What on earth is happening out there? When I attend
professional association meetings and am routinely
assaulted by "life coaches" trying to pitch me as a client,
I wonder if the professional world has gone slightly mad.
Now I know this does make me sound solidly middle-aged, but
I was doing executive coaching before it had a name. When
on earth did it morph into "life coaching" and take on this
strange, frothy form? Good grief. It's just embarrassing.
These days, you'll have to pierce through a lot of noise in
the system to get to a good coach whether of the career,
leadership, or personal variety. I know, because I am
always trolling for affiliates to join my team. For what
it's worth, here are the minimal criteria I think you need
to use. I use them myself when screening candidates.
Screen without any hesitation for ALL of the following:
1. Good personal chemistry and a sense of trust. Done
right, coaching of any variety will quickly put you in some
very vulnerable and occasionally uncomfortable places
(sorry!). You must be able to trust the coach both
personally and in terms of his or her professional
competence. If you can't let down your guard with the
coach, you won't grow. A "maybe" should always be a "no."
If you don't feel good chemistry and a gut-level sense of
trust in your first meeting, move on.
2. Substantial demonstrated results. Has the coach worked
with others at your level and in similar professions? What
goals did these clients have? Were these goals similar to
yours? If so, what results did they achieve? Some might
blab on about how results are hard to define. That's
nonsense. Don't waste your time with anyone who can't
demonstrate results with clients who are in some meaningful
way similar to you.
3. Availability. A coach should be available to you, and
not just during prescribed meeting times. Everyone learns
differently. Not everyone grows best through weekly
one-hour structured meetings. It's a relatively personal
relationship, but a business one between peers first and
foremost. As such, I expect coaches to take calls between
appointments and from time to time after the official
coaching process has been tied off. Some of my clients
don't even set appointments any more. They call me when
they need me. If a potential coach squirms at this idea,
it makes me wonder why he or she can't better manage time,
client expectations, and fee schedules.
4. Speed. Unless you drag your feet, you should be able to
experience some progress and personal improvement within
the first 1 - 2 weeks after the initial assessment is
complete, in some cases sooner. Coaching is not therapy,
and no coach should assume that it will take months for you
to show any improvement at all. The only thing that
improves with that attitude is the bank balance of the
coach.
5. Strategic focus on strengths, and not just because
Marcus Buckingham made it trendy and cool. We lead from
our strengths, and studies had proven this years before
Now, Discover Your Strengths hit the bookstores. A good
coach helps you figure out how to better leverage and
develop your strengths in order to make progress toward
your development goals. He or she will also help you
figure out how to manage or improve your weaker areas, but
your weaknesses shouldn't be where you spend all of your
coaching time, or even most of it. Now if I could only
convince some of my clients of that...
These items are completely discretionary, depending on your
interests and needs:
1. Age and Gender. If you want someone your own age (or
older or younger, for that matter), it's o.k. to ask for
what you want. Likewise, if you believe you would feel
significantly more comfortable working with one gender over
the other, seek out what you want, and curb any feelings of
guilt that you might be ageist or sexist. It's more
important that you be comfortable enough to be open than to
be politically correct. Your coach is an objective
outsider, not an employee. Clients always apologize
profusely when they call to ask for a male coach, but I
never take it personally.
2. Industry knowledge. As much as we all like to think
that our companies, roles, and industries are unique, the
truth is that the majority of leadership challenges are
similar across industries. Industry experience can help
some people feel more comfortable with their coaches from
the onset, but consider the counterargument -- the less
industry experience, the less likely you are to learn that
your coach is also developing your direct peer at your
direct competitor.
3. Broader consulting or management experience. In my own
experience, I have found that the best executive coaches
have a great deal of other business experience and do not
dedicate 100% of their time to working as coaches. This
gives a broader perspective, but that may or may not be
important in your particular situation, particularly if
your development goal is of a personal nature.
When it comes to career coaching, you're swimming in some
mighty strange waters these days. So strange that career
coaching deserves its own spotlight in this article. If
you seek coaching in anticipation of a big career move, you
could experience a strange irony: your so-called career
coach could do damage to your career.
Career coaching has become a popular field, along with its
sidekick, resume writing. There are no barriers to entry,
with the extreme variations in quality that you might
expect under those circumstances.
Gone are the days when you could count on your career coach
to have a graduate degree in career counseling and years of
experience. You absolutely must ask for and check
credentials of anyone claiming to be a career counselor.
The worst are the career coaching services that charge
thousands of dollars to provide executives and aspiring
executives with a "marketing director" to write your resume
and tell you how to pitch yourself. There's certainly some
quality to be found out there, but mostly I come across
expensive junk. For example, I recently blasted two of
those resumes to bits and it was a shocking but
much-appreciated experience for the clients, both of whom
had previously worked with me on projects. I charged a
whopping $0.00, a substantially better price than the
executive career coaching services had charged. These
"marketing directors" had absolutely no idea what
executives value, how they think, or what would make a
candidate attractive to them. The resumes were full of
false bravado and hot air and did not in any way reflect
the fine personalities and genuine executive potential of
the candidates.
Your resume is your calling card. It's your voice to
prospective colleagues, and it impacts your reputation
before you've even had a chance to make one in person.
Don't hand the responsibility for your voice to a
near-stranger. In this arena, I know of no way to take a
shortcut that doesn't shortchange. Do the hard work of
writing your own resume, and give it to trusted colleagues
and advisors for feedback. You can't travel light on the
front end of a job search, but you sure can save yourself
months of delays and wasted time later by doing the hard
work now.
If you've personally used an outstanding executive-level
resume writing service, I'd love to hear about it. For
now, though, my recommendation is this: resume writing
services may be helpful for individual contributor jobs or
for those who struggle a great deal with English - although
I have my doubts -- but proceed with extreme caution if the
hiring manager for the job you want has a title that starts
with Partner, Chief, or Vice-President.
----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Selby Long, Founder and Principal of Selby Group,
provides executive coaching and organizational development
services. Jennifer's knack is helping clients navigate the
leadership and organizational challenges triggered by
change and growth. She knows firsthand that great plans
often fail because companies don't take into account the
human factors that come into play when implementing them.
Visit Jennifer at: http://selbygroup.com
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