Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer

As I was doing research on the sales coaching industry, I discovered there is a great deal of garbage about sales coaching on the internet. People who are posing as sales experts are infiltrating minds with myths that are absolutely false!

And, that’s exactly why I’ve written this article… To make some waves in my industry by debunking 10 of these myths right now.

Sales Coaching Myth #1: “Successful sales professionals and sales leaders do not need coaches.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Professionals have coaches and amateurs do not. Sales coaching helps the best get better, the good to become great, and the struggling to breakthrough.

Sales Coaching Myth #2: “I can coach myself for free or talk to my peers or sales manager.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Yes, you can and should talk to these people, but you will not get the same results you get from working with a professional sales coach. Your managers, peers, and friends will all have their own agenda, not be professionally trained in coaching skills, will be biased, and will not provide the same accountability or partnership that you receive from an external coach.

Sales Coaching Myth #3: “I get all the sales information I can possibly use right now from sales books, sales articles, and my sales manager.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Information and knowledge is helpful only if you can translate it into action. Coaching will help translate your knowledge, ideas, goals, and intentions into reality.

Sales Coaching Myth #4: “A sales coach is the same as a sales mentor.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Mentoring is important, but it is typically informal, open-ended, and the mentor is not professionally trained to best support you. Sales coaching provides clearly-defined goals that are created with you, learning, actions, professional support, motivation, focus, and on-going accountability.

Sales Coaching Myth #5: “Coaching is like going to therapy.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Therapy deals with the past and present. Coaches work with the present and future.
A coach’s role is to turbo charge your results, maximize your productivity and effectiveness. Coaching is based on partnership, goals, plans, and the alliance designed by the coach and client together. In therapy, the “treatment plan” is largely designed by the therapist.

Sales Coaching Myth #6: “Coaching fosters an unhealthy dependency on others.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching helps clients to better self manage themselves, grow, and feel empowered, not dependent.

Sales Coaching Myth #7: “We do not need on-going sales coaching, we have a sales training program”
Sales Coaching Fact: Most sales training has a very short-term effect on performance and less than 15% of the information is retained and implemented. Sales Coaching provides on-going support, on-going results, growth, changes in behavior, attitude, implementation of new skills, new actions, accountability, improved productivity, and a customized approach. Bring a sales management coaching seminar to your organization to teach your sales management how to coach sales reps, or visit our sales coaching services to learn more about direct support for your sales team.

Sales Coaching Myth #8: “Coaching should only be a short-term solution.”
Sales Coaching Fact: A long-term partnership with the right sales coach will continue to add value for many years.

Sales Coaching Myth #9: “Sales Coaching focuses strictly on your sales career and professional life only.”
Sales Coaching Fact: The success in your professional life and personal life are all connected. The more balanced you are, the more energy you have, the more fulfillment you have in all areas, the more success you will experience. A good sales coach should be trained to support you holistically and ready to support you in all ways.

Sales Coaching Myth #10: “I need to be more organized or more successful before I hire a coach.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching will help you get more organized and achieve more success faster than you can ever create on your own.

If all of these myths were true, sales coaching would have failed a long time ago. The fact is, the industry is expanding rapidly as individuals and organizations are looking for new ways to create more sales success, faster.

Sales coaching from a top level sales coach or from a sales leader who has attended a sales coaching seminar has proven to deliver remarkable sales results. It is our hope that by debunking these myths, you can find the right sales coach for yourself, organization, or sales management coaching seminar.

“I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their full potential.” - Bob Nardelli, CEO, Home Depot

“Many of the world’s most admired corporations, from GE to Goldman Sachs, invest in coaching. Annual spending on coaching in the U.S. Is estimated at roughly $1 billion”. - Harvard Business Review

“Recent studies show business coaching and executive coaching to be the most effective means for achieving sustainable growth, change and development in the individual, group and organization.” – HR Monthly

“A major benefit of coaching is having someone who helps you see your strengths and weaknesses and uses them to accomplish your goals.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Using [coaching] instead of sending executives and managers to seminars two or three times a year can be more beneficial to ongoing career development, not to mention less expensive…” – PC Week

