Filtering facts from fake news
Given the popularity of fake news, I thought it would be worthwhile to lean into the foremost five fallacies from the world of business coaching.
- Coaching is only for top executives
The 2018 report “Building a Coaching Culture for Change Management” from the International Coaching Federation showed a significant growth in coaching across all levels of employees. Respondents were mainly from larger businesses and the elements of coaching culture include external coaches, internal coaches, and the development of coaching skills for all line managers. Coaching has now moved beyond the board rooms. - Coaching is for under performers
Actually the same report showed a greater growth in coaching for high performers than for other segments of the workforce. - Coaching is expensive
There is an investment in all types of people and organisational capability development, including training, consultancy, action learning events, mentoring, etc. The main difference with coaching is the duration of the relationship. ActionCOACH is the largest business coaching operation in the world and many of our coach-client relationships last over 5 years. Estimates of return on investment range from 750% to 1500%. These do not tend to include the indirect cost of extra time investment by the coachee, although this is often offset by improved time management by our clients. ActionCOACH offers a guaranteed ROI within 6 months – when it comes down to it, the only two measures of coaching benefit are business results and the coach-client relationship. - Coaching is just about asking questions – the coachee should have all the answers
If a client has no knowledge of how Google works, no amount of questions are going to elicit an effective SEO solution. Great coaches have a tool set and access to specialist resources to recommend. The choice to adopt and implement however, should always remain with the client. Asking great questions is without doubt a necessary skill for coaching, but sometimes we need to suggest solutions. - Coaching is for sports not business
Isn’t it interesting that every top athlete and sports team has at least one coach, and there is a burgeoning trend towards more and more specialist coaches, for example the striker coach, goalie coach and penalty psychologist for the England Football team at the 2017 World Cup. If you accept that the key role of any coach in any context is to raise awareness of what needs to be done to achieve goals, ensure responsibility is taken, and support and challenge is supplied in appropriate measures then it is no wonder that there is a growing trend of more and more business coaches. That’s why the vision for ActionCOACH is a coach in every business. There’s a long way to go, but come on, a great vision has to be ambitious! Nothing fake about that…
