Executive Coaching

Articles

How to Get the Most Out of Coaching

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Tips on Maximizing Your Coaching Investment

Published in Leadership Advantage Newsletter, Vol. III Number 1

  1. Talk about what matters most. Talk about your important needs. Be selfish about your coaching time – talk about what really matters rather than what you “should” be addressing.
  2. Focus on how you feel and want to feel, not just on what you want to produce. Don’t avoid talking about your feelings, no matter what your opinions of them are. Feelings drive behaviors. To change your behaviors, change how you feel. Be willing to explore and discuss your feelings with your coach. Awareness is the first step toward change.
  3. Get more space, not more time, into your life. Coaching needs room in order to work. If you’re too busy, you’ll use coaching to push yourself harder, instead of using coaching to become more effective. Simplification gets you space. You need space in order to learn and to be able to evolve beyond where you are today.
  4. Become incredibly selfish in order to reduce energy drains. Coaching will help you to identify and reduce things that drain and strain you such as recurring problems, difficult relationships and pressured environments. It’s up to you to ask your coach for help in reducing energy drains.
  5. Be open to see things differently. You will get more out of coaching if you are willing to examine your assumptions, ways of thinking, expectations, beliefs, and reactions. As David Whyte has said, “Nobody has to change, but everybody has to have the conversation.”
  6. Sensitize yourself to see and experience things earlier than before. Coaching conversations will lead you to increased awareness. The more you sensitize yourself to your feelings and thoughts, the faster you can respond to events and opportunities. This may mean eliminating alcohol, stress, caffeine and an adrenaline-based energy system for living.
  7. Design and strengthen your business and personal environments. The value of coaching can be extended if you use part of your coaching time to design the perfect environment in which to live and work. If your surroundings are unpleasant, unhealthy, or disorganized, they can affect your success. Clean up, organize, beautify.
  8. Be clear about your goals before ending the coaching session. Coaching is just conversation unless it leads to action. Make sure you know what your goals are, both immediate, near future and long term.
  9. Spend part of your coaching time to improve your ability to give feedback. Successful leaders know how to give positive feedback to their key people. They do it frequently and with authenticity. They never hesitate when feedback is less than positive. You should give your coach feedback, especially at the end of each session. Say what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d like next.
  10. Be willing to evolve yourself, not just increase your performance. Coaching is a developmental process and an evolutionary one. You’ll learn how to accomplish more with less effort. But you will also think differently, adopt a new personal vision of yourself, change outdated beliefs and assumptions and expand your view of yourself and your place in the world. Work with your coach to become more magnificent in your work and in your life.

Copyright 2001 Simmonds Publications – Reprinted in the Leadership Advantage Newsletter with Permission

The Business Case for Coaching

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Published in Leadership Advantage Newsletter, Vol. IV Number 1

by David Lassiter

For years most organizational pundits have known that it is not how much you know but how well you relate to other people in the organization that really matters.

Research by the Center for Creative Leadership has found that the primary causes of derailment in executives involve deficits in emotional competence.
The three primary ones are:

  1. Difficulty in handling change
  2. Not being able to work well in a team
  3. Poor interpersonal relations.

A study of 130 executives found that how well people handled their own emotions determined how much people around them preferred to deal with them (Walter V. Clarke Associates, 1997).

Effective coaching works with executives and others to develop their proficiency in working with change. It helps them identify when teamwork is important and to use their skills to foster it. Coaching builds skills and capacities for increased results and more effective working relationships.

Coaching paves the way for decision-makers to create higher levels of organizational effectiveness through dialogue, inquiry and positive interactions. Coaching creates awareness, purpose, competence and well being among participants. Coaching is NOT another feel-good exercise based in soft skills that have no correlation to the bottom line.

In an article in the Harvard Business Review (Jan-Feb 1998) entitled The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears, by Rucci, Kirn and Quinn, a model was developed indicating that a 5 “unit” increase of employee attitude led to 1.3 “unit” increase in customers’ positive impression, resulting in 0.5% increase in revenue growth.

