Executive and management coaching practices and outcomes

Executive or Management Coaching

Coaching can be quite powerful when well executed. However, in some cases, coaching can turn out to be a rather artificial and temporary process. This is more so the case in those instances where coaches fail to establish meaningful relationships between them and their clients for purposes of coaching. This text will concern itself with the key reasons as to why relationships are considered a foundation for coaches in their quest to evoke excellence in their clients.

According to Flaherty (2010, p. 4), "a coach is someone who builds a respectful relationship with a client and then researches the situations the client finds himself in, with a particular emphasis on the client's interpretation of the events." In basic terms, it is difficult for a coach to evoke excellence in others if he or she does not have a perfect or well-founded understanding of their own unique circumstances. In building relationships with clients, a coach is able to understand their capabilities as well as strengths and weaknesses. This understanding could aid the coach in designing the exercise in a way that best suits the client and the specific circumstances he or she is in. To highlight this assertion, Goldsmith and Lyons (2006, p. 21) are of the opinion that for purposes of enhancing the effectiveness of the coaching exercise, there is need for a coach to "engage in open-ended inquiry to establish an equilibrated helping relationship before he or she can determine what kind of help is needed."

Next, it is by way of nurturing a meaningful relationship that a coach wins the trust and confidence of the client hence motivating him or her to make recommended changes. As Flaherty (2010, p. 40) notes, "the elements of the relationship are mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual freedom of expression." In this case the author uses the word mutual to create an emphasis that these elements of the relationship must go both ways, i.e. emanate from both the client and the coach. It is these elements that give the client confidence to take action based on the ideas sourced during coaching exercise. As Goldsmith and Lyons (2006, p. 146) note, "transfer of knowledge flows from relationships of trust." However, trust cannot be established without first forming a meaningful relationship with the client. Therefore, coaches should see relationships as a foundation for them to effectively share ideas and information and in the process impact on the behavior of others.

Further, it can also be noted that nurturing relationships could be critical for follow-up purposes where necessary. In this case, relationships aid communication and hence the coach can easily make a follow-up of the progress made so as to suggest corrective measures in case actual results deviate from the desired outcomes. Thus follow up is necessary for feedback purposes. In most cases, feedback is critical for both the coach and the organization. As Goldsmith and Lyons (2006) note, failure to connect to the organization in some way on the part of the coach may deny the coaching process the much needed support and resources. Well-established relationships with clients could ease the collection of feedback which apart from being used to further evaluate the progress of the client also helps the coach to secure the much needed involvement of the organization. This could further benefit the client even more going forward.