“Coaching takes a holistic view of the individual: work, corporate values, personal needs and career development are made to work in synergy, not against one another.” – British Journal of Administrative Management

“Coaching started in the business world to help stressed out executives cope with their professional and personal lives, and it still thrives in the corporate environment. But, increasingly, individuals are turning to coaches for help with every sort of problem.” – Boston Globe

“If you want to build your business and at the same time have a rewarding personal life, you call a coach.” – Denver Post

“A personal coach can help you by getting you to spell out what it is that you really want and then working with you to make the changes that actually enable you to get there.” – The Vancouver Province

“A study featured in Public Personnel Management Journal reports that managers (31) that underwent a managerial training program showed an increased productivity of 22.4%. However, a second group was provided coaching following the training process and their productivity increased by 88%. Research does demonstrate that one-on-one executive coaching is of value.” – F. Turner, Ph.D.

“Xerox Corporation carried out several studies on coaching. They determined that in the absence of follow-up coaching to their training classes,  87% of the skills change brought about by the program was lost.” – Business Wire

“In a 2004 survey by Right Management consultants, 86 percent of companies said they used coaching to sharpen skills of individuals who have been identified as future organizational leaders.” - Excerpt from “What An Executive Coach Can Do For You” – Harvard Business School.

“Business coaching is attracting America’s top CEOs because, put simply, business coaching works. In fact, when asked for a conservative estimate of monetary payoff from the coaching they got… managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.” - FORTUNE Magazine

“A coach may be the guardian angel you need to rev up your career.” - MONEY Magazine

“Across corporate America, coaching sessions at many companies have become as routine for executives as budget forecasts and quota meetings.” - INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY

“Coaches are not for the meek. They’re for people who value unambiguous feedback. All coaches have one thing in common. It’s that they are ruthlessly results-oriented.” - FAST COMPANY Magazine

“I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable.” - John Russell, Managing Director, Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

“.[A coach] is part advisor, part sounding board, part cheerleader, part manager and part strategist.” - THE BUSINESS JOURNAL

“[Executives should seek coaching] when they feel that a change in behavior-either for themselves or their team members-can make a significant difference in the long-term success of the organization.” - Marshall Goldsmith, Fast Company Columnist

“strong consideration needs to be given to using external coaching programs to enhance internal results.”

“The study also indicates that using internal coaches to coach managers or executives is not correlated with coaching success. It appears that using external coaches for those groups is more effective and perhaps confirms that the higher cost of using an external coach may be well worth it.”

New Global Study Tackles What Really Works When It Comes to Coaching Employees

Article Source: American Management Association

American Management Association and the Institute for Corporate Productivity Provide In-depth Look at Successful Coaching Practices

June 17, 2008

At one point, having a coach carried a stigma because it was more frequently directed at problem employees. Today, it’s more likely to be a sign that the employee is on the fast track and that the organization is serious about raising performance levels and developing talent. That’s according to an extensive global study commissioned by American Management Association (AMA) and conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity.

Coaching: A Global Study of Successful Practices is based on a survey that included responses from 1,030 managers and executives across a wide range of functional areas. The survey was conducted using AMA’s global network, including Canadian Management Centre in Toronto, Management Centre Europe in Brussels, and AMA’s partners and affiliates in Mexico City, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, and Istanbul and in many other cities around the world.

When asked about the groups that their organizations coach, 60% of respondents said the coaching involved high potential employees to a high or very high extent, and 42% said the same about executives. By contrast, 37% said they coach problem employees to such a high extent.

The study defined coaching as “a short- to medium-term relationship between a manager or senior leader and a consultant (internal or external) with the purpose of improving work performance” (Douglas & McCauley, 1999). And this study showed that coaching is indeed linked to improved performance, both at the individual and organizational levels.

“Executive coaching has become one of the tools to achieve effective leadership in today’s vastly changing corporate culture. As we increasingly learn how to measure executive coaching, we will find that we manage its role in leadership development better,” said Edward T. Reilly, president and CEO of American Management Association. “In going forward, what we have learned from this study will pave the way to a clearer understanding of the possibilities of executive coaching and practice. Change will need to come quickly given the vacancies in top management that are likely to occur due to retirement of the baby boomer generation,” Reilly said.

