This paper reviews Ryan Underwood's 2005 Fast Company article "Coaching School Dropout," in which Underwood goes undercover at a five-day life coaching seminar run by the Crystal-Barkley Corporation. The review summarizes Underwood's mixed experience and uses it to evaluate executive and life coaching as a method of employee training and development. The paper argues that coaching is most effective when participants are motivated and when sessions are organized around a clear, shared goal — such as those found in cohesive military or corporate settings — rather than open-ended seminars where participants must define their own values and objectives from scratch.
"Coach, put me in, I can do it!" This phrase, often uttered in clichéd sports films, is the ideal attitude every military general or corporate executive expects from his or her employees — but seldom receives, much less hears from lower-level workers or officers. However, adopting a page from a winning sports formula has proved successful for some companies today in the form of executive coaching, as described by Fast Company writer Ryan Underwood in his article "Coaching School Dropout."
Such life or executive coaching is designed to become a fundamental component of employee development — an expansion of the introductory training process into the everyday facets of the workplace, even after an employee has become well integrated into the organization. The coaching is supposed to serve as a kind of training camp, a pre-season warm-up even for a seasoned company veteran. However, although an excellent idea in theory, Underwood was less than impressed with coaching in practice.
The article provides a useful overview of an increasingly popular method of employee training and development. Underwood, a writer for Fast Company, cast himself as a spy on a secret mission — determined to penetrate the unique benefits conferred by executive or life coaching by refusing to disclose his contented position and presenting himself instead as a potential executive seeking a promotion or a new career direction.
As Underwood explains: "This article originally started as an 'embed' story (not quite Iraq, but you take what you can get). I would witness up close and personal how the process of coaching unfolded for a small group of professionals hoping to find concrete answers to some of life's most slippery questions in a five-day 'Life/Work Design' seminar from the Crystal-Barkley Corp., which offers various coaching services." Rather than finding the experience enriching, however, Underwood found the coaching session to be a bust (Underwood, 2005, p. 85).
The problem Underwood encountered was his inability to relate to the other seminar participants. Because this was an independent coaching organization drawing a diverse group from different professional spheres, there was little agreement among participants about what constituted a "good life" or what organizational and personal values they were all trying to uphold. As Underwood states, over the course of workshops designed to elicit preferences, tastes, and feelings, he "remained the odd man out. I'm pursuing my dream career already, while everyone else (aside perhaps from the publicist) had come searching for answers to a particular set of problems and concerns. Skepticism may be the proper mind-set with which to enter into a coaching relationship, but you have to want to be coached. I didn't. I was just some jerk trying to play along. The group felt it. I felt it. So after one lost weekend, I didn't need any coaching to decide not to return for a second one" (Underwood, 2005, p. 85).
"Motivation identified as key coaching effectiveness factor"
"Coaching works best with shared organizational goals"
Developmental coaching with a goal in mind can be helpful for all components of an organization, as opposed to vague sessions where the questioning individual must define the goal, values, and what he or she wants out of life in quick succession. Underwood's experience ultimately reveals less a flaw in coaching itself than a flaw in the format: when organizational context, shared purpose, and participant readiness align, executive coaching remains a promising and legitimate tool for employee development.
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