Drop the coach, it’s time for a neo-coach!

The ‘confessor-coach’, aimed at the insecure executive, is a thing of the past. Welcome to the ‘neo-coach’, a kind of dynamo who uses action as a training tool, committed to the client’s decision-making processes over the long term. A new kind of coaching aimed at leaders under increasing pressure from the events taking place around them. A sort of special envoy who both accompanies and inspires. A turbo effect rather than a sticking plaster.

Published for www.hbrfrance.fr- The Harvard Business Review France

Have coaches become retro? For a long time, coaches have been despised (‘failed’ executives who have made the transition, in a happy-go-lucky manner, to become coaches for ex-colleagues in difficulty… ‘), often criticized, (‘if they only knew how to steer clear of introspection, and not overstep the professional line with their clients, thereby venturing into personal terrain, since they are not trained for that’), and are still the object of finger pointing (‘they think they’re super therapists!’). And yet coaches have proved themselves by developing their profession, structuring it with certifications and training and setting up recognized professional bodies. Today, nobody is surprised to see them on the sidelines of management board meetings.

But through wanting to be too much a part of the landscape (their involvement, always discreet, still remains subject to the taboo comparison with psychoanalysis), whilst at the same time trying to avoid mixing advice and business, many of them find themselves supporting their charges to reach sky high goals, ever more ambitious, where strategies can dissolve in an instant. The 1,500 coaches identified in France, of which only one third adhere to an official code of practice, have learnt to diversify their offering (development and resolution coaching, internal or team coaching, for example) without nonetheless radically changing their original positioning, which is based around:

– regular coaching sessions (6 to 10 sessions on average, over a total duration rarely exceeding six months),

– the refusal to be confused with a ‘consultant’, from whom one expects solutions, contrary to the coach, who brings the support necessary to the coachee so that he or she can find their own response to a problem

– a process which is first of all based on perception, but then becomes prospective (examining the true nature of the coachee’s character, then identifying untapped potential).

However, the acceleration of time combined with the globalization of space is resulting in needs which diverge strongly from these static approaches. It is here that the ‘neo coach’ has a role to play. What are the neo-coach’s assets? They can be summarized in seven points:

1. The neo-coach provides an external vision. Submerged by complexity and continuous ‘urgent’ situations, decision-makers cease to venture outside their work environment, trapped as they are inside the complex workings of their company. Time and space for inspiration are rare luxuries. The ‘neo-coach’ needs to bring back pertinent pieces of evidence from the outside world on current trends, signals, rumors.
2. The coach helps to channel internal information upwards. T A CEO will in this way send out the neo-coach to investigate a given subsidiary or department in view of a possible visit there.
3. He or she meets the stakeholders of the company on behalf of the decision-maker client, in an official capacity. At a time when CSR and sustainable development are commonplace, how can one conceive a project or define a strategy without taking the pulse of one’s stakeholders before launching anything? The porous nature of organizations is one of the more insidious consequences of the digital age and it obliges a decision-maker to become omnipresent in his or her territory, with what resemble ‘sensors’ able to gather opinion on the ground.
4. The neo-coach supports original ideas, continuously. Driven by the need to innovate, of course. A multi-competitive environment (one where there is total competition, all sectors and countries combined) drives a leader to surround him or herself with colleagues on competitive watch day and night, on the lookout for a target to purchase, a market segment to take on, a new distribution channel or an emerging mode of consumption. This perpetual strategic insomnia makes the ‘neo coach’ a key part of a leader’s armory. Which explain the new types of contract emerging today (monthly, annual, automatically renewable) between the neo-coach and his client.
5. He or she reinforces the managerial and organizational, and in this way the leadership of the manager. The ‘neo-coach’ will also ensure a good balance between client personality and the governance system the client is implementing, in the context of the combined pressure of Big Data and client experience, the new emerging forms of management (less authoritarian, more collaborative), strategic agility and the company’s structure.
6. The coach can imagine a number of future outcomes. The ‘neo-coach’ knows how to take risks. Player? Diviner? No, more a surveyor of anomalies and the catalyst for unexpected discoveries.
7. He or she is the source of new value. Beyond present or future action, the challenge for the neo-coach, which also applies to the old style coach, consists in improving client behaviors to make them a better leader. But what would be the impact of such improvement if it weren’t based on a coherent belief system? Faced with insoluble questions, the ever more common recourse to intuition confirms this need. How much weight and how sustainable would an intuitive decision be if it was not based on a set of strong individual values, nourished by solid points of reference? Nothing stops a neo-coach from arriving in the office of a client, with, tucked under his arm, a work by Lao-Tseu, a fable by La Fontaine, a reproduction of a Malevitch painting, a DVD of an Akiro Kurozawa film, a speech from Titus-Livy or perhaps a Chinese thriller to open up their client’s mind to consider his or her dilemnas with a new mindset.

A new kind of special reporter, the ‘neo-coach’ is single-handedly able to combine depth of field, perspective and commitment to action with the investigation of alternative sources of information and unlikely innovation hotspots. A key link in the chain, the neo-coach is dedicated to the success of a man or woman, and their immediate working environment.

Nicolas Rousseaux

http://www.hbrfrance.fr/chroniques-experts/2015/06/7208-fini-le-coaching-place-au-neo-coaching/

Photo © Nicolas Rousseaux