The Coaching Connection: A Manager’s Guide to Developing Individual Potential in the Context of the Organization

&

INTRODUCTION

*

The Tale of Two

Clients,

or The Coaching

Conundrum

“Engaging in an executive coach for your high performing

talent tells them that they are valued and that you are

investing in their future. A coach builds awareness around

successes and failures and provides a supportive partner who

reflects the commitment to your executive’s personal and

professional long-term success.”

—Judy Jackson

Senior Vice President

Head of Human Resources

Digitas

E

xecutive coaching has often in the past been used to remedi-

ate damaging behaviors demonstrated by those with enough

institutional authority to do significant damage to people

and to the organization that employs them. When powerful execu-

tives behave badly by making ill-advised financial or organizational

gambles, their organizations suffer. When an organization suffers,

the suffering trickles down to a variety of constituency groups.

Profits can be lost, benefits can be lost, jobs can be lost, and what-

ever good things customers and the community at large derive from

the organization’s goods and services are diminished or disappear al-

together. Anything, such as coaching, that helps managers and execu-

tives make good decisions is worth the investment, whether that

means turning around a manager’s or executive’s thinking and/or in-

volving them in more productive habits, skills, and activities.

The emerging trend that is eclipsing the mostly remedial ap-

proach to coaching is to identify high-potential leaders inside or-

ganizations and engage them with skilled coaches early on. The

emergent practice is to use the guidance of a business coach to

make high-potential individuals more effective businesspeople the

same way a sports coach improves the performance of a gifted ath-

lete: transforming natural talent and ability into highly refined

skills and capabilities. While coaches in business and sports spend

time reprogramming bad habits, addressing skills gaps, and estab-

lishing the most productive and efficient activities to enhance the

businessperson’s or athlete’s ultimate goals and objectives, coaches

prefer to (and should) enter the equation sooner rather than later.

The Coaching Connection is, in part, about connecting the dots

between the need for highly skilled, knowledgeable, and wise

coaches and the exponentially increased benefits of preemptive

managerial and executive skill and competency building as opposed

to reactive, after-the-fact interventions. If we have learned anything

from the history of coaching, it is that effective leadership does not

come naturally to the vast majority of people who are promoted

into leadership positions and are paid to lead. We have also learned

that leading is not easy for anyone facing high-pressure demands

from employee, customer, and the board, internal and external eco-

nomic challenges, and complex marketplace competition.

The Conundrum

Who, then, is the coaching client? Is it the individual or small team

receiving the coaching or the organization that is paying for it?

x INTRODUCTION

Reread the opening paragraphs of this introduction and note how

many times the individual manager’s or executive’s fortunes are

tied directly to the fortunes of the organization and vice versa.

Throughout this book you will hear us discuss this symbiotic rela-

tionship, this interdependence, if you will, between the organiza-

tion and the members of its organizational population.

That makes our final answer: The individual and the organi-

zation that employs the individual are co-clients. We are not talk-

ing about someone who has been referred to professional therapy

by the human resources department to be treated for depression

or to receive marriage and family therapy, although even those re-

ferrals have a potential benefit to the organization by helping to

develop a happier and healthier employee. We are talking about

the growth and development of individuals specifically in how

they do their jobs and interact professionally with others now

and in the future, both of which are directly and inexorably

linked to the health and well-being of the organization that em-

ploys them.

Conundrum solved. The tale of two clients unfolds. In marriage

counseling, neither partner is the client. The relationship between

them is the client. So it is with business coaching. The highest value

a coach or a manager who coaches can bring to the individual or

to a small team is to find the place where the best interests of both

converge.

The diagram of the contextual coaching process illustrates

how the individual and the organization are considered separate

at first but begin to merge as the coaching process progresses. Ul-

timately, if the coaching is successful, the individual’s and the or-

ganization’s interests become one—or as blended as humanly

possible. A well-coached employee who has experienced such con-

vergence will be able to articulate how his or her function adds

value to the organization.

Look no farther than a commonly held definition of organi-

zational culture to discover why the organization functions the

way it does. Organizational culture is the driving, guiding—often

unspoken—force that defines how an organization conducts busi-

ness, treats its internal and external customers, and positions

itself in the marketplace. Organizational culture is also defined

as the shared beliefs, values, and behaviors that inform the real

INTRODUCTION xi