What is Executive Coaching?

I’ll give an example from my own first experience of receiving coaching. 20 years ago, on being told my firm would pay for me to use a coach, my first reaction was to be offended. I thought I was being criticised. My (slightly) more considered thoughts were no more positive. Was there really an expert out there who knew my job so much better than I did? And if this coach’s contribution was to be ‘common sense’, I had more than enough people to turn to for that!

At our first meeting, my new coach pressed me for an example of a challenge I was facing. I came up with something that had been bugging me for some time: one of my colleagues had a very scruffy workspace, and he filed documents either inefficiently or not at all. He was 20 years older than me, but I was responsible for him. What magic words should I use to persuade this colleague (finally) to get some order into his office?

I sat back, thinking that, having formulated the challenge, my work was done. The coach would now give me my script. No. My coach had listened carefully to me. But he didn’t tell me anything; he asked me a question.

‘What makes it important this person should have a tidy, organised office?’. I found myself explaining (to myself as much as to the coach) that this was a ‘risk’ issue. What if this colleague was on holiday, or ill, and we needed to find any of his documents or pick up on any of his work?

My coach prompted me again: ‘Anything else?’. I found more thoughts that I hadn’t properly formed before: ‘This colleague is a very clever person, but he isn’t respected by other colleagues as he should be because they make assumptions about his competence based on the mess he works in.’. I waited for the clever words but, again, I was wrong. Instead of dictating to me, my coach asked another question: ‘And what words do you think you might use to convey these thoughts to him?’.

My coach wasn’t being difficult or lazy. He had no knowledge of my colleague or the context, other than what I told him. He knew I was much better placed than he was to formulate my plan of action. And he knew something else: if I created the plan myself, I’d be many times more likely to see it through.