I have watched and been a part of the emergence of executive coaching in the UK and Europe for almost 20 years and one thing that stands out from my many experiences is the number of people actively coaching who do not possess the core skills, and often do not know what those skills are. The times that I have demonstrated coaching in front of experienced practitioners and elicited surprise by making no suggestions nor offering any advice and yet the player (a marginally better word than coachee) moved forward are countless. To be able to cause the player to think is a core skill.
The experience, skills and techniques involved in the various backgrounds from which people enter the profession (I think I can call it that now) can have a profound impact in coaching but they do not make a coach. There is a distinct set of skills that a coach needs to possess in some measure in order to be able to coach effectively. And these skills need to be learned. For simplicity, let me suggest that there are four places where a coach needs to put attention with a different set of skills relating to each one : Over There; Over Here; the Relationship and the Context. Over There refers to all the resources (intelligence, imagination, intuition, knowledge, experience and so on) that exist within the player; Over Here to the resources in me, the coach, and how those resources can be used to support the person being coached. Then there is the Relationship between coach and player when two people are working well together things occur that are a function of the relationship, not either of the individuals. And finally there is the Context in which the player is operating: the particular business or industry, the organisation, its culture and aims and so on.
In this model the player is primarily reliant on the player’s resources. The skill-set involved has been called ‘non-directive coaching’, a title that has it’s roots in Rogerian approaches to therapy, but it is neither an accurate nor a helpful description. ‘Non-directive’ tells you as the coach what you should not do not what you might do, so it’s not exactly insightful. And it is not a watertight definition as, no matter how hard one might try, it is impossible to be completely non-directive and almost certainly not desirable. While a new title may well be found (self-directed is an option) the faculty of the School has coined the terms given in this article: Over There and Over Here.
Giving primacy to the ‘Over There’ skills is not merely the dogmatic pursuit of a model. This is about the authority of the player. (Authority has a Latin root; auctum, which means to produce or cause to grow, author has the same root). By authority I mean the capacity of an individual to author their own life: to make their own decisions and be fully responsible. Non-directive coaching promotes and protects this authority. And strong individuals make strong teams, in turn making strong organisations.
As a coach, first learn to be reliant on the resources in the player. The primary function of the coach is to understand. Not to solve, fix, heal, make better or be wise. To understand. The magic is that it is in that moment of understanding that the player understands for him or herself, becomes more aware and is then in a position to make better decisions and choices than they would have done anyway. This is how coaching is profoundly simple and simply profound. But most of us struggle to get above our own agenda and want to be seen to be making a difference.
Executive coaches require the capacity to understand in order to fulfil the player’s potential.
There is a distinct set of skills that a coach needs to possess in some measure in order to be able to coach effectively. And these skills need to be learned.
Myles Downey is a business coach, director of studies at The School of Coaching (which he established with The Work Foundation) and the author of Effective Coaching (second edition Texere/Thomson).