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What a Good Coach can Do...
Fundamentally, a good coach is a powerful observer,
interpreter and teacher.
We all benefit from having someone to share and compare perceptions and
interpretations of situations. For most, this need is met with family,
friends, colleagues and peers. While such resources can be deep and
profound, there are often limitations, or even liabilities from such
sources. Some business issues are sensitive such that it is
inappropriate or counter-productive to share them with colleagues,
direct reports, bosses, board members and partners. Some business
situations are so complex that spouses, family and friends may not have
the experience and perspective to offer anything more than support and
good wishes. Sometimes the people you most want to confide in have
interests and concerns that are at odds with your own. These and other
factors help substantiate the old adage that “It’s lonely at the top.”
A good coach holds your concerns as paramount. As
organizational outsiders, they are not embroiled in traditional office
politics and turf battles. The coach has your back and
nobody else’s.
A good coach is a trustworthy confidante in whom you can entrust both
your light and your dark pieces, your fears and ambitions, your
assessments of others. While many coaches are not steeped in psychology,
the relationship can have the intimacy and depth that one associates
with a therapist.
A good coach draws from experience that is relevant to your situation,
roles and responsibilities. Academic, conceptual knowledge might provide
useful frameworks, but most organizational leaders are in need of
pragmatic, action-oriented support.
A good coach helps clarify and focus by asking penetrating questions and
not necessarily settling for the first answer. Peeling the onion may
reveal deeper insights and useful alternatives, or help in the endless
process of sorting and sifting among the overwhelming demands on an
executive’s time.
A good coach sees and interprets differently. Such differences are not
necessarily superior, but with multiple perspectives come greater
options and choices on how to think and move in a given situation.
A good coach has the courage to bring “bad news” for the sake of
whatever the client declares as the goal. Negative assessments are not
shared in a mood of harsh criticism, but rather as “tough love”. Only
rarely is an owner or executive surrounded by people who are willing to
provide such important, essential, constructive assessments.
A good coach knows and owns his limitations, being careful not to offer
advice or consultation outside areas of relative expertise.
A good coach fosters interdependent thinking and
acting, unlike some consultants who seek to be indispensable. In the
framework of interdependence, all parties know and accept their own
strengths and experiences with an openness to hearing what others have
to say and allowing those perspectives to impact them. This model is
more powerful than the isolation that comes with independence,
and the disempowerment that comes from dependence.
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