As an industry, since most coaching is done by telephone, think of how many “office visits” we are saving and car miles that are reduced - thereby saving lots of electricity and gasoline while reducing pollution.

Although I recognize face-to-face contact is important in coaching and marketing your business, but even that reduces the environmental impact because much of marketing can be done electronically; and networking in most instances is done locally.

Coach training at the Institute for Life Coach Training, www.lifecoachtraining.com,
(both basic and advanced) is done over the phone, allowing people to switch from commuting to work each day to an exciting profession where they can live green each and every day!

If you’re a coach, you’ll  need to be able to describe your style to HR and to the exec in interviews. Or perhaps in writing. For example, one company asked its new coaches to prepare 100-word style summaries for HR to use in matching coaches to execs.  

Do we all speak the same language when we talk about style?  What is HR or an executive trying to learn with the question “What’s your coaching style?”

If, as a coach, you say your style is non-directive, what are you saying?  What does HR or the exec hear when you say non-directive? How do you know what they will “hear?”   

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) was an American writer who published “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in the late 1930s during the aftermath of the Depression.  According to Deloshon and Potter (1982), Carnegie’s 1937 book stated that “training is rooted in learning by doing” and “based on self-assuredness and acceptance of oneself as a person of worth who can achieve desired goals through greater understanding of oneself” (p. 23).  An early proponent of the responsibility assumption, his book identified that it is possible to change other people’s behavior by changing one’s reaction to them.  Carnegie’s concepts are based on the Gestalt school and autosuggestion.

 I remember growing up and seeing “How to Win Friends and Influence People” on my Dad’s bookshelf in the early 1960’s.  When I asked him what it was about he described how his role as a manager was to get work done through other people and this book helped him to do this more effectively.

 It is interesting how some of Dale Carnegie’s principles are applicable some 70 years later as core principles of organizations, as as the values and approaches of coaching.

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Thanks to Jim Clarkson for this nomination.  You can read more about Malcolm Knowles in Jim’s comment of May 15, 2008.

Will coaching be viewed as an “add-on” and be the first service cut from budgets? Or will business rely on coaching to keep and train key talent or help companies and their leaders navigate through the downturn, so they can operate more effectively?

Who better to gauge the market than you, our Coaching Commons community? Do you see a change in the coaching climate? Do you detect a hesitancy to hire coaches……….. or an urgency for clients to find coaches who can help them sail though this economic squall?

By the way, the Training Zone article offers tips to make yourself recession-proof.

I’d like to hear the wisdom of our coaching professionals on this subject!  How do we - and coaching as a growing field - successfully surf economic change?

The acronym “GROW” (2) refers to the typical process of coaching conversation:

Goals - at this stage the process focuses on the goals that the client wishes to achieve, not only from the specific coaching session, but also in the longer term.

Reality - this is a time for exploring the real nature of the problem, ensuring that the session is not sidetracked by false assumptions, and for gathering information that will shed light on the realistic issue. It is not a time for problem solving.

Options - This stage of the process explores the possible options of behaviour or decisions that will lead to the right solution.

Wrap Up or Will - At this stage the focus moves onto what the client is going to do in terms of specific steps to reach the goal. It is also a stage of examining the potential obstacles that may arise and of discussing ways of overcoming them, and of agreeing the resources needed and the nature of further support.

For Coaching Commons readers, I have three questions:
1) How effective is “GROW” model on real process of coaching?
2) Is it useful to anyone, any purpose, and any context?
3) What are its limits (if any)?

1 http://www.alexandercorporation.com/graham_alexander.php

2 http://www.performancecoachinginternational.com/resources/articles/historyofcoaching.asp

Now there is a new idea in home parties…life coaching. Seriously.

A Florida life coach is now bringing coaching - free of charge - to the coaching-curious via in-home parties. In what I think is a flash of brilliance, Coach Heidi Lyn tired of having to explain what a life coach is/does, so she decided to SHOW her family and friends at home. From that, her home party niche was born.

How it works: A host invites 10-12 twenty/thirty-something women who share a common goal or topic to her home. The coach gives a brief “what is life-coaching” speech, and then launches an informal coaching session. She passes out her card to those who want to follow up with individual or group coaching. (and who wouldn’t?)

What a great idea to spread the word about life coaching and meet potential clients. At least I think so - let’s hear what you think……

Then, you are invited to comment on your thoughts and experiences about presence in coaching. When have you experienced the power of presence?  What have you noticed fosters presence for yourself and your client?

Listen to interview here.

“To read more about Elizabeth’s study,  “Presence-Based Coaching: The Practice of Presence in Relation to Goal Directed Activity,” visit her posting in The Research Repository of The Foundation of Coaching by clicking here.

What interested me from the beginning was that coaching as described by the author, Ferdinand Fournies, has been presented to thousands of managers in seminar form before the book was published.  According to Fournies, the book “deals with certain specific beliefs managers have about their subordinate workers, about themselves as bosses, and about the seemingly undefinable process called management. . . . [as well as] the techniques you can use as a manager to solve people-performance problems.” (pp vii-viii).

 As with other coaching books from this period, the focus is on coaching as part of a performance appraisal process and a way to deal with problems.  Fournies five step coaching “face-to-face discussion” model includes:

1.  Getting agreement that a problem exists.

2.  Mutually discuss alternative solutions.

3.  Mutually agree on action to be taken to solve the problem.

4.  Follow up to insure that agreed upon action has been taken.

5.  Recognize any achievement.

In 2000 Fournies published a revised and updated book where his five step model were the same as in 1979 with the exception of step five where ”recognize” was changed to “reinforce”. The purpose of this revised book was to “help managers do better what they get paid to do, to improve their employees’ performances, quantitatively and qualitatively, through specific, face-to-face interventions called coaching.

The type of coaching presented in Fournies book is for people who use coaching in the performance of their day-to-day job responsibilities. The message for professinal coaches is that the skills of coaching can be effectively used by anyone. It is our responsibility to be inclusive and collaborative with others who are using coaching skills for the betterment of others.