Four Essential Ways that Coaching Can Help Executives

Introduction

Imagine a professional football team that recruits the best players, puts them through training camp to hone their technical skills and learn the plays and strategies to win, and then plays the entire season without a practice session or a coach. There’s not a team owner in the world who would ever expose such a major investment to that kind of risk. Yet most traditional practices in organizations seem to do just that. People are expected to perform key roles—to lead a new project team, to present financial results to outside investors, to manage conflicts across departments—all in an exemplary fashion, without training, practice, or coaching. Consequently, many investments in people—the human side of enterprise—have had mixed results. ...