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Put Me In, Coach
As companies seek more specific skills, executive trainers gain traction
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Business New Haven
6/18/2001
By: Susan Cornell
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By Susan E. Cornell
Corporate coaching is one of the hottest topics in human resources - except for the fact that coaching typically doesn't come out of HR at all.
Coaching is a grass-roots movement spreading across corporate America, and coaches are enlisted at all rungs of the corporate ladder. Companies hire coaches as agents of change: to shore up execs, to guide performance, to boost profits, and to make decisions regarding strategy and personnel.
Executive coaching is not a particularly new phenomenon, but coaching has entered the mass market; both chief and top execs have relied on confidants and sought counsel from board members, personal consultants and industrial psychologists for eons. Today, though, workers at all levels can have their own coaches.
Mid-level managers drowning in a sea of work as their teams become deprived of support staff are bringing in efficiency coaches. Senior managers are being sensitized by fair employment practices coaches. And outplacement and downsizing have created opportunities for the career coach.
But what exactly is a coach? He or she is part sounding board, part personal consultant and part manager. Some observers say that the coach often functions as part therapist, although many coaches adamantly deny this characterization.
And how many are there? The International Coach Federation (ICF) says its online coach-referral service gets 2,600 hits a month. ICF's membership has increased eightfold over the past two years to 2,400 members. The group estimates there are currently 15,000 coaches in the U.S. - and this number is growing.
Demand is clearly one of the driving forces behind the coaching phenomenon. With corporate America stressed out and continuing evaporation of trust in big companies, employees are looking outside the box and seeking independent advice. Businesses are leaner and the climate is less personal; increasingly less time is devoted personal development as corporations focus increasingly on production. The Band-Aid for many organizations operating under some or all of these symptoms has become insight from the outside.
The other driver is the requisite pedigree (or lack thereof) for a practitioner. Anyone can call herself or himself a “corporate coach,” which makes coaching the Wild West of HR. Until the last couple of years, for example, the ICF had no official credentialing program. Moreover, there is little consensus regarding precisely what academic background or business experience qualifies someone to be an executive coach. Many practitioners in their past lives were therapists and many more were “consultants.”
Combine soaring demand with ease of entry into the coaching field and the result is a business boom in the industry. With such hot demand, coaches can charge anywhere from $600 to $2,000 a month - for no more than a handful of 30- to 60-minute telephone conversations. Some bill as much as $400 an hour - earning substantially more than psychologists or psychiatrists.
Can coaching work miracles? Have the results of the investments in coaching been quantified? Sort of. A major global provider of executive coaching services, Manchester Inc. (www.manchesterUS.com), did survey its customers regarding their experiences. (Bear in mind that this is a coaching firm responding to the question whether coaching works - but the answers did come from clients.)
The respondents were executives who had participated in either “growth-oriented” coaching, designed to sharpen overall job performance, or “change-oriented” coaching, aimed at improving certain skills or changing particular behaviors.
The execs were from large companies - mostly Fortune 1,000. The programs lasted between six months and one year. Roughly sixty percent of respondents were between ages 40 and 49 - the prime age bracket for career retooling. A third earned $200,000 or more annually, and half held positions of vice president or above.
The executives were asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching: These managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies. Almost three in ten (28 percent) claimed they had learned enough to boost quantifiable job performance - whether in sales, productivity or profits - by $500,000 to $1 million since they undertook the training. They also reported better relationships with direct reportees (77 percent), bosses (71 percent), peers (63 percent) and clients (37 percent).
They further cited a marked increase in job satisfaction (61 percent) and “organizational commitment” (44 percent), meaning they are less likely to quit than they were before.
Impressive results, but carefully check out the coach's experience and credentials before signing up to play. The market bears everything from the dubiously credentialed to MBAs and Ph.Ds with tons of experience.
A helpful Web site for locating and comparing executive coaches is that of the American Society for Training & Development, www.astd.org. Under the heading “Products and Services,” click on “Buyer's Guide.” This will give you a directory of more than 500 training companies and coaches, which can be browsed by area of expertise, industry, product type or company name.