Respondents from organizations that use coaching more now than in the past are more likely to report two kinds of advantages. First, they are more likely to state that their organizations have higher levels of success in the area of coaching. Second, they are more likely to say that their organizations are performing well in the market, as determined by self-reports in the combined areas of revenue growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

“There’s been skepticism about executive coaching in recent years. In some cases, it’s been warranted. Coaching for coaching’s sake is probably worthless. But this study suggests that—when it’s done right—coaching can raise both individual and organizational performance,” said Jay Jamrog, senior vice president of research of the Institute for Corporate Productivity.

The study found that raising individual levels of performance is the number one reason for using coaching and that using coaching for this purpose is highly correlated with the success of coaching programs.

But there are many ways of designing and implementing coaching programs and not all are equally effective, the study found. For one, sending potential coaches to external development programs was more strongly correlated with overall coaching success than more internally focused methods. Yet, those external programs were less commonly used, suggesting that strong consideration needs to be given to using external coaching programs to enhance internal results.

The study also found that clarity of purpose counts. The more a company has a clear reason for using a coach, the more likely that its coaching process will be viewed as successful. Add measurement into the mix and you have a winning formula. The research indicates that the more frequently respondents reported using a measurement method to gauge coaching effectiveness, the more likely they were to report success in their coaching programs. The measurement methods that were most strongly linked to success are individual increases in productivity, impact on engagement, satisfaction with the program, and bottom-line results on the business.

Survey participants were asked to what extent their organizations used certain criteria to match coaches with coachees. By far, the most frequent basis for matching was the area of the coach’s expertise. Almost three-quarters of respondents (74%) said matching decisions were—either frequently or a great deal—based on finding a coach with the right expertise to address specific issues.

Matching the right expertise with the right client is associated with higher success rates.

The study also shows that it pays to interview coaches. Surprisingly, when asked about the criteria they used to select coaches, only 54% say they interview potential coaches frequently or a great deal. Yet, this basic step is more correlated with reported success of coaching than any other selection strategy. Both time and money are wasted when organizations fail to invest time up front matching clients with coaches.

Another coaching best practice is to know when to use an internal versus external coach. The research indicates that external coaches are hired most often to work with executives. External coaches are significantly less likely to work with managers or supervisors. On the other hand, internal coaches are almost equally likely to work with managers as they are supervisors. Internal coaches are significantly less likely to work with executives. Additionally, while internal coaches were assumed to coach employees at all levels of the organization (43%), very few respondents (5%) said that external coaches coach employees at all levels to any great extent.

The study also indicates that using internal coaches to coach managers or executives is not correlated with coaching success. It appears that using external coaches for those groups is more effective and perhaps confirms that the higher cost of using an external coach may be well worth it.

The study found that providing coaching to expatriates is associated with success and improved market performance. Yet, few companies report that they offer coaching to this segment of their employees, suggesting that there’s an opportunity for competitive advantage here.

The study also found that there’s room for improvement in various areas related to coaching. For example, only about a third of respondents (32%) considered peer coaching (in which each participant acts as both coach and coachee to a partner within the organization to improve growth and development) to be very effective or extremely effective. That finding indicates that most organizations have yet to determine how to reap maximum benefit from their peer-coaching programs.

In general, the researchers believe that coaching remains an untapped opportunity for many organizations. Only about half of responding North American companies said they have coaching programs in place, and the same was true for just 55% of respondents in the international sample. This suggests that there’s considerable room for coaching to expand and mature, becoming a critical variable in developing and retaining scarce talent in the future. Companies that learn to leverage coaching and build their programs on what works will have a significant competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

The complete report, Coaching: A Global Study of Successful Practices, is available at www.amanet.org/research

About AMA

American Management Association is a world leader in talent development, advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success. AMA’s approach to improving performance combines experiential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career journey. AMA supports the goals of individuals and organizations through a complete range of products and services, including seminars, Webcasts and podcasts, conferences, corporate and government solutions, business books and research. Organizations worldwide, including the majority of the Fortune 500, turn to AMA as their trusted partner in professional development and draw upon its experience to enhance skills, abilities and knowledge with noticeable results from day one.

