BEST PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE COACHING I This page intentionally left blank II London and Philadelphia Carol Wilson BEST PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE COACHING A Handbook for Leaders, Coaches, HR Professionals and Organizations III Publisher’s note Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publisher and author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the publisher or the author. First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2007 by Kogan Page Limited Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accor- dance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publisher at the undermentioned addresses: 120 Pentonville Road 525 South 4th Street, #241 London N1 9JN Philadelphia PA 19147 United Kingdom USA www.kogan-page.co.uk © Carol Wilson, 2007 The right of Carol Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 978 0 7494 5082 3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilson, Carol. Best practice in performance coaching : a handbook for leaders, coaches, HR professionals, and organizations / Carol Wilson. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7494-5082-3 ISBN-10: 0-7494-5082-7 1. Employees Coaching of. 2. Performance. 3. Mentoring in business. I. Title. HF5549.5.C53W55 2007 658.3'124 dc22 2007022193 Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall IV For my parents who believed I could do anything, and my sister who saw only the best in everyone. With loving thanks for the support of my husband Paul Tabley. V VI This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by Sir John Whitmore xi Foreword by Sir Richard Branson xiii Acknowledgements xv Introduction 1 Part I Fundamentals 5 The how, who, when and where of coaching for performance and good leadership 1 What is coaching? 7 The history of coaching 7; The seven principles of coaching 10; The contrast between coaching and related fields 13; A coaching culture at work: the Virgin empire 17; Creating a coaching culture 18 2 Coaching techniques 20 Listening 20; Questioning 22; Clarifying, reflecting and using intuition 25; Permission 28; Giving and receiving feedback 28 3 Coaching models 32 EQ 33; GROW 35; EXACT 42 4 Structure 50 The coaching series 50; Length of sessions 51; Early termination and cancellation 52; The introductory session 53; Goal setting 54; Second session: strategic planning 56; Intermediate sessions 60; Final session 62; Structure within a session 63 VII 5 Training as a coach 68 Who can become a coach? 68; Levels of mastery in coaching 69; Choosing a training school 71; Style of the training 73; Coaching and training for organizations 74; Assessment and accreditation 74 6 Running a professional coaching practice 78 Marketing 78; Finding corporate clients 81; Internet marketing 82; Closing the deal 84; Terms of payment 85; What to charge 85; Paperwork 87; Niche coaching 88; Professionalism 88; Mentoring and supervision 88; Ethics 89 7 How to create a coaching culture in organizations 92 Who can be coached in the workplace? 92; Confidentiality in the workplace 93; Informal coaching in the workplace 94; Uses for coaching skills in the workplace 94; The purpose of workplace coach training 95; Measurement in workplace coaching 96; Coaching across cultures 97; Creating a coaching culture in the workplace 99; Conclusion 103 Part II Advanced coaching 107 Tools, models and international case histories 8 Coaching tools 109 Transpersonal coaching 110; David Grove’s clean language, metaphor and emergent knowledge 111; The talking stick 115; The change curve and the four-room apartment 115; Transactional analysis 117; Values questionnaire 118; Cultural transformation tools (CTT) 121; Systemic coaching 122; Appreciative inquiry 123; The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) 124; 360-degree feedback 126; Neuro linguistic programming 127; Body language 129; Coaching by telephone 130; Other models 130; The role of the coach in the organi- zational hierarchy 131; An organizational hierarchy of needs 131; How people and organizations change 134; The relationship between the component parts of coaching 134 9 Case histories 137 Delegation and responsibility 138; Coach training at the NHS 139; Evaluating coaching at OFGEM 140; Career development in corpo- rate finance 144; Building confidence and self-esteem 147; Creating an in-house coaching service at the BBC 149; From Beijing to Belgium: coaching the global nomad 154; From Macedonia: increasing sales through the HRDF Project 164; From California, viii CONTENTS USA: career coaching an environmental scientist 170; From Australia: management development at Orica 173; From Abu Dhabi: corporate coaching in the United Arab Emirates 177; From Australia: leading for performance; building a values-driven organization in IT services 182; From Japan: management styles and succession plan- ning 185; Moral dilemmas and coaching challenges 190; Coaching for Performance ROI 202 Appendix A: Awareness questions 205 Appendix B: Worksheets 210 Appendix C: Sample coaching agreements 216 Appendix D: Coaching evaluation 219 Resources 223 About the author 228 Index 231 CONTENTS IX X This page intentionally left blank [...]