The Evolution of Coaching
Coaching, circ. 1984
As part of my study of leadership and business, I recently read a classic— Tom Peters’ 1985 book, A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference. This book followed his best selling book on great companies, Search for Excellence (1982). By the time I read over 300 pages, I knew that I was going to use a number of quotes on “coaching.” Then I turned the page to Chapter 18. It has a one line title, Coaching.
Now if that doesn’t surprise you as it did me, then let me remind you that Thomas Leonard did not create the field of “Coaching” until 1991. So this chapter was published 6 years earlier! And while there’s a few things I’ll mention in a minute that doesn’t fit for Meta-Coaching, mostly it is right on target. Chapter 18 is addressed to executive leaders and managerial leaders in an organization about how to be a leader coach. Now is that relevant? To see for yourself, here are a few key quotations from the book:
“Coaching is face-to-face leadership that pulls together people with diverse backgrounds, talents, experiences and interests, encourages them to step up to responsibility and continued achievement, and treats them as full-scale partners and contributions. Coaching is not about memorizing techniques or devising the perfect game plan. It is about really paying attention to people— really believing them, really caring about them, really involving them.
“To coach is largely to facilitate, which literally means ‘to make easy’ —not less demanding, less interesting or less intense, but less discouraging, less bound up with excessive controls and complications. A coach/facilitator works tirelessly to free the team from needless restrictions on performance, even when they are self-imposed. In these next few pages we will talk about some of the most vital aspects of coaching: visibility, listening, limit-setting, value-shaping, skill-stretching.” (325-326)
Under the title of “Coaching by Wandering Around,” Tom Peters writes about leaders and managers who use coaching as their methodology for leading:
“Coaching is the process of enabling others to act, of building on their strengths. It’s counting on people to use their own special skill and competence, and then giving them enough room and enough time to do it. Coaching at its heart involves caring enough about people to take the time to build a personal relationship with them.” (328)
“Coaching is tough-minded. It’s nurturing and bring out the best; it’s demanding that the team play as a team.” (329)
“Every coach, at every level, is above all a value-shaper. The value-shaper not only brings company philosophy to life by paying extraordinary attention to communicating and symbolizing it.” (330)
“The best coaches spend as much time developing the team’s ability to believe in what each member can contribute as they do working with individual players. It sets the tone for the way people should aim to work together and trust evolves in the process.” (334)
Now for what Tom Peters wrote that does not fit for coaching today as we know it via Meta-Coaching. This indicates the way coaching has evolved from 1984 to today:
“Five Coaching Roles: In short, sometimes coaching is not coaching, but counseling, or sponsoring, or confronting, or educating.” (337)
“It turns out that successful coaches instinctively vary their approaches to meet the needs of this person at this time, or that group at that time. They perform five distinctly different roles: they educate, sponsor, coach, counsel, and confront.” (338)
The theme of this chapter on Coaching is that the leader is a coach and the leader who coaches appeals to the best in each person, has an open door, is a problem-solver and cheerleader, thinks of ways to make people more productive, manages by wandering around, is a good listener, etc. (354-357).
“Effective coaching means creating winners, keeping the faith in the thick of turmoil, building momentum, finding tiny glimmers of light (to reinforce) in the midst of darkness…” (357)
“Effective leadership is full-time people development. … In coaching, the name of the game is execution.” (359)
“Coaching includes praise— expressing approval or admiration, applauding, commending and lauding small (and large) victories.” (361)
“Coaching is ongoing leadership. … Coaches stretch you to your limit, a limit often beyond what you thought possible.” (362)
“The best coaches set in motion a continuing learning process —one that helps people develop a tolerance for their own struggles and accelerates the unfolding of skill and contributions that would not have been possible without the ‘magic’ attention of a dedicated coach.” (377)
“Leading is a hands-on art. Coaching is the essence of leading– developing those with whom we work. Coaching is MBWA (management by wandering around.” (384)
As I reflect on these writings some 26 years ago, no wonder coaching has become such a powerful modality in the business world. And today we stand on the shoulders of such giants as Tom Peters.