Many people new to professional coaching wonder how the great majority of it is done on the phone.
In coaching the focus is all on you and here are some reasons why coaching on the telephone is so effective.

1. It helps you really focus hearing yourself.

2. Less distractions, no visual distractions, total concentration.

3. Telephone coaching is much more efficient. You and your coach will get into coaching right away.

4. Neither you nor the coach will be distracted by physical actions or appearances of each other.

5. No distractions from the surroundings where you would meet.

6. You want your coach to be your equal partner and the telephone is the great equalizer.

7. It is very difficult for either you or your coach to intentionally or accidentally become the superior person over the telephone.

8. The telephone allows the coaching experience to be focused entirely on you, as it is intended.

9. Telephone coaching requires much less preparation time, because neither you nor your coach will have to spend time traveling.

10. Telephone coaching helps increase success for finding the right coach, because you will be connected with your ideal coach anywhere in the world.

11. The odds that you and your ideal coach will be within reasonable travel distance are extremely low.

12. Telephone coaching is very convenient and relaxing. You will be able to conduct your coaching sessions from any location you wish. You will be able to select a quiet, private and relaxed place to be during coaching sessions.

13. Telephone coaching is very confidential. The private and secure place you choose to be during coaching sessions will assure complete confidentiality. No one will know who you are talking to or what you are talking about.

14. Telephone coaching can be very fun enjoyable. You will be able to be yourself in private and have more fun doing it. You will be able to enjoy the moment without concern for others watching or listening.

15. People are sometimes more open to share certain things over the phone versus in person.

Jeremy J. Ulmer, Professional Coach, Sales Coach, Sales Mentor, Business Coach, Life Coach

Source: The Coaches Training Institute website (articles)

Coach Training Impact on the Organization

Coach training impacts not only the person being trained, but also the employees in the company receiving coaching from that individual. While no study has measured the impact of internal coaching, the impact of external executive coaching would provide some directional evidence.

Research from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management shows that the impact of coaching-like training can last seven years. Manchester Inc. recently released the results of a study that quantifies the business impact of external executive coaching. The study included 100 executives, mostly from Fortune 1000 companies. Companies that provided coaching to their executives realized improvements in productivity, quality, organizational strength, customer service, and shareholder value. They received fewer customer complaints, and were more likely to retain executives who had been coached.

A company’s investment in providing coaching to its executives realized an average return on investment (ROI) of almost six times the cost of the coaching.

Among the benefits to companies that provided coaching to executives were improvements in:

• Productivity (reported by 53% of executives)
• Quality (48%)
• Organizational strength (48%)
• Customer service (39%)
• Reducing customer complaints (34%)
• Retaining executives who received coaching (32%)
• Cost reductions (23%)
• Bottom-line profitability (22%)

Among the benefits to executives who received coaching were improved:

• Working relationships with direct reports (reported by 77% of executives)
• Working relationships with immediate supervisors (71%)
• Teamwork (67%)
• Working relationships with peers (63%)
• Job satisfaction (61%)
• Conflict reduction (52%)
• Organizational commitment (44%)
• Working relationships with clients (37%)

Jeremy J. Ulmer, Professional Coach, Sales Coach, Executive Coach, Sales Mentor, Business Coach, Life Coach

1. Be open minded and ready to move forward.

2. Think about your goals, get clear on them.

3. Be open to maximizing your potential, both in sales, business, and personally, to be the best you can be.

4. Be willing and ready to make commitments to yourself.

5. Come to the coaching session with an agenda/topic in mind that would be most important and most helpful for you to cover.

6. Think about success that will be helpful to share/learn from, think about new challenges, strategies, new skills you want to learn, areas you feel stuck, breakthroughs you want to have.

7. Complete assignments that we create together, follow-through.

8. Have fun and enjoy the sessions!

9. Be willing to think deeper and explore ideas with no limits!

10. Do not forget that what you do in-between the coaching sessions is critically important.

 
Jeremy J. Ulmer, Professional Coach, Sales Coach, Sales Mentor, Business Coach, Life Coach, Executive Coach

In a study conducted by MetrixGlobal, LLC, the Return on Investment of coaching was calculated to exceed 500%.