... them In this chapter, we start by exploring where coaching came from, its fundamental principles, where it is positioned in other related fields and, finally, I share some of my personal experiences of working in the model coaching culture at Virgin Records during its first decade THE HISTORY OF COACHING A sea of confusion surrounds the term coaching The expression has not even made its way into... situations around them Performance coaching can be 14 FUNDAMENTALS practised with individuals and groups, not by telling, but by questioning to facilitate awareness and self-directed learning There are a growing number of categories in coaching, such as life, executive, team, group and career coaching, but the process is largely the same and all can be generically defined as performance coaching Just as the... counselling, it is not a driver Mentoring is usually aimed at improving performance; however, coaching sometimes deals with psychological issues in order to achieve this, whereas mentoring is about imparting facts and experience Coaching is about facilitating self-directed learning Mentoring, while having similarities to coaching, is fundamentally different A mentor has experience in a particular field and imparts... which she prefers, as do I, to the overused and incomplete SMART for goal setting She goes on to explore the structure of a coaching relationship, the training of coaches and the pleasures and pitfalls of setting up a coaching practice She ends the main text with a chapter on coaching in organizations All of this essential information to a new or practising coach, or to a potential client, is very easy... profession, including his seminal book, Coaching for Performance, which has been translated into nineteen languages These events coincided with the development of practices arising from cognitive therapy, brief solution focused therapy, psychosynthesis and positive psychology All of these elements, and others, have contributed to the type of coaching that we explore in this book The core principle of performance. .. carefully marked at the place where I gave up reading them and set them aside to finish ‘when I have more time’ I hope to have spared my readers the drudgery of ploughing through irrelevant detail to find the nuggets that are golden for them 2 BEST PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE COACHING This book is intended as an introduction for anyone thinking of becoming or hiring a coach, whether private or corporate, and... some models of coaching, such as the cognitive-behavioural coaching approach, that have a psycho-educative element, where the coach may facilitate coachees in uncovering information which they are unlikely to find out or understand on their own Coaching is about improving performance The focus of coaching is to enhance performance Although this may be the result with therapy and counselling, it is not... For instance, if someone shouts ‘Fire’, you would not be wise to hang around asking, ‘And how do you feel about the fire?’ would you? I have given my own definition of coaching at the beginning of Chapter 1, and quote also the one provided by the Association for Coaching, a non-profit making coaching body of which I am Head of Accreditation, which defines coaching as: A profession which helps individuals... baronet discovered it and made coaching his life’s work: Sir John Whitmore (now my colleague and the author of a Foreword to this book) with his associates at Performance Consultants, introduced the ‘Inner Game’ to Britain, developed the techniques in sport and business, and coined the term performance coaching John has since done more than any other proponent of coaching to promote the techniques... exploration Coaching has also produced results in physical healing, sometimes combined with related fields such as neuro linguistic programming and Grovian clean language Psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a medical doctor with further specialized training in the field of psychiatry but, surprisingly, not necessarily any training in psychological therapies Psychiatrists are concerned with diagnosing mental . BEST PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE COACHING I This page intentionally left blank II London and Philadelphia Carol Wilson BEST PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE COACHING A. Creating a coaching culture 18 2 Coaching techniques 20 Listening 20; Questioning 22; Clarifying, reflecting and using intuition 25; Permission 28; Giving