Business Coaching: Fad or True?

Wed, 16 Jun 2010

We often have to choose from too many possibilities. The unknown consequences of our choices are reflected in a feeling of risk and fear.

by Tanit Parada Tur

Occasionally, we know what we have to do and yet we are unable to make that step, maybe because we don’t know how. We assume we must be able to answer key questions such as “What should I study? Where do I want to live? Which profession should I choose?”, only because we feel we know what is right and what is wrong. Unfortunately, life is not black or white just like not all choices are good or bad. Business coaching emerged in Europe in the 1980s to resolve such dilemmas. This new area of personal development is very different from the consulting advice usually prescribed in similar cases. While a consultant attempts to solve a client’s ‘problem’ telling him/her what s/he should do, a coach tries to trigger the solution from within the client.

Typical professional questions include “What will be the next step in my career-planning? How can I do the step from manager to leader? How can I learn to delegate? What is the vision of our company? Coaching applied to business is about improving performance and helping people look at their tasks from a different perspective by asking the right questions. First, this requires that the client realises s/he needs someone else’s input. Second, trust must be built up between the coach and the client.

According to Swiss business coach Adrian Schweizer, with more than 20 years of experience, managers (or entrepreneurs, investors and politicians) call him when they stop blaming others for their own failures and start taking responsibility. The delegation of tasks is a classical example of this. Many managers feel that delegation will not bring successful results because no one will ever do anything as well as themselves. After the client contacts him, Mr Schweizer meets him/her and in two day sessions the business coach helps find strategies to reach the client’s goals or suggest new perspective for recurring issues. Regarding delegation, it could be that the client had an inner assumption of which he/she was unaware. For example, the association of delegation with being taken advantage of or with the fear the client would be perceived as lazy is a common issue. Managers often refuse to delegate to demonstrate their superiority in relation to their employees. Mr Schweizer’s job is to get rid of these traditional views and in this case, to teach the manager how to trust employees. Ultimately, he says, it’s about “believing in what we are doing.”

A disadvantage of business coaching is the relative frequency with which it relates to therapy. If this happens, there is a risk of creating a dependant relationship between the coach and client. It can also be seen as a prestige position in a business, creating a net of influences rather than solution-oriented outcomes.

Business coaching is also an approach to management because it teaches how to become a good manager. We all want our leader to take our needs into consideration, rather than taking decisions unilaterally. The ideal manager should challenge and develop the employees’ skills and abilities to achieve the best performance results. Feedback should be constructive instead of mere praise or criticism because learning from our mistakes is substantial to improving our professional competence. Knowing how to motivate a team to reach the company’s goal is almost as important as the goal itself, and business coaching stresses exactly that.