A summary of that study can be seen below.

Case Study on the Return on Investment of Executive Coaching
Prepared by:
Merrill C. Anderson, Ph.D.
MetrixGlobal, LLC
November 2, 2001

This executive briefing was excerpted from the final report of the study conducted at a Fortune 500 firm and is intended for the private use of MetrixGlobal clients and professional associates.

Bottom Line: Coaching produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business. Including the financial benefits from employee retention boosted the overall ROI to 788%. The study provided powerful new insights into how to maximize the business impact from executive coaching.

Introduction

A Fortune 500 firm launched an innovative leadership development effort that was expected to accelerate the development of next generation leaders. The participants in this effort were drawn mostly from the ranks of middle managers and from many different business units and functional areas. Leadership development activities included group mentoring, individual assessments and development planning, a leadership workshop and work on strategic business projects.

Coaching was considered to be a key enabler for this approach to leadership development because the participants could work privately and individually with his or her coach to develop specific leadership competencies. The client organization engaged the Pyramid Resource Group to provide coaching to the leadership development participants. While participants spoke very highly of their experience with coaching it was decided to conduct a formal assessment of the effectiveness and business impact of coaching. It is intended that the results from this study be used to determine:

How did coaching add value to the business and what was the return on investment?

How could coaching be best leveraged in the future, especially if coaching was to be expanded to other business regions?

Data Collection Procedures

It was decided that the best way to isolate and capture the effects of coaching on the business was through a questionnaire. This questionnaire had two parts. Part one was completed electronically via email and examined clients initial reaction to coaching, what they learned, how they applied what they learned and captured their initial assessment of business impact. Part two was conducted over the telephone with each respondent and probed more deeply into business impact and the financial return on investment.

The target population for the survey was 43 leadership development participants. These participants were drawn from two regions: Eastern United States (37) and Mexico (6). These participants represented a cross section of the business and included those in sales, operations, technology, finance and marketing. All had been identified as potential leaders and executives. Thirty (30) of 43 leadership development participants returned their surveys for a 70% response rate.

Results

Coaching was a very effective developmental tool for the leadership development participants, producing financial and intangible benefits for the business. Coaching sessions were rich learning environments that enabled the learning to be applied to a variety of business situations. Decision-making, team performance and the motivation of others were enhanced. Many of these business applications contributed annualized financial benefits. Other applications created significant intangible benefits. Overall, the participants appreciated their coaching experiences and would highly recommend coaching to others.

Three-quarters (77%) of the 30 respondents indicated that coaching had significant or very significant impact on at least one of nine business measures. In-depth discussions were conducted over the telephone with each respondent to further explore the business impact of coaching. Sixty percent of the respondents were able to identify specific financial benefits that came as a result of their coaching.

Overall, productivity (60% favorable) and employee satisfaction (53%) were cited as the most significantly impacted by the coaching. Respondents defined productivity in this context as relating to their personal or to their work group productivity and half (50%) documented annualized financial benefits. Employee satisfaction was viewed both in terms of the respondents being personally more satisfied as a result of the coaching as well as the being able to increase the employee satisfaction of their team members. The respondents could not quantify this benefit in financial terms. Employee satisfaction, then, was a significant source of intangible benefits. Customer satisfaction (53%) was also a significant source of intangible benefits.

The next most frequently cited as being significantly impacted by coaching were work output (30%) and work quality (40%). Twenty percent of the respondents identified financial benefits as a result of increased work output. Many respondents reported improvements in work quality, however, they were not able to quantify these improvements in terms of dollar benefits. Work quality improvements were considered an intangible benefit of the coaching.

Program costs were tabulated for all 43 leadership development participants in determining the return on investment. Overall, the coaching process produced a 788% return on investment. Given the client company’s downsizing activities and the general state of the telecommunications industry, the client was reticent to fully factor in the financial benefits from retention.  Excluding the benefits from employee retention, a 529% return on investment was produced. While those clients who had customer or people responsibilities produced proportionally greater financial benefits, the realization of benefits to the business was fairly widespread throughout the group involved in this study.

