With apologies for adapting 1 Corinthians, these three have enjoyed a wide and loving press as being the keys to unlock organisations' potential, with coaching being seen as the main tool. To offer words of criticism could almost get one burned at the stake for training heresy. And yet despite these being so fully supported, with so many hours of away days and workshops, appearing in every trendy managers PDP, why is it that so few organisations can truly claim to have a genuinely coaching culture?

Of course, there can be good and bad ways to teach coaching. Having said this, the essence of coaching is not that complicated to get across. Many different consultancies will have their own specialised model, but the majority tend to come back to the same old core of understanding and respecting the other person's position and using reflective and empowering questions to help them come to their own more effective solution. How hard can that be to get across – even in a coaching style?

 

The issue comes down to three basic problems; firstly a tendency to use coaching too widely as a management tool, and in circumstances where it is ineffective or even damaging. Secondly there is the problem of 'falling at the last fence' – managers and leaders doing all the right things right up until the last part of the coaching process and in fact directing rather than coaching. Lastly, both leaders and organisations may not be truly ready for the outcomes of coaching – do they really want to empower their staff?

The first of these failures is most widely practiced when organisations are looking to transform themselves from a more 'command and control' environment to an 'empowered' one. Typically a disastrous employee survey of some sort shows a downtrodden and disgruntled workforce. Consultants are called in and (often rightly) suggest that a more enlightened management style would make a big difference. The problem is the size of the shift that needs to happen – and it cannot happen easily in one step.

Previously authoritarian and coercive managers are thrust through the coaching courses and try to put that style into practice. Firstly this massive shift in management style leaves the majority with the 'he has been on a course' syndrome, and they wait for them to just get over it. However if it persists then there is even more damage. People who have been so used to a directive style have real problems understanding coaching. When they are asked for their views on what they should do they panic – feeling abandoned rather than empowered. They desperately search for hints and tips as to what they are meant to do. True coaching is a real skill, and it is very hard to get right if your coachee is constantly asking for the very thing (direction) that you are not meant to give. You are on the horns of a dilemma – give great coaching and they feel lost, give in to help them with a little direction and you are just reverting to type. Moving from high command cultures needs more time and a gentler transformation of leadership style – a jump to coaching is not helpful.

Secondly there is the 'falling at the last fence'. So often the coaching is perfectly well taught, but like many such events actual practice is rather time limited. There is the world of difference between saying 'what do you think you should do' and saying 'what do you think you should do to make them re-write the report'. They sound so similar when spoken casually, but one is truly empowering and the latter version is in fact direction, dressed up as coaching. As a leader even if you have got the first question right it is so hard when the coachee responds 'I don't know – what do you suggest?' and so many are lured back onto the rocks of direction. This failure is particularly pernicious as the leaders often genuinely believe they have been coaching, and cannot understand when the next years surveys show little movement on the empowerment scale.

 

Lastly is the biggest challenge that any leader faces – truly letting go. Are your leaders and your organisation really ready to allow people to put their own ideas into practice, and are you prepared for a longer term gain. As all good coaching teachers will tell you, coaching leadership must allow for some short term learning curve problems – the coachee needs to 'fall off the bike a bit' in order to learn how to ride solo. With many companies focused on short term gains, reports and rewards, it is hard to allow true coaching the head room it needs.

These are real failings that occur in a wide variety of companies – and many will know that their coaching training is not having the impact they thought it would – yet it can. Coaching can be the great unlocking tool, and perhaps just like 'love' in 1 Corinthians, it may be the greatest - it might be easy to write about, to sing about, to talk about, and is still one of the trickiest to truly put into practice.