One study examined the effects of executive coaching in a public sector municipal agency. Thirty-one managers underwent a conventional managerial training program, followed by 8 weeks of one-on-one executive coaching. Training” which included goal setting, collaborative problem solving, practice, feedback, supervisory involvement, evaluation of end-results, and a public presentation” increased productivity by 22.4%. Training and coaching increased productivity by 88%, a significantly greater gain compared to training alone.
(Public Personnel Management; Washington; Winter 1997; Gerald Olivero; K Denise Bane; Richard E Kopelman)

“Companies like EDS, Chrylser and Herman Miller use coaching to create a culture of high performance, change and learning. Xerox, IBM, Microsoft and many others are training thousands of managers to become coaches. Executive coaches in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo are helping CEO’s and senior and middle managers to unleash their unused potential for increased performance, satisfaction and results” (Masterful Coaching, Robert Hargrove).

Between 25 and 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaches, according to the Hay Group, a major human-resources consultancy. Lee, Hecht, Harrison, the world’s leading career management firm, derives a full 20% of its revenues from executive coaching. Manchester, Inc., a similar national firm, finds that about six out of ten organizations currently offer coaching or other developmental counseling to their managers and executives. Another 20 percent of companies, they said, plan to offer coaching within the next year.

Although it was once used as an intervention with troubled staff, coaching is now part of the standard leadership development training for executives in such companies as IBM, Motorola, J.P. Morgan Chase, Hewlett-Packard and many others. Companies such as Merrill Lynch, and sales-based organizations like insurance firms use coaches to bolster performance of people in high-pressure stressful jobs.

In some cases, the coaching is geared toward correcting management behavior problems such as poor communication skills, failure to develop subordinates, or indecisiveness. More often, however, it is used to sharpen the leadership skills of high-potential individuals. Coaching can help ensure the success or decrease the failure rate of newly promoted managers.

“People are in a legitimate state of doubt” about galloping technology, globalization, heightened competition and increased complexity,” says Warren Bennis, who teaches leadership at the University of Southern California. “They need someone to bounce ideas off of and to listen to their existential grousing.”

Michigan-based Triad Performance Technologies, Inc. studied and evaluated the effects of a coaching intervention on a group of regional and district sales managers within a large telecom organization. The third party research study cites a 10:1 return on investment in less than one year.

The study found that the following business outcomes were directly attributable to the coaching intervention:

  • Top performing staff, who were considering leaving the organization, were retained, resulting in reduced turnover, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction.
  • A positive work environment was created, focusing on strategic account development and higher sales volume.
  • Customer revenues and customer satisfaction were improved due to fully staffed and fully functioning territories.
  • Revenues were increased, due to managers improving their performance and exceeding their goals.

 

The Confusion Over What Coaching Is

Coaching means many different things to different people. The occupation is fairly new as an organized profession and is searching to find its niche. Coach training schools vary widely in their philosophies and competencies. Many consultants and persons trained in psychology are simply calling themselves coaches with no formal training or consistent standards.

In many companies and industries coaching is showing up in several ways. One is through the use of external coaches to work with key or targeted individuals (CEOs, senior and middle managers, high potentials, problem managers). Secondly, some companies have hired internal executive and management coaches. Thirdly, they have trained their own management and executive staff in coaching skills. While all of these are valuable initiatives, each has unique implications.

For our purposes, business and executive coaching is defined as an intervention that occurs between people producing increased performance, change or results. Executive coaching is all about promoting increasing self-awareness, self-management, choice, competence and well being. It encourages and supports a shift in our thinking and behavior, taking it off “cruise control” and putting it into “manual operation”.

How coaching is experienced by people in organizations, however, is not always clear. There is a great difference in the coaching experience that depends on whether the person coaching is truly independent or not.

Coaching Without Responsibility, Accountability and Authority

According to Mike Jay, founder of B-Coach Systems, “It is easy to mistake a coach for someone who is coaching (leader, manager, teacher, trainer, mentor, etc) as they both use the similar skills. The critical difference is the locus of responsibility, accountability and authority over outcomes.

This difference is key because it shapes the nature of the coaching relationship. Only with a coach is the focus solely on the agenda of the person being coached as a part of a business or organizational system. When a manager is coaching, or using coaching skills, there is at the very least implicit pressure to change in a direction desired by others. That pressure may also be present when an organization designates internal people to do coaching.

With an external coach the focus is on the development of the person being coached. Effective coaching helps clients identify and strengthen the relationship between their own development and requirements of the business. There is a natural tension between these two streams that a coach can help clarify. By asking questions designed to examine assumptions and beliefs, the mental models (is the glass half full or half empty?) of the person being coached are explored. This leads to double-loop learning (Argyris and Schon) where a person can improve not only performance, but emotional intelligence as well.

