Coaching: passing fad or lasting trend?

Coaching: a trend?

In recent years, coaching has established itself in the Swiss workplace.

Team coaching, professional coaching, manager coaching, life coaching: a host of names full of promise and a plethora of new consultant-coaches have arrived on the market, all promising to guide you towards success.

So, is this new wave of coaching simply a passing fad, or does it deliver real added value? Let us try to shed a little light on the question.

First of all, where does coaching come from? How do we define it?

The practice of coaching comes from the world of sport, where it has long been accepted that a champion needs a coach to train, to work on their strengths and weaknesses, and to support them both physically and mentally. Tim Gallwey, a tennis coach, put forward a formula that sums up what coaching does, whatever the field:

P = P - I, that is:

Performance (or success) = Potential – Interference.

If we apply this formula to coaching in business:

Performance = achieving our objective

Potential = our skills, our strengths, our talents, our interpersonal qualities, and so on.

Interference = our blocks, our obstacles, our limiting beliefs, whatever prevents us from succeeding, our fears, and so on.

This very simple formula shows us that the coach's work lies mainly in helping clients become aware of their strengths (potential) and their obstacles (interference). The next step is to work on capitalising on the strengths and defusing the obstacles. ​

The coach's stance

How do we distinguish a coach from other professionals whose role is to help an individual or a group achieve their objectives? It is not unusual for a coach to have to explain what they are NOT in order to convey what they are. Here is a brief overview of what a coach is not.

A therapist

The therapist looks to the past for the cause of blocks, whereas the coach helps to identify the block but then focuses on the future, with a view to overcoming it. The cause is therefore not worked on.

A consultant

The consultant advises and brings expertise in content (for example, a Supply Chain Management consultant must have solid experience and knowledge of logistics), whereas the coach brings expertise in the thinking process. It does not matter that the coach is unfamiliar with the content of your job; they are there to help you broaden your scope of analysis, become aware of your resources and of what is holding you back, and put in place an action plan to succeed. They support you through personal change in your behaviour, your outlook, your beliefs, and so on.

A trainer

The trainer passes on specific knowledge, whereas the coach seeks to bring about change in their client by making them aware of their resources. The coach may, however, provide some theoretical input by explaining communication or behavioural models that will help the client to understand themselves or their situation better.

The difference therefore lies above all in the coach's stance. As the boundaries are not watertight, a coach with experience in one of the three fields mentioned above can switch hats at any time and, for instance, advise their client like a business management consultant.

Why such enthusiasm?

​Now that we have seen what coaching is, how can we explain why it is so highly sought after in the business world today?

One way of explaining this phenomenon lies in the need for meaning that is growing ever stronger in the workplace: a divide between generations who do not share the same vision of work, a period of transition between different management models (a sometimes turbulent shift towards participative or collaborative management), and the automation of work that calls certain jobs into question. In short, today's environment is conducive to questioning the meaning we give to our work.

In this environment, coaching is perfectly positioned to help individuals restore meaning to what they do.

It is therefore important to understand that a coaching process is never trivial, because it involves self-questioning and therefore a possible desire for change on the client's part, and consequently a risk for the company of losing an employee.

Coaching also meets an individual need for support. It is beneficial for everyone, regardless of hierarchical level or position, since it provides personalised support and makes it possible to step back and reflect on one's practice and beliefs.

Individual coaching and team coaching

Two different types of coaching can be carried out: individual coaching or team coaching:

• Individual coaching makes it possible to work with the coachee when they take on a new position or role, or face a managerial difficulty or challenges in managing their time, their stress, and so on. At the start of the process, the coach and coachee set the coaching objectives together, so as to know exactly where the coachee wants to get to.

• Team coaching makes it possible to work on a team's performance, that is, the way the various team members collaborate and communicate. The themes addressed are often team culture, values, communication, the introduction of new rules of behaviour, group dysfunctions, and so on. In very concrete terms, over two or three sessions we work on the behavioural changes needed to achieve better team performance.

  
  

  We work from a systemic perspective, viewing the team as a system that is worth more than the sum of its members. Theoretical models from group psychology are then used, along with very practical exercises that enable everyone to become aware of their role in the team and to see the team as a high-potential system. At the end of the team coaching, each participant leaves with one or two individual objectives, and the group with one or two team objectives. Group dynamics can evolve very quickly over the course of a few sessions.

Which coach should you choose?

If you have decided to call on a coach, how do you choose from the sheer number of practitioners? The quality of coaching will depend on the coach's personality, background and method. Here are a few tips we would offer:

1. Take the time to make initial contact with the coach. Ask them all your questions and listen to your gut feeling and your impressions: the relationship has to "click" both ways, and some coaches may be a perfect fit for your colleague yet not "match" your personality.

2. Make sure the coach properly sets objectives with you or your team member at the start of the coaching. Without objectives, we move forward without knowing where we are going, and there is therefore no way to measure how effective the process is. So be wary of a coach who would begin coaching without clearly defined objectives.

3. Be prepared to do your own work between sessions and to question yourself. For coaching to succeed, the client must be ready and willing to question their practices and beliefs. The coach cannot do this work for you. So if you feel that your coach never challenges anything you do and praises everything, it may do your ego some good, but it will not help you make progress...

4. Beware of self-proclaimed coaches: as the profession is not protected, anyone can claim to be a coach. Some certificates validate coaching training and skills.

5. Do not confuse a coach with an "influencer" or "motivator", who sometimes see themselves as advisers and claim to provide ready-made advice and theories that are supposed to help you move forward in your life and discover your potential (this kind of influencer is rife on LinkedIn and YouTube).

6. Be wary, too, of the fantasy of omnipotence that some coaches harbour: making themselves indispensable to their client's success by seeking to change them radically. This way of thinking is amoral and even irresponsible, because it can have a negative impact on the coachee if they fail to reach their objective. Let us remember that coaching can help modify certain behaviours and beliefs, but it cannot completely change a person, who is made up of a history, a journey, a past, sometimes contradictory values, and so on. The risk with these all-powerful coaches is that they address only the symptom, and the underlying problem will resurface later in another form.