When Did The Executive Coach Become A Player?

I've been wanting to open up this conversation for some time now. Thanks to Jim Stroup's writing at Managing Leadership, the perfect opportunity has presented itself.

Jim is an experienced leader, author and consultant now living in Turkey. Thanks to his willingness to initiate an email exchange,  I've come to enjoy and be stimulated by his writing. By all means click over to Jim's blog and have a look at his take on "The Strategic Role of the Senior Executive," Jim's tag line.

In his posts Who's In Charge and You Are In Charge, Jim takes a look at some real issues surrounding coaches, their clients, and what he observes is a trend toward managers relying on coaches to do what the managers are supposed to be doing. His commentary was prompted by an article he read in the Wall Street Journal which:

"...describes how some executives coaches are now inserting themselves into certain executive functions, such as the hiring process. According to the article, some are actually conducting interviews of job applicants and exercising – or being given – vetoes over hiring decisions."

The issue is this: Coaches are supposedly engaged to enable managers to grow and perform better as managers. If a coach executes the duties of a manager, that's managing.  And that isn't contributing to the manager's future effectiveness. In fact, it's subverting the alleged intention of the engagement.

As Jim says, if you're a manager who allows this to happen ..."then you really ought to resign your position and recommend your coach as your replacement."

What's Going On Here?

This is the part that will probably start those cards and letters rolling in. But if I don't put this out there for context, my other thoughts might not make sense.

Here goes: I've always struggled with the whole "coach" thing.  I've tried to identify the point at which the "coach" phenomenon actually began. (If anyone has a date or year, please send it along). Thinking back, I believe that I saw it pop up on the radar screen of life sometime in the 1990's. But I can't be sure because for the longest time I sort of ignored it.

Why?

It felt as if, out of nowhere, a herd of people were almost instantaneously proclaiming the existence of a profession and, just as quickly, claiming to "certify" others.  Maybe it was the speed of it all that made me uneasy.  Most of all, I knew what it took to be a good advisor because I had spent years combining my own background in management, education, and behavioral science to cultivate certain expertise and discernment needed to serve my clients well. I also knew how many mistakes I had had to make (in real time with real clients) to reach that point. So, the coaching "movement"  as such was bothersome.

Please understand that my  clients would tell you that I "coach". I advise and consult with people who have contacted me specifically asking for coaching. Other large consulting practices sometimes hire me for the express purpose of coaching an executive client. But my practice for 30 years has been that of a consultant and I continue to identify myself and see myself in that way. And if someone requests a coach, I realize that for many the term is now commonplace and comfortable. So after asking them solid diagnostic questions about what they are trying to accomplish and why, we determine whether or not my expertise will help them get there. How they choose to frame it really doesn't matter as long as they achieve the desired results.

Coaches and Consultants: Does the Allure Make You Want More?

Being an advisor in any capacity carries with it the proximity to power and influence. For consultants as well as internal staff people, it presents the opportunity to be seen as an operational player by being seen as a "do-er" vs. an advisor. It's heady stuff being around power and realizing that you can probably get some, if only for a moment.

This presents two issues:

1. Contractual. Does the explicit contract call for the coach/consultant to overtly speak on behalf of the client on a given issue? If so, has that been conveyed to the people involved? And if so, what is it that uniquely places the coach/consultant in the position to do that instead of the manager or some other internal person?

2. Ethical. Trusted Advisors experience a dynamic similar to those in the helping/counseling professions. That is, by "opening up" to the advisor, managers usually make themselves more vulnerable than they would in a normal business situation. If an engagement has been moving along successfully and a coach/consultant--now seen as an "expert"--suggests taking a more visible role, the manager may assume, out of trust and dropping one's guard, that the person is acting in his/her best interest and "knows better than I do."  Advisors worth their salt know the boundaries and put their clients' interest and well-being before their own need to be seen as influential.

What Are The Managers Getting Out of This?

I really don't know. We could probably guess--and be right--about a number of perceived benefits. But It does take two people who are colluding, consciously or unconsciously, to make this happen.

Jim mentioned in his post about coaches being brought in to interview candidates. I can say straight away that I've been part of the screening process on a few occasions for companies that I've consulted with for many years. Their reasons for inviting me into the process were very similar: I knew their organization intimately, knew the culture, knew the department or workgroup, knew why they were looking and what they were looking for, and they felt that I could add to the process. In one instance, a company had a German candidate, I was in Germany doing work for them, and I speak the language. In no instance did I have decision-making authority or a vote. When I interviewed candidates they knew who I was, why I was involved, and how the information would be used.

But I think the most important part was this: I had a specific, explicit contract with the organization to do that job. It was seen as a separate assignment from anything else I was doing for the company. So there was no co-mingling of roles and overstepping of boundaries.

So Why Are We Bothered By This?

I can only speak for myself.

