A group of 35 senior business coaches from around the world were treated to a day interacting with celebrated business coach Dr Marshall Goldsmith at Henley Business School’s Centre for Coaching in March.
One of Goldsmith’s recent ventures provides free coaching to 100 leading American coaches, on the proviso that they then do the same. This approach has already gone viral in the US, and his visit to Henley is part of his quest to replicate it across Europe. He said that as leaders and as coaches, we have just two roles: to learn as much as we can, and to help as much as we can.
Goldsmith has built a reputation as a world-leading leadership thinker, and has coached CEOs from more than 150 corporations and written several books, including the best-selling, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and his latest book Triggers. In December 2018, Mastering Executive Coaching was published, co-edited by Goldsmith, Brian Underhill and Dr Jonathan Passmore, director of the Henley Centre for Coaching.
The advice he offered was about the things coaches and leaders should stop doing. In order to achieve greatness, Goldsmith believes leaders need to address their worst habits which include seeking to win too often, add too much value, demeaning others’ suggestions by stating: “I already knew that”, and passing too much judgement.
“We are all conditioned to prove we are a success but we have to learn to let it go, and focus instead on the other person. After all, who is ever going to tell you that they miss that judgemental person that you used to be?” said Goldsmith.
He said that pretty much globally, around 65% of our time is spent on promoting ourselves or criticising others. “If we can reduce that number, we can increase productivity.”
For coaches, success is about choosing the right clients, he said. Trying to change clients against
their inclination is impossible,
and they have to have active support and follow-up from the other stakeholders in the business for coaching to succeed.
If potential clients cannot give you an assurance that they are open and willing to change, coaches must be prepared to walk away. For most organisations, the biggest cost of coaching is the time-cost for the senior people involved, directly or indirectly, so the cost of the coach becomes almost insignificant; this overcomes a stumbling block of fee agreement many coaches encounter.