Coach: Coaching is about a relationship between the coach and the subject of the coaching. So you will need to vary your approach according to the relationship you have with each team member and the needs of the person. This is the practice employed by all professional coaches.

If you were looking to employ a leadership coach you would be well advised to look for a coach with a good track record in leadership coaching. Don’t be fooled by the amount of training or qualifications the coach possesses. Of course some training is good. But coaching is an art as much as a skill and only experience can hone that art. So only coach your people when you are sure you know enough to be able to be of help to them. Otherwise you are better to hire a professional coach.

Client: How can I tell before I hire a coach whether they are the right coach for my requirements?

Coach: There is no formula that can possibly help you. However, a good, experienced coach will offer you a free trial session so that you can judge how well you get on with each other.

Use this session to see how much you learn in the session and most particularly to check how you feel at the end of the session. Not every session will end in you feeling over the moon because sometimes you have to face up to your own inner demons and that can be a bit unnerving. However, a good coach will leave you feeling much better about yourself at the end of your trial session and at the end of the vast majority of your real sessions.

Client: Is it a good idea to choose a coach provided by a training company or will I be better off with an independent coach?

Coach: This is a really interesting question.

Until about five to seven years ago most coaches were independent. Then the training companies saw that coaches were making money and realised that this was a product that they could easily add to their portfolios. The big advantage that the training companies have is that they already have good connections with HR and Personnel Directors so opening the door to make the sale is easier for them than for an independent.

What the training companies did was to train up some of their people to be coaches.

Client: That sounds as if I will get a well-trained coach from a reputable company.

Coach: Quite right, that is exactly what you will get. However what you won’t know is whether that coach is a coach with real flare and a high level of interest in the work.

Good independent coaches are people who are really interested in developing people. They are coaches because they are passionate about coaching individuals to help those individuals get the best out of themselves.

A good coach brings to the relationship a portfolio of learned skills, an ability to understand and empathise with the subject’s issues, plus an aptitude for communication, creating solutions and inspiring the subject to higher levels of achievement.

The difference between a trained coach and an inspired, natural coach is that the difference between winning the league and finishing in the middle of the table.

Client: It sounds like it may not be so easy to find the right coach.

Coach: It doesn’t need to be difficult. In my 15 years of experience I have nearly always found that I know during the first meeting whether or not I am the right coach for the prospect sitting with me. It is partly a matter of intuition, partly the chemistry and partly the actual issue, whether it interests me and whether I know that I have enough experience to be able to help.

The client will be feeling the same sort of feelings as I am and they will either have confidence in me or not.

Client: Are you suggesting that choosing the right coach is largely a matter of feeling?

Coach: To a large extent, yes I am. But I would add to that that, as with any other major decision, you have to use your judgment to decide whether or not you consider that the coach you meet is likely to be able to help you achieve the objective of the coaching.

I am not suggesting that only independent coaches have a natural flare for coaching, or that all the coaches in the training companies have no flare. The point I am seeking to make is that coaching is not simply a matter of following a formula from the issue to the solution.

Very often the coaching dance requires a lot of innate understanding and natural flare that simply cannot be taught. It is not something that is in any book, it just appears to the natural coach to be the right thing to do or say at that particular moment. Think of it as being rather like the inspired substitution that the football coach makes that wins the game. No amount of training or formulae can guide him to the right substitution, he just “reads” the state of the game and decides which player to take off and which one to put on.

I believe that coaching is as much an art as it is a science or skill.

The danger to the coaching profession is that too many coaches are being appointed on the basis of their having great looking programmes on paper. I believe that good coaches are born and then trained, not simply trained to deliver a proscribed programme.

Sometimes a coaching session has to go in unexpected directions because that is where the subject needs to go at that time. Sometimes a session will divert to discuss issues that are not on any preconceived agenda because that is what the subject dictates.

If a company wants out of the box solutions for its staff then send them on training programmes. The whole point about coaching is that it is individual and deals with the issues that the individual faces in the moment. Therefore the relationship between the coach and the client is paramount.

When you are coaching members of your team you have to bear all these points in mind, all the time.

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.”
Chinese Proverb