COACHING IN IRELAND. AN UPDATE.

The following article appeared in HRD Journal, official journal of the Irish Institute of Training & Development in the Summer of 2006

By Mike O’Halloran and Evelyn P. Gilmore, Joint Directors Coach Institute of Ireland.

In this article the authors will explore the development of Coaching in Ireland and discuss the benefits of Workplace Coaching.

Recent Developments.

There has been an explosion of interest in Coaching both here and abroad since the start of the decade. Much of this is down to changes in lifestyle and the increasing complexity of the modern workplace which creates greater demands on managers than before to communicate more effectively with peers and subordinates, as well as developing greater skilfulness in goal setting.

When Coaching first began to emerge into popular consciousness, it was known as Life coaching. More recently there has been a greater emphasis placed on the usefulness of Coaching for people in the workplace, and Business Coaching has emerged as a distinct discipline within the broader field. Coupled with the growing demand for business coaching a great number of practitioners have emerged, of varying degrees of ability, and this negative situation is compounded by the fact that the profession remains largely unregulated.

An attempt is being made to rectify this through the development of bodies such as the Life& Business Coaching Association which is developing standards for Coach Training and Coach Accreditation. However,  while many Coaches in Ireland affiliate to this body, just as many do not. More recently the London based Institute of Leadership and Management has endorsed the Coach training programme of Coach Institute of Ireland,(which the authors direct), and we hope this will encourage other training providers to seek endorsement and thereby raise the quality both of Coach Training and graduates of training programmes. It is certainly of benefit to the developing profession that endorsement/accreditation starts to come more from genuinely independent bodies which have their own reputation to defend. Coaching is too good, too useful when applied by a skilled practitioner, to be open to almost anyone who feels like putting a nameplate on their door.

7 Benefits of Coaching.

Depending on one’s level of seniority within an organisation there may be different benefits to engaging in a Coaching process. However, certain generic results should occur in all successful Coaching outcomes. We believe the following seven benefits are the most common:

1 Greater Self-awareness .

A coaching process which involves active listening by the Coach, eg, where the Coach is able to heighten the Client’s awareness of aspects of his or her behaviour which are self-limiting, will lead to the Client becoming more aware of how she may be sabotaging herself and give her the power to stop. For example, a client who is perfectionistic will take too long to complete projects and reports, or he may avoid assuming greater responsibility if this were going to lead to having to produce more reports.

2 Greater Self-belief.

Everyone holds a set of beliefs about themselves. Mostly these are just outside the Client’s awareness and a Coach can help them access these beliefs relatively easily. Beliefs such as ‘It’s good to try out new things,’ or ‘You don’t always have to get it right,’ allow a person to innovate. Beliefs such as ‘If you stick your head out you’ll get it chopped off,’ keep people overly safe and afraid to contribute. A skilled Coach helps a client identify his negative beliefs and then substitute them with more positive ones. One of our clients held the belief ‘I’m not good unless I’m always available to help people.’ Her office door was never shut and she was constantly interrupted. When she was able to name the underlying belief and see how crazy it was she started to shut the door and her entire experience of her working life changed.

3 Greater ability to set and achieve Goals.

There is a popular characterisation of Coaching that it is all about goal setting and attainment. This is both true and false. The measure of success of Coaching will be in whether the Client achieves his goals or not. However, an exploration process is often needed prior to the Client setting goals, as otherwise they may be unrealistic or too narrow. In addition, if a client is to set goals which stretch him, then he will almost certainly have to examine and change some of his negative self-beliefs and develop his self-awareness. It’s no use me moaning that everyone else seems to be getting on in the office except myself, and telling my Coach that my goal is promotion, if I have an underlying belief that it’s others who call all the shots and decide what happens to me in my life.

4  Greater Fulfillment in Work & Life.

Rather than ask a client ‘What is your goal in work?’ a Coach may sometimes ask the more powerful question ‘What would it take for you to be fulfilled in your work?’ This takes the client below the surface and gets her really thinking about where she wants to go. Often, the client won’t be able to answer this question immediately and will need to consider it more. We find that for Coaching to be effective the Client needs to address the issue of fulfilment in addition to short term goals. For example, one client wanted recognition. He also had a fear of loss exemplified in the belief ‘Hang on to what you have.’ When he was able to critically examine this inherited belief he developed a new product and became the manager of a new business unit set up to market it.

5 Greater Leadership Skills.

People who have been through an effective Coaching process are better leaders both in the Workplace and as ‘Leaders of Their Own Lives.’  They have greater self-awareness and so are better able to read their own emotions as well as those of colleagues. They will have an enhanced understanding of the need for communication, and often will have worked on developing their own communication skills as one of their goals whilst getting coaching themselves. Developing greater communication and leadership skills are two of the most commonly cited reasons for people in organisations hiring a Coach.

6 Greater Self-Confidence.

This is a key benefit of Coaching and flows directly from the client’s experience of setting and achieving goals. We all know the saying ‘Nothing succeeds like success.’ We have one important caveat to add to this. Success in one area, or goal, will lead to further success in similar areas, and then spread to other areas of the client’s life provided the client recognises the success as her own achievement which sprang from her own ability. Traditional psychological explanations of human behaviour were based on Pavlovian theory which suggested that people did things in order to achieve certain goals. More recently the emphasis has changed to ‘People will engage in certain behaviours provided they believe they have the ability to be successful in them.’ Coaching reinforces the client’s belief that she has the ability to do what it is she wants to do, and that her successes are due to her ability and perseverance, rather than luck or external factors.

In both authors experience a considerable number of clients overemphasise external factors in both their failures and successes.

7 Greater Balance & Enjoyment of Life and Work.

Coaching is Holistic and does address the Whole Person, even if a client sometimes hires a Coach for a specific reason to do with one area of their life such as career. For example, a workaholic client went through the following process during Coaching. Firstly, through exploration, he learned he didn’t trust that anything would get done properly if he didn’t either do it himself or oversee it being done. Secondly, he experimented with delegating more. Thirdly, he experimented with setting ground rules about how many times in the week he would get home at a reasonable time. Three major changes occurred for this client; Greater Trust, Better Leadership through Delegating, Better Home Life.

In conclusion, we believe that Coaching can be a significant enhancer of workplace and organisational life and performance and those managers of all levels can benefit from bringing the Coaching philosophy into their style of leadership.

About the Authors. Mike O’Halloran, MA.(Couns.), BA., H.Dip.Ed., European Cert.Psychotherapy., MIAHIP, MIACP, MLBCAI. Mike has worked as a History Teacher in Africa, is former Marketing Manager for Golden Pages, and is a trained Counsellor and Gestalt Psychotherapist. In 2000 he founded Coach Institute of Ireland which trains individuals in Business, Executive & Personal Coaching.

Evelyn P.Gilmore, MS.c(Workplace & Organisational Psychology)., BA (Hons.) Psychology, MIITD, MLBCAI. Evelyn is Joint Director of Coach Institute of Ireland. She has extensive experience of working at managerial level with world class manufacturing organisations, has conducted research on leadership and emotional intelligence and lectures in NUIG on Organisational Change.