Recommendations were made to maximize the business benefits from executive coaching:

Manage the entire coaching process to ensure consistency and quality. Though the content of individual coaching sessions should always be confidential, the coaching process itself needs to be managed to ensure that the coaching clients and the coaches are following the appropriate process and leveraging best practices.

Prepare clients in advance for coaching and don’t force coaching on anyone. Because coaching remains a relatively new development technique, people may not understand how the coaching process can help them become better business professionals. The sooner they understand the process, the sooner they will see results.

Offer clients the ability to select their coaches. Chemistry is important to build an effective coaching relationship.   Provide prospective coaching clients with information about the coaches including biographies, education, coaching credentials, functional expertise, industry experience and other background information.

Provide coaching strong organizational support. Those being coached should receive encouragement and support from their immediate managers. Also, coaching should be conducted in the context of other developmental efforts such as competency development, assessments, mentoring and leadership workshops.

Ensure coaches are grounded in the company’s business and culture.  Coaches are more effective when they can identify with and talk about the realities of their client’s environment.

Allow each coaching relationship to follow its own path. A major difference between coaching and training is that coaching allows the individual to determine what works best for him or her at a very personal level. Coaches need wide latitude to work with “the whole person” and help each client be more effective as a person as well as to be more effective as a business leader.

Build performance measurement into the coaching process. Evaluation of coaching should be designed into the process from the beginning to better set performance expectations and open up new learning opportunities for making coaching more effective while the coaching is being conducted. For example, coaching can be refocused to deal with issues or to ensure that business priorities will be met. In this way, the evaluation of coaching becomes more than just a measuring stick – it becomes a structured approach to deepen the business value of coaching.

About MetrixGlobal, LLC

MetrixGlobal LLC is a professional services firm specializing in performance measurement solutions that increase accountability for bottom-line business results. Whether it’s developing a scorecard for a corporate university, determining return on investment for a human resources program or conducting a business impact study on an organization change initiative, MetrixGlobal consultants partner with clients to create powerful measurement methodology.

Jacksonville, Fla.–(Business Wire)–Jan. 4, 2001–Manchester Inc., a supplier of customized executive coaching programs, has released the results of a study that quantifies the business impact of executive coaching. The study includes data on executive behavior change, organizational improvements achieved, and the return on investment (ROI) from customized, comprehensive executive coaching programs.

The study included 100 executives, mostly from Fortune 1000 companies, who received coaching.

Participating companies realized improvements in productivity, quality, organizational strength, customer service, and shareholder value. They received fewer customer complaints, and were more likely to retain executives who had been coached.

In addition, a company’s investment in providing coaching to its executives realized an average return on investment (ROI) of almost six times the cost of the coaching.

Half of the executives in the study held positions of vice president or higher (including division president, general manager, chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief information officer, partner, principal, and practice leader). Almost six out of 10 (57%) executives who received coaching were ages 40 to 49, and one-third earned $200,000 or more per year.

The coaching programs that executives participated in were a mix of both change-oriented coaching — which is aimed at changing certain behaviors or skills — and growth-oriented coaching — which is aimed at sharpening performance. The coaching programs typically lasted from six months to one year.

Among the results of the study:

The coaching programs delivered an average return on investment of 5.7 times the initial investment in a typical executive coaching assignment — or a return of more than $100,000 — according to executives who estimated the monetary value of the results achieved through coaching. 

Productivity (reported by 53% of executives)  

Quality (48%)  

Organizational strength (48%)  

Customer service (39%)  

Reducing customer complaints (34%)  

Retaining executives who received coaching (32%)  

Cost reductions (23%)  

Bottom-line profitability (22%)  

Other benefits to executives who received coaching were improved:

Working relationships with direct reports (reported by 77% of executives)  

Working relationships with immediate supervisors (71%)  

Teamwork (67%)  

Working relationships with peers (63%)  

Job satisfaction (61%)  

Conflict reduction (52%)  

Organizational commitment (44%)  

Working relationships with clients (37%)

Executive coaching programs focus on helping executives adjust to new organizational realities and not just survive, but thrive.

Differences

(The follow information is from The Coaches Training Institute manual)

Coaching: Views both parties as naturally creative, resourceful and whole. Does not diagnose or treat.
Therapy: More apt to view the clients from a medical model. Diagnoses and treats.

