Space for network members to start discussions, share ideas and resources, and/or raise questions.
Some time ago I read an article by Robert Witherspoon where he outline 4 roles in executive coaching that I've found useful over the years, they include: Coaching for Skills, Coaching for High-Performance, Coaching for Development and Coaching for an Executive's Agenda. For those interested, he later wrote a chapter, "STARTING SMART: Clarifying Coaching Goals and Roles" in the edited book by M. Goldsmith et al. entitled Coaching for Leadership.
A topic that comes up often in my work with executives is their desire to raise the performance of their employees and organizations through coaching, a few years back I decided to write an article to captures what I've learned about this form of coaching with my executive clients: High-Impact Performance Coaching Applying the four-Cs framework to define, monitor and generate results!
I'd be interested in hearing from others: (1) your reactions to the ideas in the piece and (2) what other things you have found useful in supporting clients in the area of performance coaching.
I've attached the article here with the permission of Choice Magazine, www.choice-online.com
Comments
Hi Yvonne,
I made a mistake and deleted your reply to this Blog, could you repost? Sorry, I'm still learning the system. Yet, you can see my reply below, yet it will not make sense to others without your reply.
Done.
Hi Yvonne,
The distinction made in the article between performance coaching and performance counseling is informed by research from the performance management literature vs. the coach specific literature. It has to do with a continuum of a manager's role ranging from a focus on the build up of employee knowledge, skills and other capabilities with the aim of enhancing performance on the one end; to a manager's dual role of being able to recognize, communicate and make clear expected changes when either an employee's behavior and/or performance is not aligned with organizational expectations.
Organizational research focused on management systems show that a leader's ability to both understand the distinctions between coaching and counseling, and importantly enact the related leadership set of responses is key to leadership and organizational effectiveness. The intent of this article was to bring an organizational performance management perspective to professional coaches supporting organizational leaders with this work.
Have you had the opportunity to explore any of the organizational performance management research and make connections to your coaching practice? I have a number of organizational clients in the US who are very interested in this work.
Original question: Hi Terry, Thank you for sharing your article. It was very interesting and it provided some further insights to CCCP. Many thoughts arose reading the article and one that I am curious to ask more is regarding how you've chosen to different between performance counselling and performance coaching - the former being a form of control whilst the later is about growth. In my opinion, I think a rather narrow definition is being used which could lead to an oversimplification that represents the interaction between the employees, managers, the organisation itself and social expectations. Hence, I'm curious to learn more about how you define 'control' and its connection with the article. Thanks Yvonne
Thanks for the clarification. Organisational performance management reminds me of work carried out by Oshry, as well as the paradoxical role of a manager/leader in modern society.
Yvonne, I certainly relate to your observation about the often, paradoxical role of managing and leading in organizations. When you are operating at lower levels, my experience suggest the issue is not as pronounced, yet as you move to the Director level and above things get interesting. I find the book, Leadership Pipeline, useful in thinking about such role complexity.
Sorry for asking you to post the comment, again, I made a mistake and deleted it when trying to reply. Thanks for recreating it! I look forward to you starting some Blogs on topics of interest for you!