Forms and Formats of
Coaching: some reflections from my Experience
T. V. Rao
Chairman, TVRLS
tvrao@tvrao.com
(While T V
Rao practiced and taught coaching since 1975 starting with L&T along with
Dr. Udai Pareek and Dennyson Pereira, since mid-eighties he has been using individual
and organizational coaching in different forms. Most OD interventions like
survey feedback, role effectiveness exercises and individual assessments
involve some form of coaching or the other. At TVRLS we have been using
coaching as an integral part of personal and managerial effectiveness and
leadership development using psychometric tests, 360 Degree Feedback,
Assessment and Development Centers (ADCs), Climate surveys etc. In recent times
our teams have been trained as Executive or Leadership Coaches and also
undertake independent coaching apart from 360 DF and ADCS. TVRLS would have
coached over 30,000 individuals and teams using these interventions. What is
presented here is based on our experiences in last five decades)
Executive
coaching has become the order of the day for many executive development
interventions. There are many agencies like the International coaching
Federation (ICF) and Cocharya that have been certifying and preparing coaches
across the world. However, there are many forms and approaches to coaching
which have not been outlined fully in the past. Executive coaching is only one
of them and perhaps most significant across the globe. Executive coach normally
attempts to help CEOs, senior managers, entrepreneurs, and others to discover
their potential and put their competencies to best use to achieve whatever
goals they may have in mind. Coaches even help you to articulate your
goals some of which may be hidden in the unconscious. Normally executive coaches try to build
managers to be more effective as managers and as leaders and get the best out
of their capabilities in the settings in which they are operating.
In the
olden days, coaches, particularly in sports and other areas are the ones who
have built considerable expertise in their field. With such an expertise, they
put themselves in a position to be able to guide other candidates to become
like them or even better. So coaching was done essentially by experts in the
field. However, in executive coaching, a coach need not be an established expert
the field of the person being coached. The person to be coached is normally
called “Coachee” and the person who coaches is a “Coach”. For this article while
I would call a Coach who is coaching the other person or team as a Coach but prefer to call those being coached as a Person or Team. Anyone can be coached
to explore his or her potential in any given field and plan out course of
action so that the person can achieve the best in his/her life and in the
context in which he or she is working.
In our view a coach as one who helps you to solve
a set of problems, or discover your own inner potential and put to use in a way
that you can get the best out of the situation. ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients
in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize
their personal and professional potential. The
process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination,
productivity and leadership. (https://coachingfederation.org/about) The Harvard Business School pocket mentor on “Coaching People” defines
coaching as means for learning and development, guiding someone towards his or
her goal, and mutual sharing of experiences and opinions to create agreed upon
outcomes (HBS Pocket Mentor, 2006). Marshall Goldsmith the leading globally
acknowledge coach states his mission as “to help successful leaders achieve,
positive, long term, measurable change in behavior, for themselves, their
people and teams (Goldsmith, 2012). Edgar Schein (2012) maintains that coaching
is a subset of consultation. If coaching is to be successful, the consultant
must be able to create a helping relationship with his or her client like the
consultant. Ulrich and Johnson (2012) go one to identify five archetypes of coaching:
self-coaching, expert coaching, boss- coaching, ins-ide peer coaching and
outside peer coaching.
All
coaching situations involve a coach to help you with certain amount of
expertise either in the field in which he or she is coaching you, and an expertise
or competencies in coaching process so that you own the outcomes. Coaching is
not everyone’s job. More than subject matter expertise, a person who coaches
others requires to be a good listener, patient, empathetic, insightful about
human behavior, free of biases, and a desire to understand the other person and
his/her point of you, and enable the other person to generate alternatives and
choose an appropriate course to maximize the returns in a given situation. The
coach needs to be skilled in listening, probing, understanding, human behavior and
its complexities, dynamics of relationships in the family or in the workplace
or in the society, how the environment affects individuals and shape their
behaviour, and how individuals can shape the environment by their own actions
individually all collectively.
