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WHAT CAN COACHES DO FOR YOU?

By Diane Coutu and Carol Kauffman

In the seventeenth century, the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu relied heavily on the advice of Father François Leclerc du Tremblay, known as France’s éminence grise for his gray monk’s habit. Like the famous cardinal, today’s business leaders have their gray eminences. But these advisers aren’t monks bound by a vow of poverty. They’re usually called executive coaches, and they can earn up to $3,500 an hour.

To understand what they do to merit that money, HBR conducted a survey of 140 leading coaches and invited five experts to comment on the findings. As you’ll see, the commentators have conflicting views about where the field is going—and ought to go—reflecting the contradictions that surfaced among the respondents. Commentators and coaches alike felt that the bar needs to be raised in various areas for the industry to mature, but there was no consensus on how that could be done. They did generally agree, however, that the reasons companies engage coaches have changed. Ten years ago, most companies engaged a coach to help fix toxic behavior at the top. Today, most coaching is about developing the capabilities of high-potential performers.

Bottom line: Coaching as a business tool continues to gain legitimacy, but the fundamentals of the industry are still in flux. In this market, as in so many others today, the old saw still applies: Buyer beware!

THE DANGERS OF DEPENDENCE ON COACHES

By Michael Maccoby

All coaches recognize that they should be making you more competent and self-reliant. If the coaching relationship isn’t doing that, it’s very likely that you’re becoming overly dependent. Dependence isn’t always bad, of course—friends relying on one another, for example, is a good thing. But we all know people who can’t make a decision without first talking to their psychotherapists, and some executives defer to their coaches in the same way. They have conversations with the coach that they ought to be having with other executives in the C-suite or with their teams.

The data in this survey show that more than half of the respondents think their clients do not become overly dependent on them. In my view, that’s unrealistic. Coaches have an economic incentive to ignore the problem of dependency, creating a potential conflict of interest. It’s natural for them to want to expand their business, but the best coaches, like the best therapists, put their clients’ interests first. Harry Levinson, the father of coaching, worked with the top executives of his day. He said that if a coach wasn’t aware of the dependency dynamic, then he had no right to be a coach. What this means for you is that before you hire a coach, you should ask him how he handles dependency in relationships.

“Coaches have an economic incentive to ignore the problem of dependency, creating a potential conflict of interest”.

A related finding of the survey deserves special attention: Although almost 90% of the respondents reported that they establish a time frame prior to starting an engagement, all but eight said that the focus of the assignment shifts from the original intent. There are no data in the survey about the mechanics of how those engagements shift, but in my 35 years of working in the field, I have observed that it’s typically a matter of coaches recontracting with executives. Coaches who are essentially consultants may have a contract with you to work out strategy, for example, and then may offer to stay on to help with implementation. Or if you hire a coach to help you be a better team player, she may suggest that you need additional work in managing upward or working with difficult but creative subordinates. All this takes more time—and money. Extending contracts is not necessarily unethical. Just be aware that your coach may be asking you to recontract for more than you bargained for or really need.

Two particular kinds of shift in focus, though, are dangerous and should be avoided. One is when a behavioralist coach (my term for someone who monitors your behavior) seduces you into a form of psychotherapy without making that explicit. For example, he or she may say that you are now ready to explore deeper issues that keep you from realizing your full potential. The other is when personal coaches morph into business advisers. In these cases, your coach becomes a kind of speaking partner—someone you can bounce strategic ideas off of. That can be just as dangerous because it’s a rare coach who has deep knowledge about your business.

Michael Maccoby is the president of the Maccoby Group in Washington, DC, and is the author of Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails (Harvard Business School Press, 2007)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://hbr.org/2009/01/what-can-coaches-do-for-you

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The old adage about it taking a village

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