Coaching as a leadership style for personal, professional and organizational development. Part 1

The section, “Introduction to Emotional Intelligence coaching and Assessment,” taught that emotions are important in coaching. Mark McGuinness, author of Creative Management for Creative Teams says, “In addition to their core coaching skills, many external coaches have specialist expertise that makes them particularly suited to certain coaching assignments. Specialisms can include leadership, sales, negotiation, mediation, presentation skills, creativity, psychology and emotional intelligence” (McGuinness 16). Richard Boyatzis of Case Western University talks about a person who inspired us because they gave us a positive feeling about what we could achieve. That is a good coach with emotional intelligence as their specialty, the type of coach I hope to be. It was inspiring just learning that it was okay to be a positive coach rather than a negative one always criticizing.

Coaching should have a positive objective of getting the person being coached to perform their best. McGuinness says that coaching is goal-focused, and the goal is getting the person to do their best (McGuinness 26). While constructive criticism that is negative can be helpful, it should be balanced with more that is positive so that the person being coached feels good about themselves and looks forward to being coached rather than dreading it. I would rather inspire people in a way that they look forward to being coached than in a way that they dread it.

Coaches can achieve this emotionally intelligent coaching by listening to their coachees and looking at them to see what is going on with them. This develops empathy (McGuinness 27). Having empathy involved will always bring up emotions. One goal of coaching should be to get an emotional response. When emotions are involved, the coachees are more committed to the objectives (McGuinness 40). That is important to success for them and for me as the coach.

Part 2

The second part of the class was called, “The Art of Listening.” This section talks about how coaches inspire their coachees to be better leaders. Susan Ennis, Judy Otto, Lewis Stern, et al., authors of Principles and Guidelines for a Successful Coaching Practice echo McGuinness when they say that listening attentively with an open mind is one of the objectives of coaching (Ennis, Otto and Stern 30). They also bring up the emotional elements of coaching when they say, “Uses active listening techniques (e.g., maintaining full attention, periodically summarizing, being non-judgmental) to reflect and acknowledge the other person’s feelings and concerns” (Ennis, Otto and Stern 65). This is different than what most people think about business leaders. Most think they are driven people who lead because they are driven by some other passion such as a passion for power or wealth. I had not thought that perhaps a business leader can be driven by a desire to achieve success in leadership. It makes sense that a person wanting to achieve in this way would want a coach to help them.

In a video, Gregg Thompson talks about how leadership coaches will not coach unsuccessful leaders. If a person is a failure at leadership, a leadership coach is not going to help them. If they are a good leader, then a leadership coach can help them to be even better by teaching them about emotional intelligence, listening, and other aspects of leading.

I like this approach because it says that one needs to believe they are successful at least to want to have a coach, and the coach can only help a person get better and achieve the goals that the person being coached sets for him/herself. “Executive coaching is driven by specific goals agreed upon by all members of the coaching partnership. Such goals are based on feedback data that identify skills, behaviors and knowledge that the executive needs to develop to achieve specific business results” (Ennis, Otto and Stern 41). Despite the goals that are set by the person being coached, the coach has only one objective according to Thompson, helping the coachee to accelerate their ability as a leader (Thompson). Because of this, coaches will not offer advice, they will be positive but they will challenge their coachee and not pamper them. This sounds more like the conventional idea of coaches to me.

I am not so sure I agree with Thompson on some of what he says about coaching and the methods used by coaches. The fact that there was annoying—probably supposed to be inspiring—music playing in the background throughout the entire video did not help Thompson to sound credible to me. He has some good ideas but they seemed to be nearly opposite of what McGuinness says. Thompson makes it sound as if coaches are just constantly challenging a person, and while that is good, there is little emotion involved in it. Perhaps it is better as a coach to remember that on