The Coaching Imperative

Posted on Feb 2, 2013 in Blog, Portfolio | Comments Off on The Coaching Imperative

by Rob VeVerka, President – Top Level Coaching

After talking with several coach-colleagues that were former executives, I made an interesting discovery about coaching.

When coaches get together, they usually talk about coaching.  We found that in our former roles, we felt that we were “coaching” our team.  However, we now realize that most of us were not really coaching!  What we called “coaching” is very different from the executive coaching that we do today.  What we were doing is performance coaching and on-th-job feedback.  We spent most of our time putting out fires and dealing with day-to-day problems.  We didn’t have the time or inclination to spend some of our valuable time discussing our people’s goals, dreams, and behaviors.  We were not doing developmental coaching with our team. Probably our best description was Coaching on the Run!

The word “coaching” has many so meanings, and we suspect that most leaders really don’t understand how to effectively coach their subordinates.  Regretably coaching is one of the key responsibility that managers must do.  They should develop their team and build future talent for their organizations. They need to keep their staff motivated to reach higher levels. They need to develop the stars as well as the weak performers. Probably most  leaders do not have the right skills and process to effectively coach  their people to grow and develop. Few have a clue about what is possible with the right coaching skills and tools.  Unfortunately,  we didn’t learn these until  we became an executive coaches.  We now realize that top executive coaches have a unique set of skills and a process.

These are not easy to learn.  It took over three years of training and many clients to master our executive coaching skills.  I was fortunate to have organizations hire when I first started coaching.  Companies were more than willing for me to assume the coach’s role and responsibilty from their managers and pay us very attractive fees.

The economy has significantly reduced our executive coaching engagements. We are still busy, but not coaching as many clients we were just a few years ago. We suspect that companies no longer have the deep pockets that they once did to pay external executive coaches premium fees.

We also suspect that there is less coaching being done  in companies today. It’s likely that managers haven’t taken up the void and are spending even  less time coaching their people.  Many managers are probably neglecting this developmental responsibility.  Most of our clients are saying that the need for coaching is even more important today, however there’s a lot less going on.  The need has not gone away.

To address this problem, we offer a one-two-day program called Coaching Skills For Leaders.   This program teaches mid-level managers the skills that executive coaches use to get behavior changes. Participants learn the same set of skills that we use with all of our clients.

I usually teach the program with another executive coach. That gives our clients two perspectives, and allows us to spend more individual time with each participant.

The program objectives include:

• The difference between managing and coaching
• What makes a great coach
• Coaching skills including empathetic listening and in-depth questioning
• How to conducting the first meeting
• Tools to pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and developmental needs
• Building a developmental plan

We teach the content in a participative learning session.  Video role plays help participants to see how they coach.  Participants get constructive feedback and walk away from the seminar with confidence to effectively coach. As follow-up to the seminar we personally work with each managers to enhance their coaching skills.

To learn more about executive coaching, please call us at 513-772-5115 or contact us for a preliminary discussion.