Coaching for Business. Coaching for Leaders

As many of you know, I embarked on training as a coach last year.  It has been an amazing journey of learning and practice.  Unexpectedly, my favorite part has been joining the most wonderful community of fellow coaches. Imagine sitting across from someone at a networking event and getting hit with a question that prompts you to explore your values and question your commitments. That’s pretty much been par for the course throughout the certification journey. Many of you have asked how this dovetails with the Human Resources and Business

Management consulting I’ve been offering for more than a decade. My answer: Very well. It’s the next best step and one that will open up opportunities and engagements for you and your team.

Coaching is very different than consulting on a fundamental level. Most consultants draw from our experiences to offer advice and insight and to problem-solve with the client, whereas coaches defer to the client’s experiences and empower the client to answer their own questions. In Human Resources, a consultant’s advice very often stems from knowledge of regulations, legislation, and best practices, though the best advice is adapted to fit the culture and needs of a business.  A coach, meanwhile, sits firmly in the position that we do not have the answers and we do not problem-solve, but we will ask many questions to help the client get to the answer that best fits them.  When it comes to being a consultant, the most apt metaphor for me: when someone asks me about a problem or an issue, I grab my glasses and start digging in to understand the problem. Sometimes I have to change to reading glasses to get really detailed, but I’ll come back to the client with an assessment of the situation and possible solutions or I’ll ask more questions.  As a coach, when someone comes to me with an issue or problem, I’ll squint at it and ask the person questions and then ask more questions until they’ve told me that they’ve brought the issue into resolution for themselves.    

The beauty of coaching has been the permission and framework to ask bigger and more “out there” questions to clients. This has been helpful and applicable in the bigger picture planning of Human Resources, especially as clients take on or explore new roles, new responsibilities, or are in a space of transition. This might be a leader or project manager of a firm who is letting go of the reins and needs to be held accountable for big picture design or deadlines, but not for every detail of how deadlines are met.  Or it could be the new parent navigating themselves back to work and adjusting to schedules that need flexibility, but have some new hard edges thanks to the newest addition to the family.   Sometimes it is working with the project manager who feels stuck or pigeonholed, and wants something different or new in their work or life.  At the outset of a coaching relationship, the client defines their personal goals or agenda as well as the desired outcome.  Then, in a defined group of sessions, we explore the agenda together through their values, their perspective on the issue at hand, and through their emotional responses. Along that path, I assign some homework, challenges, or accountabilities to keep plodding toward the goal or through the agenda. The outcome is almost always unexpected because so much is discovered throughout the journey.  What I strive for in coaching is a creative process that explores the client’s values, strengths, and vulnerabilities with them to find their purpose or meaning within a transition or a change.