We have
outlined here many forms of coaching on the basis of my experience. In
mid-seventies we used the term counselling
as a part of human resources development systems we formulated (Pareek and Rao,
1981). Later years learning from the U. S. A. we changed to coaching in place
of counselling as it is better understood that way. Coaching can be focused on
individuals which we may call as individual
focused coaching. It could be “role
focused”. It could also deal with two person relationships (dyadic coaching) or interpersonal
relationships or enhancing interpersonal competence. Coaching can be team focused and it could be organization
or institution focused. I used the term Institutional
coaching in some of my talks. Coaching may also be problem-solving oriented or development-
oriented without having to address any problems. We will try to explain in
this article various forms of coaching from my experience.
Individual Focused
Coaching
The
individual focused coaching may be aimed at:
a.
Performance improvement, in which case it is called as performance
coaching.
b.
Discovering the potential to perform higher or different types of jobs
which the individual may not have performed can be called as generic potential coaching or Self-discovery coaching. In this coaching normally initiated by the individual
and rarely by the company except under separation assistance. This uses
various tools including biographic data extending over all previous assignments
and interests, psychometric data and general conversations focused on
discovering potential for any other jobs or work anywhere and not restricted to
the current work place.
c.
Focused Potential assessment and coaching may deal
with Assessment and Development center data and can be called as ADC Coach
d.
Coaching can also be done using tools like 360° feedback or assessment
and development center data called as 360 Feedback based coaching
e.
Helping the
individual to make right career choices and to get the best out of one career can
be called as career coaching
f.
Individual coaching also may focus on building leadership capabilities
which may be called as leadership coaching or coaching for leadership
development.
g.
It could also focus on making executives more effective which is most
commonly used executive coaching.
h.
It could aim at building the personality or enhancing personal and
managerial effectiveness. This coaching and uses largely psychometric tests and
tools and can be called as personal
effectiveness coaching or personal development coaching or life coaching.
Performance
coaching
essentially deals with the objective of helping the individual to perform even
better than before or earlier. Pareek and Rao, (1990) outlined the objectives
of this coaching as: Providing a non-threatening atmosphere where the individual
can express tensions, conflicts, concerns and problems with his supervisor or manager;
to help the individual develop an awareness of his/her strengths, and areas for
improvement; enhance the individual’s understanding of the environment; enhance
the individual’s personal, interpersonal and team effectiveness; review the
progress, and identify factors that are hindering progress and prepare action plans;
to provide the support needed by the individual for his/her growth and
performance and help him/her recognize[Ma1] the potential for future. In performance coaching the coach is normally,
the supervisor. Occasionally the performance coach may be drawn from the HR
department or from outside to help people to understand factors affecting their
performance and work out action plans to improve and emerge as a better
performer. The performance coach should understand the performance equation
which says every individuals performance in a given setting depends upon a set
of factors including his or her ability or competence to perform multiplied by
his or her motivation to perform multiplied by extent which he/ she receives organizational
support and moderated by chance or circumstantial factors. The performance
coach helps the individual to interpret how each of the sets of factors are
affecting his performance and preparing course of action which may deal with
competence, building or commitment, building or actions to change the outside
factors working on him and develop an ability to understand what is
attributable to chance and what is not attributable to chance. The performance
coaching is a specialized field and for the last over five decades organizations
across the globe are trying to build these coaching competencies in every
manager so that every executive becomes a performance coach for those people
who were reporting to them. Unfortunately, the success of the system are
limited because in performance coaching, and most of the conversations end up
focusing on targets and incentives that vitiate the coaching climate and rather
than on working out ways to improve the performer and performance. Performance
coaching has so far met with limited success. However, so as not to throw the
baby with water, organizations are continuing to build coaching capabilities
among executives so that their juniors will be able to get better guidance and
will be able to build them up for future. On-line video facilities in and other
technological developments have largely facilitated in effective performance
coaching specially in remote situations. Often it is difficult for those in
reporting relationships to wear the hat once in a while and start being a coach
by becoming empathetic, listening and understanding person. Those who succeed have
been able to get great output from individuals. In cases where it is difficult for
he supervisor to be a coach it is useful to have external coaches for
performance coaching.