A truly effective coaching experience is one that provides long-lasting results. On the surface, coaching sounds like goal setting with accountability and motivational pumping up. The athletic coach comes to mind. Even Ken Blanchard co-authored a book with Don Schula; Everyone’s a Coach. But the truth is, not everyone’s a masterful coach.

Not Everyone’s a Masterful Coach

The work of effective coaching within organizations involves unleashing the human spirit and expanding people’s capacity to stretch and grow beyond self-limiting boundaries. Coaching should not start with goal setting and problem solving, but rather with exploring the underlying concepts or mental models that a person uses to make meaning. What are the assumptions and beliefs that determine behavior? The truly effective coach knows that you can’t solve a problem before you know what the problem really is.

This is a primary difference between coaching, set forth here as an independent set of skills, and consulting. The consultant is usually called to provide answers. The consultant doing coaching may or may not be skilled at distinguishing this important difference.

Before they can focus on performance issues, a masterful coach guides the exploration process, identifying openings where there may be blind spots. He or she helps to clarify what really matters to the person being coached. Together, they look towards alignment of personal and organizational goals. Only then can there be commitment to right action within the context of the organizational culture and business reality. The most effective coaches help their clients see and choose what best serves both themselves as leaders and the organization.

It becomes evident that this exploration of assumptions and beliefs is difficult to do when the person coaching is a peer or a supervisor within the organization.

Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee in their latest book Primal Leadership (Harvard Business School Press 2002) bring up the point that despite the commonly held belief that every leader needs to be a good coach, they exhibit this style least often. In high-pressure times, leaders say they “don’t have the time” for coaching. Although coaching focuses on personal development rather than on accomplishing tasks, this leadership style generally produces an outstandingly positive emotional response and better results.

The Critical Need for Impact Studies

What is not always clear in organizations are how initiatives, whose effects are a challenge to quantify, impact the bottom line. Some examples of the ways that coaching programs affect financial results are provided in this article.

One such study conducted by MetrixGlobal for an executive coaching program was designed by The Pyramid Resource Group. Pyramid coached over 70 executives from a multi-national telecommunications company that included participants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. MetrixGlobal performed an extensive survey of 43 coaching participants that yielded the following results:

Coaching produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business. Including the financial benefits from employee retention, coaching boosted the overall ROI to 788%. The study provided powerful new insights into how to maximize the business impact from executive coaching. (Merrill Anderson: merrilland@metrixglobal.net)

It is critical to reiterate the need for coaching to demonstrate its impact on the bottom line. Money is acknowledged as an indicator of value in the marketplace. Peter Drucker often refers to profit as the return on invested capital. We must always evaluate the return to our human and financial capital in light of profitability. It is critical to establish measurements before coaching programs are implemented in order to account for the change induced by coaching. Few organizations or consultants take the time to do this.

To be successful in today’s ever-shifting market, people count for more” they can make or break the best business strategy, be the driver or brake in adopting new technologies. People are not an implementation issue, nor just an operational or strategic asset. People are the raw resource around which business success revolves.

No strategy, however well designed, will work unless you have the right people, with the right skills and behaviors, in the right roles, motivated in the right way and supported by the right leaders. Adopting new technologies without having the right people to use them wastes billions of dollars of investment by companies throughout the world.
“The Hay Group

Emotional Intelligence, Coaching and the Bottom Line

An analysis of more than 300 top-level executives from fifteen global companies showed that six emotional competencies distinguished star players from the average: Influence, Team Leadership, Organizational Awareness, Self-Confidence, Achievement Drive, and Leadership (Spencer, L. M., Jr., 1997). The higher one goes in organizational hierarchy, the more one’s emotional intelligence distinguishes the star performers.

Currently, organizations are looking to recent work on emotional intelligence to augment approaches to executive and management development. One study involved a leadership competence model developed by Lyle Spencer for a $2 billion industrial controls division of Siemens.

