By John Raymond, Head of Coaching, IECL
What is Organisational Coaching?
There is still much confusion between different fields of coaching including organisational, life and business coaching. If one looks at the definitions, we see,
- Coaching itself is a goal-oriented, solution-focused, question-based conversation to support the development of the trainee and achievement of their goals.
- Organisational coaching is any coaching that goes on within the context of organisations—often around leadership.
- Life coaching is where you work with an individual on his or her personal goals—health, fitness, financial, relationship, etc.
- Business coaching focuses on business building and is a term often used by consultants who will advise a business owner on how to build a successful business—it is important to note that coaches do not give advice.
How has Organisational Coaching evolved?
Organisational coaching has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade in many areas—yet in other ways it is still quite stuck. For example, we have a resource in the Guideline for Coaching in Organisations (published 2011)—yet the uptake of this document is quite low. I often meet people who have responsibility for coaching within organisations and are still wondering how to engage, manage and evaluate effective coaching when the answers have been around for year. I think organisational coaching has evolved but the purchasers of coaching are often still yet to catch up with the progress that has been made.
One of the advancements that has been made is the amount of research and evidence supporting the efficacy of coaching. This is both exciting and overwhelming but true professional practice needs to have a rigorous evidence-base underpinning it to have the gravitas it deserves. Practitioners and academics across the industry are increasingly working towards this—as evidenced by increasing numbers of post-graduate qualifications available in the coaching field—for example, IECL’s Graduate Diploma in Organisational Coaching and Leadership.
I think one of the most significant developments in organisational coaching is how coaching is becoming a leadership competency. This means that many leaders now are bringing a coaching approach to their leadership style which has benefits such as activating creativity and innovation, improving engagement, developing resilience and improving wellbeing.
What is the coaching uptake like in the Asia-Pacific Region?
It has been great to see organisational coaching grow across APAC in recent years. From my perspective as a facilitator and coach in the region, the perception of coaching and its maturity varies greatly between countries and cultures. For example, Singapore is quite advanced which was supported by the Singapore government seeking to build a coaching culture across the Singapore Public Service. Hong Kong is not far behind Singapore in maturity as it has always had a Western influence given its history and being a powerful hub for global companies. China is a very interesting case study for the uptake of coaching—although coaching is relatively new, the uptake has been strong. I find Chinese business people ambitious, innovative and entrepreneurial so when a new ‘technology’—i.e. coaching, comes along that is seen to add a competitive edge, they are quick to embrace it. Other countries across Asia have varying levels of uptake. One common theme however is that a coaching approach is often led by the multinationals where coaching is part of the culture in their country of origin—for example, USA, UK, European countries, Australia etc.
What does the Future of Coaching look like?
So where to from here? I believe one of the most exciting things about coaching is that there are always new frontiers opening up in the arena. For example, a colleague of mine works in the area of coaching for teenagers. I have taught people that are using coaching to have better conversations as financial planners, or recovering alcoholics.
Next year I celebrate 20 years as a coach and continue in this field because I see the power of what coaching can do. Every coaching conversation I have I believe is contributing to a vision of humanity flourishing. I cannot describe how much of a privilege it is to be part of this movement.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