Potential
Exploring Coach: This is essentially to explore your potential to
perform and be successful in jobs others than what you are doing at present.
This coach will help you identify your strong areas and competencies and help
you to explore your potential to perform roles and job other than what you have
performed so far. The coach will help you to get more clarity on your
competencies, interests and generate alternatives for exploration. While ADC
coaching is specific to the career path outlined by your organization and the
competency framework used a potential coaching helps you to explore other
professions, jobs, tasks and activities and prepares you to work out an action
plan to explore more. For example a professor in an academic setting may like to
explore how well he will do in corporate sector or is he more appropriate to
build an NGO or set up an enterprise on his own etc. Similarly a marketing
executive may like to explore his potential to work in other disciplines like
fiancé or HR or production etc. and also explore different sectors and areas.
As
contrasted with this, the ADC Coach (assessment and development Centre
or ADC Coach, uses feedback as a result of a set of games, exercises,
role-play, simulation, test, etc. which the individual has been put through and
assessment made by a team of people who have not observed him in the past. So
the ADC feedback intends to explore the potential of an individual to
demonstrate competencies in simulated settings. The ADCs have their own
limitations. The exercises need not be perfect. The results may not be in tune
with the candidates own expectations. Sometimes, they also may not be in tune
with the expectations of seniors from the company who have been observing
him/her. I have seen cases where people
who have been rated as excellent performers prove to be very poor in simulated
exercises that tests new competencies or competencies in a different settings.
The ADC coach should understand the dynamics of assessment centers, the
limitations of assessment centers, the upside and downside of the competency
framework. The organization should be have the capability to build and empower
the feedback receiver by interpreting the ADC data rather than discouraging
him/her especially when low scores are obtained. Low scores are to be
interpreted as opportunities for growth and areas where the candidate needs to
demonstrate his/her competencies more visibly. . The individual should be
helped to accept it and work out the plan of action for his or her own
development. The ADC coach has got to be well versed in competency frameworks,
assessment centers and human behavior. Like 360 Coaching, ADC coaching involves
a lot of preparation including an introductory session, actual ADC of about one
to two days based on competency frameworks, a community feedback workshop, followed
by an individual two to three coaching sessions.
The 360°
feedback coaching is normally based on 360 assessments and post the
assessment help the individual to interpret the feedback received from other
people and chalk out appropriate plans of action. Normally 360° assessment are
assessments of an individual on a leadership or behavioral competency framework
or competencies that are considered appropriate for an organization. People who
work with you as your colleagues, juniors, seniors, internal customers,
external customers, and other stakeholders anonymously assess the candidate on
the competency framework supplied by the organization or a generic competency
framework of the Consulting firm. For example TVRLS uses the RSDQ competency
framework (Roles, Styles, Delegation and Qualities). In these feedback the
candidate gets, there may not be consistency as every group of people and other
individuals perceive the candidate according to the expectations and their
experiences and their priorities. Therefore, when the candidate gets a 360
feedback, there may be a lot of conflicting comments or assessments... Even if
there is congruence in assessments they may not in line with candidate’s own perceptions.
Therefore, the 360 feedback is likely to create quite some dissonance. The role
of a coach in such a situation, is to assure the person that it is quite normal
to have different perceptions of the same behavior and often the feedback is
reflection of the perceptions and expectations of the feedback giver rather
than the feedback seeker. In such situations, the individual may get quite
confused and at a loss to understand and interpret the feedback. The job of the
coach in 360° feedback, therefore is to enable the person to accept the very
perceptions and without damaging one’s self-respect to cull out what is
appropriate for him or her and prepare course of action for making better
impact in future. Thus 360° feedback coaching is a specialized area and coach
needs to understand the competence framework of the organization, the setting
in which the individual is working, the individuals personality, the sources
behind the kind of chemistry being generated (resulting in certain types of
feedback, both positive and negative) as contrasted with certain other types of
feedback. So the 360° feedback coach has got to be very interpersonally
sensitive , empathetic and should have tremendous ability to integrate
different feedbacks and help the individual to draw right interpretation and
create the right kind of course of action. The coach 360 feedback should be
able to isolate his own perceptions and interpretations from the possible
interpretations of the 360° feedback givers. 360 Coaching in volves a lot of preparation
including an introductory session, feedback workshop, a feedback session
followed by at least one and preferably two to three coaching sessions.