This may sound crazy since  I earn my living as a consultant who often coaches people; but what is right is right and I really do believe that truth reigns:

I'm bothered by what I've seen as an increasing dependency on coaches and consultants and a decreasing scope of the actual managerial role.

This doesn't mean that managers aren't busy or working hard. What I've observed is that the power and potential of the managerial role in many organizations has become diminished. Managers are now paying attention to tasks and projects and allowing others to handle the "people" side. Yet without struggling and learning "about" their people, relating "to" their people, and providing clear direction "for" their people, the organization is ultimately denied depth of leadership in the years to come. On an immediate level, employees look to their managers for guidance and hearing how they are doing. Yet more and more, they are instead seeing how they are doing once a year when they read their performance review. If they find out that something they did 11 months ago wasn't up to par, it's too late to learn in-the-moment and try to make the necessary changes. When managers don't manage people, they create distance in the relationship.  When there is distance, trust disintegrates. And when there is little trust, there is little ability to lead.

What Is The Role of the Consultant/Coach/Advisor?

The role is one of helping to build a specific expertise, behavioral change, and perhaps increased confidence within the client as a result.

When that is done, it is time to leave.

The greatest satisfaction that an adviser of integrity can experience is to have worked one's self out of a job.

The greatest reflection of one's integrity will be the ability to know and honor the boundaries of the engagement.

I genuinely hope that managers, coaches, and consultants will take time to add their experiences and observations in order to get a range of thoughts about this.

Photo Source: Coach from www.travel-watch.com 

Comments

[peter vajda]

you wrote: "The issue is this: Coaches are supposedly engaged to enable managers to grow and perform better as managers. If a coach executes the duties of a manager, that's managing."

Actuallly, IMH(coaching)O, that's enabling...always leading to some type of co-dependent, dysfunctional relationship. More later...

[Mark Howell]

I like the direction, Steve. Very Peter Block of you. Important ideas for all of us to ponder.

mark

[Viji]

Enjoyed this post as usual Steve. Practically speaking sometimes Managers are overloaded to manage their people. Most of their time is spent on issues related to work alone. Learning many things through your blog. Tks. Viji

[Steve Roesler]

That comment actually confirms some of what we've been talking about. Namely, that perhaps a primary role of the manager is no longer seen as managing and developing people, but focusing only on task.

Thanks Viji.

[Kent Blumberg]

Steve,

I think you are absolutely right. The job of the coach, just as in sports coaching, is to help the coachee perform the job better. The job of the coach is NOT to do the coachee's job. When I work with a manager, I seek to leave her a better, more accomplished manager because of my help. I try to teach her to fish, not just feed her a plate of food.

My reason for moving from a direct business leadership role into a coaching role was to have a positive impact on the leadership skills of a larger number of managers. If I get caught up in doing the manager's role again, I won't have the time to impact others.

Kent

[Steve Roesler]

Kent,

Indeed, the "teach someone to fish" analogy is a good one and was one of the major intentions of the post. The issue is one of defined role and the boundaries around that.

Thanks for checking back in...always appreciated and valued.

[Ruth Ann Harnisch]

In answer to Steve's question: Yes, someone does know how/when coaching started, and that person is Vikki Brock (vikki@callmecoach.com). Her doctoral dissertation traces the roots of what we now call "coaching." Her work shows how different disciplines and pioneers helped bring coaching into modern parlance and use.
Steve's description of the explosion of coaching mirrors my own experience - heard of it, paid little attention.
Then, as the board chair of an organization that used coaches, I thought I'd better find out about the field. I discovered there was no independent source of information about coaching. Plenty of business leagues and trade associations (The International Coach Federation being the largest of these in the USA), but no independent body of scholarship or acknowledged independent resources.
So I helped start The Foundation of Coaching. Vikki heads up the History division.

[Wally Bock]

Like Steve, I'm a consultant who coaches, or maybe it's a coach who consults. Beats me. Most of my consulting clients are information entrepreneurs. I do some coaching with them because the nature of what they do intermixes personal effectiveness skills and business strategy and execution. Most of my coaching clients are managers who come to me for help developing their skills at working with their direct reports.

I'm with most of the folks who've posted here in that I think coaches coach and players play. Every now and then there are player coaches (think Bill Russell) but they don't do it for long.

I think I may differ from several folks here on the "profession" of coaching. I think referring to business coaching as a profession is pretentious nonsense.

[Steve Roesler]

Ruth, thanks for offering the similar experience regarding coaching. I thought that it might just be me and I should have my memory checked out.

Vikki sounds like a good, solid resource. I intend to contact her and see if she can provide a synthesized :) version of her dissertation. I think a number of readers might find that useful.

Hope to see you again...

[Steve Roesler]

You know, Wally, the part of your comment that I really liked says clearly, "the nature of what they (managers/entrepreneurs) do intermixes personal effectiveness skills and business strategy and execution.

And that's the point: Using expertise and experience to help someone "get it done" along with increasing their effectiveness at "how they do it."

Thanks for taking part of the issue and making it crisp and concise.