Avoiding Potential Coaching Pitfalls

I ran a training session on coaching last week. Some of the people were new to the ideas, and some not. Afterwards I had a very interesting discussion with them on how coaching might actually run in their workplace. They raised some interesting potential pitfalls that I’d like to share with you.

Some of the group doubted that they could use it in their environment, as it would need buy-in from senior management. If we were talking about implementing a coaching programme, with accredited coaches, regular one-to-one sessions for each individual and maybe linking in to appraisal and other development programmes, maybe I would agree. However coaching does not necessarily need to be such a big thing. If someone in your team comes to you with a problem and instead of jumping in with an answer you ask them some questions to get them thinking through a solution – that’s coaching.

I think that the coaching industry hasn’t helped this perception that coaching is a “big thing.” Nowadays there are lots of grand sounding coaching qualifications dealing with all sorts of areas like cognitive behavioural coaching and emotional intelligence. But any manager who can learn to adopt a more questioning approach with their team and expect their people to take responsibility for their challenges, can coach. And the important thing is you don’t need to have special one-to-one coaching session to do this – it can be done on an ad-hoc basis.

Another objection to the approach was that sometimes it is easier to just tell someone how to do something. This is especially true when time is pressurised. I totally agree. I see coaching as one tool in the manager’s toolbox. There are many other just as worthwhile approaches. It’s good to mix them up depending on the situation. I think you would be a poor manager if you were always using the coaching tool just as it wouldn’t be right to always dictate to your staff how everything should be done.

One attendee had tried coaching on a one-to-one basis with one of their team who perceived it as a therapy session and started going into detail about their bi-polar disorder. It is very important to be clear to the coachee that the scope of the session does not include personality, emotional and mental problems. The session must focus on their workplace behaviour and performance. Of course, as my attendee pointed out, there can be a grey area, where the two can mix. For example, a manager who suffers from nerves when he presents. The coach has got to use common sense. If at any time it is clear the conversation is leading into the area of psychotherapy, the coach must stop this and insist the coachee seeks professional help.

One individual worried that if he coached rather than offered answers, people might perceive him as an idiot who was trying to cover up a lack of knowledge. This is a common worry, particularly when a manager’s identity is strongly based on expertise. I worried about this with one of my first coaching assignments. After a month of sitting in meetings spending most of my time just really listening to what my clients were saying I wondered whether I was adding any value. But in a business world full of people talking, the listener can be like gold dust. Also there’s no shame in spending time listening, to do it well is actually really hard, it’s far from a passive activity.