Coaching: Trained to work with functioning clients.
Therapy: Trained to work with major mental illness. (and also functioning clients)

Coaching: Coach and clients on a peer basis.
Therapy: Hierarchical difference between therapist and clients.

Coaching: Partnership, goals, plans, and the alliance designed by coach and client together.
Therapy: Treatment plan largely designed by therapist.

Coaching: Focus on evolving and manifesting potential. Moving forward. Action.
Therapy: Focus on healing and understanding.

Coaching: Emphasis on present and future.
Therapy: Empasis on past and present.

Coaching: Action and ‘being’ oriented.
Therapy: Insight oriented.

Coaching: Solution oriented.
Therapy: Problem oriented.

Coaching: Explore actions and behaviors that manifest high self-esteem.
Therapy: Explore genesis of behaviors that create low self-esteem.

Coaching: Regard and coach negative self-beliefs as ‘Saboteurs’ (temporary obstacles).
Therapy: Analyze and treat origins and historical roots of negative self-beliefs.

Coaching: Coach and client ask: “What’s next/What now?”
Therapy: Therapist and client ask: “Why and from where?”

Coaching: Discourages transference as inapporpriate.
Therapy: Encourages transference as a therapy tool.
(Definition of Transference)

Coaching: Accountability and ‘homework’ between sessions held as important.
Therapy: Accountability less commonly expected.

Coaching: Contact between sessions for accountability and “wins” expected.
Therapy: Contact between sessions for crisis only.

Coaching: Uses coaching skills.
Therapy: Uses therapy techniques.

It should be acknowledged that the difference between some types of therapy and coaching are not always clear-cut. Many therapists are ‘coach-like’ in their orientations and the two do share some common ground. Both disciplines can be working with functioning individuals who are facing difficult situations. Both professions focus on helping people make changes and accomplish goals that really matter to them.

Similarities

Coaching: Uses a “Discovery Session.”
Therapy: Uses a Diagnostic Interview/History.

Coaching: Uses many skills similar to therapy.
Therapy: Uses many techniques similar to coaching skills.

Coaching: Works with the client’s whole life.
Therapy: Works with the client’s whole life.

Coaching: May work with emotional material.
Therapy: Often works with emotional material.

I apply all of the above coaching methods into my my professional coaching practice. I am a professionally trained coach and a graduate from The Coaches Training Institute, an International Coach Federation Accredited Coach-Training Program. Training courses approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. CTI is the largest in-person coach training school in the world and was also the very first organization accredited by the International Coach Federation.

Without professional coaching training, the same results can not be expected.

Jeremy J. Ulmer, Professional Coach, Sales Coach, Executive Coach, Sales Mentor, Business Coach, Life Coach

Research by the Chartered Management Institute and Campaign for Learning – “Coaching at Work”. Results issued in a press release dated 16th May 2002:

Top 4 words associated with Coaching (from a given list) were:

Supportive (98%), Empowering (82%), Holistic (80%), Inspirational (77%)

Top 3 words associated with Training (from the same given list) were:

Prescriptive (71%), Rigid (70%), Intimidating (50%)

80% of executives say they think they would benefit from coaching at work and dismiss the suggestion that coaching is just another fad

Virtually all managers (96%) think coaching should be available to every employee, regardless of seniority

85% of managers say the main value of coaching is in enhancing team morale

80% of managers value coaching for generating responsibility on the part of the learner Research by The Lifecoaching Company – “Coaching Today Survey”. Research took place at the HRD Show in London in April 2002, respondents all HR professionals.

86% held very positive views on coaching

86% of respondents’ organizations have offered coaching at one time or another and coaching is CURRENTLY taking place in over one third (36%) of organizations

Respondents feel that coaching achieves the following desired outcomes:

• A positive impact on other aspects of participants’ lives, both at work and outside the workplace (96%)
• A feeling amongst participants of ownership of the issues and the outcomes (85%)
• Evidence of learning being put into practice (71%)
• Readily-quantifiable and positive results, often demonstrated on the company’s “bottom-line” over the long term (62%)