When star performers were compared to average managers, four competencies of emotional intelligence emerged as the unique strengths of the stars. Not a single one of them related to technical or purely cognitive strengths. The following four abilities distinguished those managers who were star leaders, that is, those whose growth in revenues and return on sales put their performance in the top 10 to 15 percent:

    1. The drive to achieve results
    2. The ability to take initiative
    3. Skills in collaboration and teamwork
    4. The ability to lead teams

Then, with a clear idea of which competencies to target, another pool of managers was trained to cultivate these four strengths. They became familiar with and were evaluated on each competence, and they set goals for improving them. The results was an additional $1.5 million profit, double of that of a comparison group who had no training.

What this means is a clear case for development of the thinking and behaviors that strengthen emotional intelligence. Being able to identify and define such competencies is now easily accessible through 360° surveys such as “Leadership Styles” (available through Leadership Advantage). Coaches can facilitate the effective delivery of feedback given to persons from their peers, subordinates, supervisors and even from family members who are invaluable sources of information.

One of the most effective ways of accessing greater emotional competency is through coaching. Coaching helps develop sound leadership, outstanding interpersonal practices and the ability to manage organizational conflicts. Coaching is about creating the capacity for appreciative and supportive interaction that leads to greater achievement of business results.

© David Lassiter 2004

8 Ways to Use Executive Coaching

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by Emily Barnes

Executive coaching is one of the latest status symbols to make the rounds in corporate America. Like the Palm Pilot, it is yet another cutting edge development designed to ease the way we work and make us more effective. The problem is, despite all the hype the Palm Pilot gets, many highly intelligent people still wonder what it is. For instance, an accountant for a university recently remarked, “it’s easier to write with pen and paper than with a stick on a slippery screen! The president of a well-known national organization quipped, “My V.P. said I should get one but what on earth would I do with an executive coach?” The fact is that the pace of change around us is so swift that it takes a highly determined effort to discover how new products and services can truly benefit us.

The relatively new field of executive coaching is gaining popularity for the wide range of ways that it can be used to help leaders and organizations. Since it can be tailored to meet so many different needs, let’s begin with eight ways to use executive coaching:

  1. Succession grooming: Coaching can accelerate the development of high performing mid-level managers. In the course of an organization’s life there is a natural ebb and flow of old and new talent in and out of the organization and its leadership ranks. To ensure the continued success of the organization, succession coaching ensures that sufficient attention is given to future leadership development.
  2. Leadership team development: Combine individual and team coaching for the senior leadership team. The combined approach allows senior executives to identify their own growth goals, but also to implement a process which supports their responsibility for developing their subordinate managers.
  3. Performance coaching: Pre-empt the need for expensive executive search and outplacement processes. In many cases, the cost of a new hire can be two or three times more expensive than an executive coach. A good executive coach certainly can help narrow the gap between the actual and desired performance of a borderline manager.
  4. Interpersonal skills development: Pre-empt the loss of high performers who are abusive to peers or subordinates. There are many stories to be shared about former successful executives whose careers were derailed because of a “personality clash.” One such story involves an executive who was forced to confront his abusive personality only after his entire staff walked out on him during one of his “name-calling” meetings. When they refused to return until he changed his approach, he screamed like a baby! Not every case mirrors this extreme, but some high performers come pretty close to it.
  5. Business etiquette grooming: Offer personalized coaching for highly talented individuals with underdeveloped social skills. It is noticed more often than it is discussed, but the lack of business or social etiquette can derail a career as quickly as a harsh or lackluster personality. Since 80% of communication occurs through body language and the subtlest gestures, we know that success in business requires a combination of technical know-how and personal presentation skills. Executive coaching can offer a safe approach to developing those skills and confidently using them in demanding situations.
  6. Promotion support: Give just-in-time support for newly promoted senior managers. Executive coaching can help the manager build a strong foundation to support his or her goals, identify the critical success factors involved in achieving and sustaining those goals, and serve as a sounding board for decision making early on in the new job. Coaching support at the initial stage of a job promotion accelerates the manager’s learning curve and self-confidence.
  7. Transition management: Facilitate individual and team efforts to make the transition to new cultural expectations. Transitions are opportunities for great strides forward but also pose significant dangers. Transitions can include a new management team taking over an organization or division, or an existing management team dramatically refocusing and restructuring its operation. Having a skilled, loyal transition team to support you while you are forming or rebuilding your permanent team can make a critical difference to the success of the endeavor.
  8. Conflict resolution: Help key performers who are clashing with each other develop mutual understanding and trust. It makes sense that intelligent people will disagree from time to time about how certain missions will be accomplished. However, when the conflict threatens the collaborative efforts of a team, the situation must be addressed before ongoing resentments destroy the team. Executive coaching can be structured to ameliorate the differences that create conflict between people who need to work together and strengthen the team for continued success.