Career
Coaching is
normally given to school and college students and is based on personality,
motivation, aptitude and interest tests besides self-assessments. I have
developed a work values questionnaire using paired comparison technique, which
measures the extend to each person (a student or adult or employee) values
different components in the work: academic content, challenge, creativity,
Service, discipline and control with regulations, people to work with,
money associated with it, status associated with the work, opportunity for
independent action etc.. The nine values tested in this questionnaire are used
to help people recognize, the strength of the work values that they have which
term may help them to choose their career or job which is aligned with their
values. Edgar Sheen has done a lot of work on career anchors and presents a
whole lot of theory. In recent times, many books in, India by scholars like
Abhijit Bhaduri (Bhaduri, 2023), have given a lot of insights for those who
want to be career coaches. Career coaching need not be only in schools and
colleges, but could also be for executives at all ages across the globe. We
constantly keep facing career dilemmas on which job to choose. A career coach
can sit with you and help you to explore your dilemmas, identify alternatives,
articulate your preferences and help you to decide the direction which will
give you more satisfaction and more tuned with your potential.
Leadership
coach helps you
to discover the extent to which you are exhibiting your leadership competencies
and extent to reach your environment offers such opportunities and helps you to
prepare plans of action that will make you emerge a better leader than before.
Executive Coaching: Similar to performance coaching executive
coaching aims at helping the individual to articulate his/her current
situation, goals, aspirations, concerns, problems, issues etc. and identify or
set new goals for the future after an exploration of the current environment
and possible opportunities and road blocks (personal and external). Normally this aims at enhancing managerial effectiveness
including use of talent, supervisory styles, impact on attrition, team effectiveness,
interpersonal competence of the individual, understanding of the job and
expectations from others, general activity level. If such executive coaching is
sponsored by the employer or company it may again be based on observations of
of the seniors and a desire to enhance the effectiveness of the executive
concerned. It is useful to get the expectations clarified by the sponsor in a
transparent and authentic way. If the objectives are not clear in the coach may
have difficulties figuring out and the coaching process may go all over and not
meet the expectations of the sponsor. However if the intention is merely to
help the individual discover more and become more effective without any expectations,
the organization should be prepared for seeing no visible outcomes.
Personality coaching or life coaching could be based specific observations and needs of
the individual and could be based on observations from previous training and
general improvements. Years back when Transactional Analysis was very popular
many senior executives who underwent such programs or programs based on tools
like MBTI, 16 PF, GIRO_B etc. felt that their employees get helped if they also
put through these experiences and coached to enhance their personality,
interpersonal competence and team work w etc.
Role Focused Coaching
These are
some of the forms of individual centric coaching. The coach also be focused on role. Normally
the objective of role focus coaching is to help the individual role holder to
perform his/her role in a very effective way. Alternatively, role centric
coaching may also involve helping you to manage stress, you experience out of
your role and converted into a positive stress so that you become an excellent
performer and perform your role effectively. There is a lot of research and
conceptual work on role focused coaching. Udai Pareek has done a lot of work on
roles. For example, he identified 10 dimensions that make one perform any given
role very effectively. These include for example, centrality, creativity,
initiative, linkage, super ordination, self-role integration influence, help
etc. Role effectiveness Coach should
understand the theory behind the roles and should know the instruments of role
efficacy. Using these tools the coach provide a systematic feedback to the
individual on his/her role efficacy help the individual, prepare plans of
action to improve the dimensions of role efficacy. There are also dimensions of
role that create stress and strain. These include role ambiguity, inter-role
distance, role-conflict, role-stagnation, role-overload, self-role distance,
role-stagnation etc. The coach needs to understand the sources of stress and
help the individual prepare mechanism to manage the stress so that he/she
emerges as an effective role performer. In an earlier article by Pareek and Rao
(1995) outlined coaching for entrepreneurial stress. Psychological stress is a natural concomitant of
any creative activity. It is much more so if the activity relates to an
intensely competitive area like business. Entrepreneurs, being creative
individuals, often experience such stress at various stages of the development
of their enterprise. On such occasions, they may benefit by professional
coaching. Pareek and Rao based largely on their extensive experience, focused
on the coach or counsellor's role and behavior.
