Professional coaching is an ongoing partnership between coach and client that supports the client in producing extraordinary results in their personal and professional life.
From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, coaching has taken the business sector by storm. Here's what they say.
Investor's Business Daily "Across corporate America, coaching sessions at many companies have become as routine for executives as budget forecasts and quota meetings."
From Business Magazine: "Need a Life? Get a Coach" Coaches say they're in the vanguard of an entirely new, and distinctly '90's profession. Part consultant, part motivational speaker, part therapist and part rent-a-friend, coaches work with managers, entrepreneurs and just plain folks, helping them define and achieve their goals--career, personal, or, most often, both.
Despite his initial misgivings, Robert Wagnon is now an enthusiastic client. His coach helped him understand that his work and homes lives are interdependent. "I might be sitting in a meeting with you, thinking about the fact that my wife and I might not be getting along real well. As a business person, I might not choose to address that. I might say "I know what my problem is, I need another $100,000 in sales this month.' Well, to get there, I may have to go clean up something else." He says his coach helps him stay on track. "I didn't have anyone to answer to, so if I said I was going to do something, there was no one keeping me focused." "It's like having a friend to bounce things off of that has my best interests in mind," he says.
Fortune Magazine So You're a Player. Do You Need a Coach? Coaches are everywhere these days. Companies hire them to shore up executives or, in some cases, to ship them out. Division heads hire them as change agents. Workers at all levels of the corporate ladder, fed up with a lack of advice from inside the company, are taking matters into their own hands and enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about everything from personnel to strategy.
What's really driving the boom in coaching, says John Kotter, professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School, is this: "As we move from 30 miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180...as we go from driving straight down the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and getting on motorcycles...the whole game changes, and a lot of people are trying to keep up, learn how, not fall off."
An Ernst and Young partner, Barry Mabry, has found a coach to be a valuable sounding board in today's crazy business climate. "Why do I need a coach?" he muses. "I've wrestled with this." He's a corporate finance partner in New Orleans. He has been with Ernst 27 years. He's successful; he's happy. His recent performance review was quite flattering. "Perhaps it's for the same reason that Tiger Woods needs a coach or Pete Sampras needs a coach," says Mabry. "Tiger Woods would say, 'I know how to play golf.' But his coach is probably the most important person in his life."
Harvard Business Review "The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization's valuable resources."
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