In Coaching - less can mean more

Being a coach is a privilege and an art best learned from experience.   All too often the coach is perceived as a problem solver; but the real juice from coaching lies elsewhere.

Try this with a group of managers who want to be coaches.  There are many to be found.  Form them into groups of three for an exercise.

Let one be the coach, one the coachee, and one the observer.  Just keep the instructions to a minimum here.  The coachee chooses an issue (preferably not life or death) he or she wishes to be coached on and make sure that you give no instructions on how to coach.  The only instruction to give to the observer is to watch out for one particular event. 

If you watch for a while, you will probably notice the coachee in animated mode as he or she elaborates on the nature of their problem.  I would almost guarantee that at the beginning the coach will be in listening mode.  After all, haven't we been told that listening is important?

All of a sudden you notice a shift in body postures and the coach starts to speak.  The observer almost certainly will identify this moment "when the problem shifts" from the coachee to the coach.

In most cases the coachee will hand off the problem to the coach who willingly accepts the burden of trying to come up with a solution.  Not great coaching but a pretty typical model of life and the way we are conditioned from an early age to accept answers from others rather than discover our own.  Now I know there are situations when we need answers from others - but that's consulting not coaching.

In his book "The Inner Game of Work", Timothy Gallwey has some excellent observations on coaching in a business context.  Tim points out that it is not the job of the coach to solve the coachees problem.  Nor is it just to be a good listener or simply ask good questions. 

High performance coaching is efficient and effective because it creates clarity for a coachee - it allows them to see their own, often habitual, thinking pattern in a new way.  By giving a new perspective on their issue they can disassociate from its complexity and insights just start to flood in.  Once the coachee understands the game of working with such a coach, the speed and value of the returns will grow much faster than could ever be achieved by a "coach as problem solver"