This is perhaps the question I get asked most often. Quite a simple question at face value. However, digging a bit deeper reveals rather a layered picture.
Being blessed with an extensive global network, including a virtual Who’s Who of leading coaches, I recently had an exchange with a South African business coach who asked me for a simple definition or “elevator pitch” for business coaching. This was prompted by the question as to what would motivate people to invest their or their organisation’s time and money in coaching.
Defining coaching
He posed the question against the backdrop of a number of definitions that cropped up during our exchange. He particularly referenced the ICF definition of coaching as quoted by the Coaches Training Blog:
“The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
This blog immediately continues to site the definition by The Institute for Life Coach Training as one of the best that they had come across:
“a professional relationship that helps people produce extraordinary results in their lives, careers, businesses or organizations, helping them to bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be.”
Both definitions are excellent. From experience I know however that coaching is always contextual. This realisation compelled me to visit the origins of coaching as we know it today. In the early 1970’s an ex-racing car driver who became a successful businessman, Sir John Whitmore, partnered a foremost tennis coach, Timothy Gallwey (of Inner Game fame) to formalise coaching for the personal, business and professional space. From this John Whitmore developed the GROW-model which is to this day recognised as a core foundation of coaching. Timothy Gallwey is clear on what coaching is for him, Inner Game coaching is “unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance; helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.
Additionally, Sir John Whitmore in “Coaching for Performance” states that:
“building awareness, responsibility and self-belief is the goal of a coach”
If we dig around a bit more, we come across variations of these definitions. The Worldwide Association of Business Coaches defines coaching as:
“Business coaching is the process of engaging in regular, structured conversation with a “client”: an individual or team who is within a business, profit or nonprofit organization, institution or government and who is the recipient of business coaching. The goal is to enhance the client’s awareness and behavior so as to achieve business objectives for both the client and their organization.”
While COMENSA defines coaching as
“a professional, collaborative and outcomes-driven method of learning that seeks to develop an individual and raise self-awareness so that he or she might achieve specific goals and perform at a more effective level”.
One of the leading reference books for coaching, “The Complete Handbook of Coaching” (Edited by Tatiana Bachkirova, Elaine Cox and David Clutterbuck), starts by saying that
“Coaching is a human development process that involves structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the coachee and potentially for other stakeholders.”, stating that coaching is an applied practice that has intellectual roots in a range of disciplines.
Manfred Kets De Vries of Insead Business School in Mont Blanc is one of the leading academics in the coaching training community. He notes in his 2014 book “Mindful Leadership Coaching: Journeys Into The Interior” that coaching invariably contains a transformational process which compels a person to change.
Great coaching vs Good coaching
I was fortunate to participate in a select global coaching programme in 2020 headed by Dr David Peterson (now ex Head Coach at Google). David has a particular interest in what distinguishes a “Great Coach” from a “Good Coach”. The implication here being that “Great” is measurably more advanced than “Good” and that “Good” signifies someone as being competent, and “Great” signifying mastery and deep expertise.
In a chapter that he wrote for “Advancing Executive Coaching” (Edited by Gina Hernez-Broome and Lisa Boyce, Published in 2010) he referenced research based on two questions. On asking people what makes a “Good Coach” they typically respond with: listening skills, empathy and a genuine interest in the person, the ability to deliver honest, direct feedback, having integrity and being trustworthy. When asked what the qualities of a “Great Coach” are the context is markedly different: someone who really gets the person to reflect, inspires people to want to change, takes people to higher levels, gets results and has passion for helping others. One immediately notices a significant change in tone. David himself regards the most important quality for a “Great Coach” as: having an understanding for how people learn and develop.
The EMCC defines coaching, as part of coaching and mentoring, as:
“Coaching and mentoring are activities within the area of professional and personal development with focus on individuals and teams and relying on the client’s own resources to help them to see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision making and enhancement of quality of life.”
For the EMCC a coach therefore is:
“an expert in establishing a relationship with people in a series of conversations with the purpose of serving the clients to improve their performance or enhance their personal development or both, choosing their own goals and ways of doing it.”
Qualities of Great coaching
What then would be indicators of great coaching that is delivered in service of the client?
That the coach:
- constructs a relationship based upon trust and permission;
- observes the client and client context through a different lens/es to the client;
- leads the client to view problems and needs as valuable learning opportunities;
- is skilled and prepared to apply a range of coaching skills as may be relevant and contextually appropriate in service of the client needs;
- is fully present and committed to the client;
- supports the client emotionally;
- believes that the client has the answers to their own problems within them;
- always remains committed to organisational goals and outcomes as agreed to by the client and appropriately pushes the client to attain these; and
- adheres to ethical guidelines at all times.
So, in the end, how did I respond to my coaching colleague when he asked for my take on coaching?
I believe coaching is a process aimed at improving performance, focusing on the ‘here and now’ rather than on the distant past or future. In coaching, the coach helps the individual unlock their potential to improve their own performance, helping them learn, partnering the individual in gaining new insight, being more effective and contributing to organisational growth. My definition is informed by sound academic knowledge with an emphasis on ethics, deep compassion for people and the complexities that they are required to navigate. I take an integrally informed, systemic, and mindful approach to coaching.
My definition of coaching:
“Business and Executive Coaching is a professional partnership between a coach and a client where the coach mindfully partners the client on a personal journey of discovery and development, through structured conversations, aimed at optimising personal being and team performance in pursuit of business optimisation.”
– Johan Raubenheimer, 2020
Author
Johan Raubenheimer
CEO CoachTribe
(CoachTribe Logo)
Need assistance with coaching? You are welcome to contact us at: info@coachtribe.co.za