Dyadic Coaching to Improve Interpersonal
Competence.
It is often
said that when employees leave companies (attrition) they leave managers more
than the companies as they were unhappy working with certain types of managers.
Also it is said some employees don’t like to lv eave as long as their managers
are there as they are very happy with them. For many employees their seniors or
bosses or sup [revising managers occupy a major part of l work life. A healthy organization
nurtures good boss subordinate relationships and also good interpersonal relationships
between dyads internal customers and external customers etc.) Two person units are
not often recognized as units to be strengthened. Coaching can be extended from
individuals to two person pairs or dyads and coaching can be extended to make
these pairs or dyads more competent an in generating a positive chemistry
between them. One plus one should work out to be more than two in human
equation. Coaching can help a great deal. This is what we call here a “Dyadic Coaching” between two people
and a coach. Dyadic the coaching may
take place between pairs of individuals like a boss and his subordinate,
appraiser and appraise, a boss and his boss, individual with an internal customer,
or an external customer, and so on. It
is possible to identify pairs of individuals who are not finding their
activities actions to be productive. Dyads could be highly dissatisfied with
the way they are functioning and seek coaching help. It is also possible for
dyads, not to feel any sense of uncomfortableness, but may seek coaching help from
a coach to strengthen their relationships so that they can contribute and build
more mutuality more mutual support and accomplish a lot more than what they
normally when you go for interpersonal coaching or dyadic coaching Both the parties
should agree to seek the help of a coach. The coach should have the usual
competencies required to be a good coach, and that is listening, understanding,
and reflecting mirroring not quickly coming to conclusions. Not letting your
own bias impact your interpretations and all above all be an integrating
personality with equal respect for all people Dyadic coaching can take
place periodically example once a quarter until such time, the two parties
don’t need a coach. Sometimes it may be as short as 1 to 2 sessions with the
help of an outsider who can provide his feedback about the way, the two individuals
or managing themselves Dyadic Coaching is new and not well implemented in our
corporations. However, there is a lot of scope for this. One of the reasons why
people don’t accept a coach is out of fear of exposure to others about the
internal conflicts and fear of losing image.
Team Coaching
Company can
also focus on the teams for coaching. An entire department or your team are a
group of people working together, physically close by or remotely can
periodically seek the help of a coach. The coach will observe their
transactions make his own assessments and provide feedback to the team about
how well they are functioning as a team. Team coaching requires opportunities
for observation, diagnosis, expressions of agreement from the members,
consolidation, and acceptance by the members of the diagnosis. Observations can
be those of group meetings, presentations, mails, conversations etc. Acceptance
of the diagnosis by the team and collective planning of action are critical.
The team coaching can be very well done by those people who have worked with
teams and groups and understanding dynamics of working in teams.
Organizational or
Institutional Coaching
Next form
of coaching is an organizational coaching where the entire organization or
institution may seek the help of a coach or a set of coaches to diagnose the
current situation, and help them to become more dynamic in achieving the organizational
objectives. I have described elsewhere, my own experience of working with the
Lawrence school, Sanawar and Doon school, where the headmaster did not face any
problems, but wanted some outsiders to come, make a diagnosis of the way he and
the school are functioning and then organized a five day, Self-Renewal laboratory,
you will get details in my YouTube videos, so I’m not going to describe this
here. Most our HRD audit programs use multiple methods and make a diagnosis of
the situation. We use a four pillar framework and assess HRD systems, competencies,
culture and impact. Using a detailed observation and such other methods we draw
out a report and make a presentation. Coaching based on climate surveys,
culture surveys, employee satisfaction, great place to work etc. surveys are
very good starting points for organizational coaching. Unfortunately most organizations
stop with diagnosis and don’t take coaching help to implement the interventions.