Executive coaching, like the Palm Pilot, has a purpose and many functions. Its use is driven by the specific needs of the user. It is not a one-style fits all tool to be purchased because it’s the latest gadget. It can be highly effective when tailored to an individual; but, the results can be further leveraged when extended to all key players in a leadership group. Once its purpose and function is understood, intelligent decisions can be made about how executive coaching can be used to answer your organization’s needs.

© Emily Barnes 2004

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Executive Coaching

8 Ways to Use Executive Coaching – by Emily Barnes

Business Case For Coaching – by David Lassiter
Leadership Advantage Newsletter

Getting the Most Out Of Coaching
Leadership Advantage Newsletter

How to Choose a Coach – by Ira Chaleff
Executive Excellence

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Leadership Development

Leading Organizational Change – Part I – by David Grau
Making the Case for ChangeLeading Organizational Change – Part II – by David Grau
Creating a Pathway for Achieving the Goal

Leading Organizational Change – Part III – by David Grau
Strategy Execution

Leading Organizational Change – Part IV – by David Grau
Personal Change and Development
Using the Organizational Change Model

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Leader/Follower Relationships

No Need for Whistleblowing: Stand up to the Culture – by Ira Chaleff
Executive Excellence
The Leader – Follower Partnership: It’s a New Day

Abusive Management Creates Potential Lawsuits – by Kari Uman

Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders – New Relationships for Learning and Performance – by Ira Chaleff
Ideas for Leaders

Follow the Leader
Tom Peters’ Fast Forward.

Full Participation Takes Courage – by Ira Chaleff
The Journal for Quality and Participation

The HR Professional: Courageous Follower and Leader– by Ira Chaleff
HR/TD Council

No, You Probably Shouldn’t Follow Every Order from Your Boss – Ira Chaleff

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Organization Culture and Ethics

Incremental Good – by Ira Chaleff
Executive ExcellenceLeadership: Facing Moral & Ethical Dilemmas – by David Lassiter
Leadership Advantage Newsletter

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Organization and Team Performance

Revitalized Business – by Ira Chaleff
Executive ExcellenceUsing Measurements Well – by Ira Chaleff
Executive Excellence

Importance of Emotionally Intelligent Teams – by David Lassiter
Leadership Advantage Newsletter

Sustaining Results: Balancing People, Values and Business – by David Lassiter
Leadership Advantage Newsletter

8 tips for Inspiring Employee Engagement – by Beverly Jones

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Transitions

Designing Your Resume for Justin Thyme – by Emily Barnes

Leadership in Times of Crisis and Uncertainty: When the Next Shoe Drops – by Ralph Bates

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Women at Work

Cross-Gender Communication Differences: Understanding Them Can Help You Be More Effective – by Kari Uman
Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce NewsletterArticles For and About Women at Work: Lessons I’ve Learned – by Kari Uman
Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Newsletter

New Women Managers – Communication Strategies that Promote Success – by Kari Uman
Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Newsletter

Women to Women Relationships: Destructive Dynamics That Can Impact Teams – by Kari Uman

Men Managing Mean Girls: Understanding Their Dynamics to Achieve Greater Results in Your Organization – by Kari Uman

Why Are Some Women Still Holding Back? – by Beverly Jones

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Workload Management/Personal Efficiency

4 Steps to Better Managing Your To-Do List – by Emily Barnes

How to Outwit E-Junk Thugs – by Emily Barnes

Organizing Your Work Space for How You Work – by Emily Barnes

Process Improvement for Knowledge Workers – by Ira Chaleff
The Professional Journal – AFSM International.