In Connecticut, the directory lists: the Baron Group; Cunnunico Ltd.; Corporate Learning & Development; Executive Consultation; Fahnestock & Associates, LLC; Gilman Performance Systems; Micro Training Associates; Paradigm Group; Resource Engineering; Team Technologies; the Communication Project; the Daniel Adams Co.; and the Educators Network.
The ICF also offers a free “coach referral” service to assist individuals in identifying coaches best suited for their particular needs (corporate coaching, career coaching, speakers resource, small business coaching).
Still, it's caveat emptor, as ICF does not verify the infomation or the qualifications of coaches listed. On the plus side, the referral process allows users to narrow down potential coaches according to search criteria. And one may limit one's search to coaches credentialed by ICF (online at www.coachfederation.org).
New Havener Millie Grenough is a self-described “ex-nun turned nightclub performer, ex-shy person who is now an international workshop presenter and psychotherapist now using my skills and experience as a life coach and trainer who has a passion for helping each of us reach our full potential - and remain sane and healthy.”
Grenough presents training sessions and keynotes events nationally and internationally. Her consulting, coaching and psychotherapy business, she says, is thriving. She is also an instructor at the Yale University School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry. Grenough is known for her talents inspiring people to do what they considered impossible; she says she has taught shy speakers to present themselves confidently, non-singers to sing, Type A personalities to work more intelligently and effectively, and “warring parties to work together.”
In the U.S. and Latin America, Grenough has developed programs and conducted trainings for academic institutions, businesses, non-profit organizations as well as for individuals and teams within these organizations. She has developed teaching curricula for the International Center at Yale, Head Start, adult education programs and for the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos in Barcelona.
She is the brainchild of an innovative and award-winning approach to learning languages through her trademark Sing It! Learn English through Song, published by McGraw-Hill. Additionally, she is the co-producer of the cassette Mosaic: New Haven Sings of Peace and War.
Grenough says that her “Grenough process works effectively with clients as diverse as accountants, athletes, attorneys, CEOs, clergy, and planning teams from large and small businesses.”
What exactly is the Grenough process? It works hands-on with businesses and individuals to: clarify what is and isn't working; to remove barriers to productivity; and to move forward to achieve goals. Grenough programs best suited to individual corporate professionals, she says, include: “Peak Performance”; “Presenting Yourself with Power & Poise (a/k/a Free Your Fire! or Public Speaking); “Life/Work Balance;” and “Stress Management.”
Executive coaching, Grenough says, is “Whatever is needed to help executives function with more efficiency, more ease, and with greater satisfaction - both in their professional and in their personal lives. This may include clarifying/re-setting of personal and corporate goals, career transitions, life/work balance, improved skills at job performance and communication and team-building, stress management, peak performance - whatever helps work and life go more smoothly and with greater passion. The executive and the coach form an alliance together to target the desired areas and to go after them aggressively.”
Stress, she says, is “the spice of life. If we don't have it, we're dead.” Grenough explains that the key is how individuals react to stress. She teaches four tools to help her clients respond more effectively to stress.
These are: moving the body, shifting an attitude, seeing the big picture and taking the time to breathe. Grenough finds that these four simple managers can be learned in an hour, used every day, and will have an “enormous impact on our daily lives.” One of Grenough's presentations, “Stressed Is 'Desserts' Spelled Backward', deals with this these management techniques.
Grenough defines Performance Coaching as simply helping an individual or a group to “get from where they are to where they want to be.”
Grenough is also forming a five-session program called the “Women's Power Group for Professional Women.” She explains, “Members of WPGroups are strong, smart, pro-active women who support and encourage each other as we move forward in our lives, traverse transitions, jump-start new directions, and/or strengthen and beautify paths on which we're already embarked.”
In the women's power groups, women learn to use more energy exerting power themselves rather than placing blame on difficulties in the system.
