Coaching
The International Coach Federation (http://www.coachfederation.org) defines coaching as “…partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” This process is not counseling, mentoring, or consulting, but rather a client driven process of discovery and goal setting.
Coaching is a fairly new industry, emerging from established traditions and theories in education, adult learning styles, positive psychology, human development, and business leadership. The techniques used by coaches have helped improve professional, personal, spiritual, and artistic satisfaction of countless clients across the globe.
A coach may use a wide array of tools and assessments to help the client identify areas of dissatisfaction and goals and action plans around resolving the issues. The most important tools for a coach are powerful questioning, and active listening. It is important that a coach be able to hear what a client is really saying, through their words, tone, and body language.
Coaching is focused on the client. The client sets the agenda, determines the action plan, performs the work, and determines when the work is complete. A coach will use various tools to provide accountability and encouragement, but ultimately the client is the decision maker.
There is no set model for coaching. Many coaches have created their own models to aid their clients understanding of the coaching process. For illustration purposes, we will use the Process of Change model created by James O. Prochaska: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance.
The first process, Precontemplation, is where a client may be aware that he or she needs to make a change, but they are not aware of the change needed or how to go about it. The client is probably out of this stage before a coach is contacted.
The second process, Contemplation, is when the client recognizes the change needed and is preparing to make that change. It is most likely in this stage that a coach would be contacted.
The third process is Preparation. This is where the client is researching and learning about the change and creating an action plan. A coach is extremely valuable in this phase.
The fourth process is Action. The client is moving forward with their action plan, and a coach is providing valuable accountability and acknowledgment as they create change.
The fifth process is Maintenance. The new change and actions are becoming habit, and the client will feel successful here. Once the change becomes routine the coaching relationship is most likely completed.
Some sources cite a sixth process, Termination , where the change and new actions are habit and no longer require the client’s energy to be maintained.
Combining the Disciplines
It is easily seen that the process groups of project management and the processes outlined by Prochaska are very similar.
Contemplation, where an individual is considering a change, is a less formal approach to Initiating, where an organization is evaluating the need for a change and doing initial research. When our clients are in this phase we can encourage them to do the same evaluations that a business would do – consider if the change is really in line with their values, or vision statement, estimate time and financial resources and needs, and evaluate the impact on the rest of their lives.
In Preparation, our clients can benefit from the Planning processes developed in project management. The creation of a specific action plan with steps as detailed as possible is necessary to achieve stated goals. A clearly defined budget, for both time and money, is essential to avoid obstacles and roadblocks.
The Action process, like the Executing processes, is dependent on the completeness of the work done in the Preparation process. In some ways, this is the easy part for both the project manager and the coach, simply provide an accountability check for the client, and help them make any course corrections necessary. Project Management has a number of tools for evaluating possible causes for obstacles, the most useful for coaching being the Fishbone Diagram which considers all the possible causes of a particular effect. The Monitoring and Controlling processes of project management are far less important to coaching than they are to project management, providing a supervisory element that is inappropriate in most coaching relationships.
Coaching Is Not Project Management
Nothing is a perfect match, of course. The Precontemplation and Maintenance processes do not have equivalent processes in project management, although both have some echoes in the Closing process group. In the Closing process group there are activities to evaluate the success of a project, evaluate how well the various planning efforts went and consider any lessons learned in the course of the project. Many of these activities could be considered part of the Precontemplation process. It is unlikely that the coach would have much to do in a true Precontemplation process, however, once a client has attained a goal or milestone that they have set for themselves, some project management evaluation tools used in project closure could be very beneficial, such as a closure checklist, to evaluate how much of the goal was met (more or less!) or a lessons learned evaluation to determine what coaching tools may have worked well for the client, or if the client feels the need to continue the coaching relationship.
Of course, many of the specific processes of project management are inappropriate to consider in a coaching relationship. Rigid reporting and task structures, for example, interfere with the client focused nature of coaching.