FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 30^th April 2008

Coaching: Fab or Fad?

In the business world, is coaching just another fad that will run its course and then be condemned to the company archives or does it really create long term benefits? Debra Stevens, Director of Sold Out Trainers, a leading company in the creation of training programmes that fit the prevailing cultures and specific requirements of corporate and international companies, explores some of the ideas behind coaching and how companies can best take advantage for long term gain within a balanced programme of activities.

Enter “coaching” into any search engine and you will be overwhelmed by the number of different individuals and organisations that purport to get your personal, business, health or whole life back together again, and make you a success. In fact you will probably wonder how you can get by without a coach – or even a few! We all know that successful sports people are coached, so in business does coaching actually deliver incremental benefits into the organisation or is it simply the “in-thing” for corporate staff retention?

Jumping on the bandwagon

The recent trend for life coaching has created a plethora of practitioners who have jumped on this band wagon. There have always been some excellent life coaches, but with little in the way of professional regulation, anyone who is bold enough to “offer advice” now seems to have become a life coach. And this has started to overflow into the corporate world where executive or business coaches claim to enable top executives, managers and even entrepreneurs to achieve extraordinary results along with a “balance” in their lives.

Over the past few years the coaching business has become a machine, turning out cookie-cutter coaches whilst raking in vast profits to feed a burgeoning appetite of academies, certificates and diplomas that all claim to deliver coaches who are certified with the ability to open up the path to wealth, health and happiness.

So where does that leave businesses? Are organisations simply being hoodwinked by this trend or is there a real place for coaching? Perhaps there always has been and like many trends the term has simply been hijacked and abused, but a real need still exists.

Coaching or mentoring?

Coaching and mentoring have often been synonymous in many organisations and good managers have always known that assembling, nurturing and motivating their team was their ticket to success. Those people, at whatever level in the organisation, had an innate skill of mentoring their staff to achieve more than they would have hitherto thought capable of.

So is coaching just another word for mentoring? – well not exactly. A coach and a mentor often perform their work using similar skills, such as strong interpersonal and communication skills. Effective mentors often use effective coaching skills, often without realising it. Mentors usually reside within the same organisation as the person being mentored and share their professional and personal skills and experiences to develop the mentee. Coaches, on the other hand, may be external to the organisation.

Mentoring is a process that focuses on providing guidance, direction, and advice. In contrast, coaching is a skill that can be used in a variety of situations and settings. A mentor uses coaching skills during the mentoring process but mentors will share their knowledge in a way that helps people take control of a specific role or task, whereas coaches attempt to build more general strengths, tackle weaknesses and facilitate on-going success in a way that opens up a broader array of opportunities.

A structured programme

In businesses that are driven by real world needs then the external coaching offered by many organisations is not the answer. Enabling managers to build motivated, well trained teams and deliver success using the natural business processes is how tangible corporate benefits will be accrued. A structured programme that focuses on how to generate ideas and solutions and gives ownership to what people have learnt will deliver buy-in to ideas and allow individuals to gain confidence and flourish whilst delivering what the organisation needs to grow.

Delivered as an integral part of the business, such a programme does not become the standalone external exercise that coaching is often perceived to be in many organisations, but a way of managing and motivating individuals in their day-to-day lives to achieve a goal for both the company and themselves.

Enabling managers to work in this way and giving their teams the necessary skills and confidence to act as one is where an experiential training programme can really pay dividends. Experiential training is an enormously empowering experience as deeply held views and behaviours are tested, re-shaped and re-tested until all of the delegates are able to grasp for themselves how to create their own strategies for handling a variety of situations.

Experiential training

Highly skilled actors lead delegates into a variety of realistic situations individually crafted to reflect the business activities and most importantly the prevailing or desired culture of the organisation. They don’t use scripted outcomes or false behaviour – the team has the experience to allow delegates to direct the action themselves and experiment with a variety of what-if scenarios. This sheds a powerful light upon the real behaviours that can change opinions and make or break relationships.

The stark reality of the situations delivered in an experiential training programme combined with the self learning through the what-if scenarios delivers an outcome where managers know how to lead, mentor and yes, coach their team to achieve desirable outcomes for the business and the individuals. Their team will understand how to interact both up and down the corporate ladder as well as peer-to-peer and with customer and suppliers, leading to a stronger and more functional team.

Such a programme does not suffer from the perceived barriers that external coaching often brings into an organisation - it knits together the individuals into a cohesive unit rather than singling out a few for special treatment.

So should coaching be condemned to the corporate archives? The answer to that is certainly no – but those companies that tread the path of external coaching for a select number of individuals should think again. Coaching can be immensely powerful, but simply jumping on the bandwagon of fashion will not enable a business to develop and prosper, that success is bred from within and needs an inclusive programme tailored to the culture and objectives of the company.