The Connecticut Coaches Alliance is a community of coaches who offer an array of professional coaching services including business and organizational coaching; personal and family coaching, fear, phobia and anxiety coaching; and ADD coaching.
Carol Lambe, a career and personal-development coach who is a member of the Connecticut Coaches Alliance, asserts that the reason “Coaching has taken off is that it fills the void between seeing a therapist and reading self-help books.” She adds, “Working with a coach allows a person to have mirrored back to them what belief systems, behaviors, repetitive systems and processes they are operating under and thereby be able change what doesn't work for them.”
Lambe says executive coaching specifically deals with issues relating to the stresses and obstacles that executives face. Her role as a career and personal development coach differs from that of an executive coach.
Lambe's CV: associate of the Rockport Institute, a pioneer in developing programs in the career counseling, life planning, coaching, and career testing; a licensee of the Rockport Career Testing Program; and an active member of the International Coaches Federation, the Entrepreneurial Women's Network, and the National Association of Female Executives.
Says the New Fairfielder: “Most folks require objective feedback. Amazingly, people don't see or hear themselves and therefore don't understand the responses they get. Talking to family, friends, co-workers - even mentors - doesn't have the same impact simply because those folks are operating via their own 'stuff' - i.e. emotions, history, beliefs, systems and biases.
“Coaches are trained to 'get out of the way,'” she continues, “not to bring any of our own stuff to the coaching sessions - no advice, no judgments, no opinions. So, what's left? The space for a person to grow, expand, and move in different directions.
“Coaches listen, really listen,” says Lambe, “on a deeper level, to hear what is really going on with the client - so that they can mirror back what they hear - and then work with the client to reframe, brainstorm or whatever is required so that the client can move beyond where they are and therefore develop in ways that they hadn't been able to on their own.”
Lambe's tips of the trade include: “Coaches as a whole also offer free introductory sessions. This practice is used to determine for both the prospective client and the coach if there is a good fit. To find a coach, when you don't have a referral to one, the ICF Web site offers a find-a-coach matching system so that prospective clients enter their requirements regarding areas of expertise, pricing and availability [because most coaching is done virtually, by phone and e-mail].”
Lambe adds: “Coaches are particularly aware of the differences between therapy and coaches. We can't ethically work with therapy clients. And the coaching would be blocked due to that person's inability to move forward.”
A coach's marketing material and self-descriptions are one thing. Here's how a client may view the payoff: “When I started my job search, my confidence level was fairly high. I believed that the answer to a successful career change would have to come from within myself, but I didn't know how to bring that out. [The coach] helped me to identify and focus on the things that are important to me, my values and what makes me tick. [The coach] helped me remove some negative thoughts and beliefs that were holding me back from having a career that really fit me,” explains client Chuck Reichl.
Even within the executive coaching ranks there are various species and fortes. Christine Fahnestock, principal at Fahnestock & Associates Executive Consulting Services, says her “Niche is coaching executives on how to coach their executive direct-reports. This is a very useful, but seldom-practiced approach to coaching. This form of coaching usually follows on the heels of a facilitated discussion among a group of execs about their exceptionally talented 'high flyers.'”
Adds Fahnestock: “They usually find some gaps in the talented individual's readiness and want them to improve. The resulting coaching activity is aimed at preparing the senior exec to meet with the 'high-flyer,' raise his/her awareness of the deficits, and start the process of closing the developmental gaps identified in the subordinate executive's skills set.”
Fahnestock says she has a 25-year track record of managing the succession-planning activities for business line organization executives and CEOs. Her company specializes not only in executive succession planning but also in senior-level talent assessment, development and selection.
Fahnestock points out: “Another not-so-standard form of executive coaching that generates a big return on investment is 'executive on-boarding.' It is coaching with a newly appointed exec and his/her team of direct-reports - my style of on-boarding also includes the executive's [new] superior. This process cuts start-up time for the new executive from months to days in terms of a getting up to speed and productive.”
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