Business Coaching

Highly developed coaching skills
External coaches have typically received a more extensive coaching training than managers, and have spent more time coaching people. This means the organisation benefits from highly developed coaching skills and a wealth of coaching experience.
Specialist expertise
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.
6. The Manager as Coach
Following on from the last chapter about The External Coach or Coaching Consultant, this one looks at the the role played by a manager as a coach for his or her team.
Many people, when they hear the phrase ‘business coach’ think of an external consultant. Yet managers can have a powerful influence on their teams and the organisation as a whole when they adopt a coaching style of management. As a way of managing people, coaching differs from the traditional corporate ‘command and control’ approach in the following ways:

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  collaborating instead of controlling
  
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  delegating more responsibility
  
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  talking less, listening more
  
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  giving fewer orders, asking more questions
  
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  giving specific feedback instead of making judgments
  

This is not simply a case of ‘being nicer’ to people - delegated responsibility brings pressure to perform and coaching managers maintain a rigorous focus on goals and results.
The role of the manager-coach is very different to that of an external coach. Whereas an external coach has the luxury of a laser-like focus on the coachee and his development and performance, the manager-coach needs to balance the needs of the coachee, other team members and the organisation as a whole.
Some people argue that it is impossible for a manager to act as a coach, given her position of authority over her team. While authority is an important issue, it need not be an insurmountable obstacle - as long as there is genuine trust and respect in the working relationship. It is also a fact that coaching frequently takes place between peers and even upwards on occasion, with some enlightened bosses happy to be coached by their team members.
In his book Coaching for Performance John Whitmore raises the issue of managerial responsibility and authority, and asks ‘Can the manager, therefore, be a coach at all?’:
Yes, but it demands the highest qualities of that manager: empathy, integrity and detachment, as well as a willingness, in most cases, to adopt a fundamentally different approach to his staff… he may even have to cope with initial resistance from some of his staff, suspicious of any departure from traditional management.