coaching process and the change is inherently acquired.
So, is this the end of the consultant approach ?
Let’s discuss about that in my next post!
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