A Winning Recipe for Working with a Coach
Wayne Hart and Karen Kirkland
Executive coaching is all about change—often, developmental change. When you hire a coach, you set in motion a process for effecting that change. The elements of a coaching engagement are ongoing assessment, challenge, and support. You may think that those three elements are the responsibility of the coach—after all, they are what the coach is trained and hired to do. But you will get much more benefit from coaching if you are an active participant in every aspect of the engagement.
The initial phase of a coaching engagement is an assessment—a baseline picture of your current situation and level of skills. This assessment might be designed to elicit information on how you see yourself, how others see you, who your advocates and enemies are, the dynamics and politics of your organization, your strengths that can be leveraged, and your shortcomings that can be improved.
Your coach will almost certainly have you complete written assessment instruments that provide information on your leadership style, leadership competencies and capabilities, skill at building and managing relationships, and other characteristics. The coach may ask your permission to have some of your colleagues and direct reports, as well as your boss, complete similar assessment instruments. In addition, the coach may want to interview these individuals and, in some cases, your spouse and other family members; may ask to review performance appraisals; and may want to accompany you to work to see how you interact with others, conduct meetings, and present ideas. You can veto any of these activities of course, but all of them will help the coach create a complete picture of you fairly quickly, and accurately focus on the areas that will make the most difference in your managerial effectiveness.