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Personal Growth

Getting the Banana Against the Odds – by Marsha Hughes-Rease

What’s Keeping You Stuck in Your Dung Pile? – by Marsha Hughes-Rease

Change Careers By Using the ‘Sugar Grain’ Principle – by Beverly Jones
Shift Fields in Midlife, Start with a Manageable Process

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How to Choose a Coach – by Ira Chaleff

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Published in Executive Excellence – January 1999

The value of coaching is permeating the organizational world. Successful senior executives have always relied on confidants to give them honest feedback – a critical element of good coaching. Increasingly, they are inviting coaches into their management meetings to make observations about group dynamics and their implication for creative thinking and organizational decision making. Mid-level managers whose teams, stripped of support staff, are drowning in workload are bringing in efficiency coaches. Senior managers whose workplace behaviors were developed under a set of norms which have changed are being sensitized and retooled by fair employment practices coaches. Career coaches are becoming a standard feature in the landscape of downsizing and out placement.

But what exactly is coaching and how do you know if you have a competent coach? Does the coach have to be able to run your organization better than you? No – most tennis coaches have not achieved the star status of their best performing clients. Does the coach have to be an expert in your industry? Not necessarily. Peter Drucker never ran a high-tech firm. Then what do good coaches have to be able to do?

WHAT A GOOD COACH DOES

A good coach has to be able to do the following for clients:

1) RAPPORT

Your coach must be able to perceive and appreciate the strengths, talents and unique gifts you bring to your job. Only when appreciation and trust exists will you be able to accept coaching. Otherwise you will naturally respond defensively.

2) OBSERVATION

An effective coach is a keen observer. Keen as in HAWK EYED. The coach observes every gesture, tone, hesitation, choice of words, body language, motion, innuendo, tactic, decision. A coaching session is not a casual “Let’s get together and talk.” It is closer to getting an MRI in which you are being observed from every angle. You should be somewhat startled by how much your coach learns about you in a very short time.

3) FEEDBACK

Change requires mechanisms for accurately perceiving the existing state of affairs so you know what needs to be changed . A strong coach will tell you clearly and precisely what he or she perceives about your behaviors and their effects on others. The coach will choose one or two high-payback behaviors to focus on and not overwhelm you with a stream of observations undifferentiated in importance.

4) CHOICE

A skillful coach will articulate the consequences of your current behaviors – the price you are paying for these and the price you are likely to pay in the future. He or she will encourage you to weigh the costs and benefits of your current behaviors and decide if you want to change these. The coach will respect you making a conscious choice to live with the behaviors or work to change them, but will not allow you to simply use the old behaviors by reason of habit.

5) OPTIONS

An effective coach will help you generate options for different behaviors that would be more productive. The coach will pay attention to which option interests you and encourage you to try that option first as, whether or not it is his or her first choice, you are more likely to stick with it over the long run.

6) PRACTICE

A hands-on coach will have you practice new behaviors or difficult conversations before you engage in them. Action plans, strategies, role plays, all have their place in preparing you to do your best in each situation.

7) DEBRIEF

Learning from doing is significantly enhanced by “After Action Reviews” or debriefs. A results-oriented coach will examine with you what went well, what did not, and what are the take away lessons for the future.

8) REINFORCEMENT

A supportive coach will stay alert for instances in which you are using the new behaviors well and will validate these. Perfection is not a realistic goal, but continuous improvement is. Shining a spotlight on an instance of improved behavior helps you use it as a model for future behavior.

9) PROBLEM SOLVING

As knowledge of you and your business grows, a trusted coach becomes a thinking partner. Effective coaches are adept at posing the right questions to help you examine issues from new and often deeper perspectives. Dialogue about problems often leads to detection of the unseen pitfalls or unrecognized potential in situations. As useful as these discussion are, rather than letting them become a substitute for appropriate group collaboration, the coach helps you forge the culture and processes that utilize the wisdom of teams and maximize their commitment.

10) TRANSFORMATION

At the highest level, once the issues that precipitated the need or desire for coaching have been addressed, coach-client relations may evolve into forums for transformation. Coaching sessions become a conversation to help you explore your deeper values and find and express your unique voice on which great leadership is built.

SELECTING A COACH

Before you sign on with a coach, you can and should do your reference checks, but they are not as important as what you experience in your initial encounter.

Coaching is a cumulative process. You and your coach will go over the same or similar ground several times while working together. Each time you build on previous progress.

But even at the first meeting when you discuss your interests with a potential coach, you should be able to experience the process begin. If you feel you are being seen in fresh and perceptive ways, if you feel appreciated rather than threatened, if you are given feedback which smacks of honesty and options for proceeding which seem workable, you have probably found a good coach with whom to work. At that point my advice is simple – get to work!