This is in some ways same as OD and change management. A lot of literature is available
on this area of organizational coaching.
The job of
the coach begins besides while designing the surveys, in interpreting the data
and helping the organization to come up with action plans. The coaches need to
constantly work with the organization so this becomes more like an organization
development exercise. Since there is a lot of literature and organizational
development, I’m not going more into this.
Coaching Styles
Coaching
can be very directive or non-directive. Directive coaching could be conceptualized
as using lecturing, instructing, directing, threatening, reprimanding, criticizing,
dictating etc. All teaching involves some amount of direct influence. In olden
days expert coaches who have attained certain stature used these when
necessary. However today most people get put off the moment you start being
directive. In old times coaching started as a tutoring mechanism and the tutor who happens to be an expert teacher
identified weak students and organized tutorials , They were exposed to extra
sessions and kept tutoring them by supplying information and catering to the
various needs of individuals. In this style, whatever the coach says is normally
taken as final because he/she is an expert in his field and therefore has been
chosen to tutor or direct or lecture. Criticism and reprimand were
treated with respect. For undisciplined students, if the tutor did not use reprimand
etc. he/she was not considered effective. Some teachers use this method in
education institutions. Some of those who use this method make it more
interesting by citing or setting examples, cracking jokes, involving other
activities that release tension in the classroom, telling stories that will
make the students more receptive. However, most coaching nowadays, especially
for adults is non-directive. It is empowering the individual, pushing the
individual for self-discovery, helping the individuals to understand the impact
of his or her behavior on himself and others by posing right kind of questions
by the coach . So in this, the coach is not direct, does not have preconceived
notions, but his/her main job is to understand and help the individuals to
understand themselves, diagnose their situation and prepare actions. Irrespective
of what form of coaching you are using the underlying skills required to be a
coach are the same, these are: ability to listen, ability to understand and
diagnose a given situation, ability to paraphrase mirror the points expressed
by the other individual, ability to appreciate different points of you, and
integrate these points of you, ability to come up with plans of action and
ability to get the individual’s acceptance. High empathy is desirable. Life
coaches help you to get the best out of your life. Executive coaches help
executives and managers to maximize their impact and build their own careers
which are aligned with their capabilities. Leadership coach helps you to
develop your leadership capabilities, role focuses coach helps you to
contribute your best in your role and also to manage your role stress, performance
coach helps you to perform better potential, potential coach help you to
discover the competency potential you have.
References
Bhaduri, Abhijit (2023), Career 3.0: Six Skills You Must Have to Succeed, New
Delhi: Penguin Randomhouse.
Goldsmith, Marshall, (2012) Coaching for
Behavior change in Marshall Goldsmith,
Laurence S Lyons and Sarah McArthur (editors) Coaching for Leadership, Third edition, New Delhi: Wiley India,
Pfeiffer, pages 3-9
Harvard Business School Press: Pocket mentor:
(2006) Coaching People: Expert solutions
for everyday challenges: HBS, Boston: Mass
Pareek, U and Rao, T. V. (1981) Designing and Managing Human Resources
Systems: New Delhi, Oxford &IBH.
Pareek,
U., & Rao, T. V. (1995). Counselling and Helping Entrepreneurs. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 4(1),
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Schein, Edgar (2012) Coaching and consultation
Revisited: in (editors) Marshall Goldsmith, Laurence S Lyons and Sarah McArthur
(editors) Coaching for Leadership,
Third edition, New Delhi: Wiley India, Pfeiffer, pages, 35-43
Udai Pareek and T.V. Rao, (1990) 'Performance
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Annual (San Diego: University Associates, 1990).
Ulrich,
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