CHAPTER FOUR
COACHING AND CONSULTATION REVISITED
Are They the Same?
Before addressing the question in this title, it is important to note that coaching in various forms reached epidemic proportions in the 1990s and continues to flourish. I rarely run into a trainer or consultant nowadays who does not claim that most of his or her business is coaching, most typically “executive coaching.” As this trend continues, if coaching becomes a mainstream activity of all kinds of helpers, it becomes all the more important to understand the socio-psychological dynamics of this complex process. In my forty-five or so years of consulting with various kinds of organizations, I have often found myself in a coaching role, sometimes with the explicit request to play that role, sometimes inadvertently or by default. I never thought of coaching as such a discrete activity with such unique dynamics, but it is now time to confront and describe those dynamics.
“Coaching” as an option arises under one of two conditions: (1) When a client defines the situation as one in which he or she wants individual help to work on a personal issue, in which case the resulting process can be likened to counseling or therapy, or (2) When a manager asks someone to take on a coaching role to work with an individual to improve job performance or to overcome some developmental deficiencies, in which case the resulting process can be likened to indoctrination or coercive persuasion.1 Both of these situations can also arise with groups or larger organizational units, as when a process consultant helps a group to solve some problem defined by the group, or when a consultant is asked to “help” a group to learn some new processes or adopt some new values that the larger organization has imposed. As a consultant I have found myself working simultaneously with several members of the client system in an individual counseling role while, at the same time, working with broader group and organizational issues that would not be described as coaching per se but that involve elements of indoctrination along with elements of education. From this point of view the consultant’s job is at times much broader than the coach’s in that the client system is defined as more than the sum of the individual coaching projects that members may engage in.2
Although coaching is often defined as working with an individual based on the athletic analogy, one can imagine coaching a group, or an organizational unit, or perhaps even a whole organization. In sports, the coach is usually in a direct supervisory role, whereas in organizational coaching the coach is typically a staff member or outsider. If the CEO is being coached on how to improve her relationship to the board or on matters of company strategy, one could argue that any behavior change on her part influences the entire organization. But if a middle manager is being coached on how to make himself more effective and promotable, the connection to organizational effectiveness is more remote. What this suggests is that the degree of overlap between coaching and consulting depends on (1) who initiated the request for coaching, (2) who is being coached, (3) in what role he is being coached, and (4) on what issues he is being coached.
Before analyzing each of these issues, let us examine the interpersonal process that is involved in what we call “coaching.” To begin, what is the essential difference between indoctrination, training, education, and coaching? All of these processes involve an agent of the society, occupation, or organization trying to change (improve?) the behavior of a target person. What is implied in coaching that is different from the other three types of interaction is (1) that the coach does not necessarily have in mind a predetermined direction or outcome, (2) that the coach does not have arbitrary power over the target person, and (3) that the target person volunteers and is motivated to learn. If the organization “imposes” a coach and a predetermined direction of learning, then by definition we are dealing with indoctrination, not coaching. It is only coaching if the coach asks the client in what areas he or she wants to improve and works strictly to help the client to help him- or herself. In other words, coaching as it is broadly used nowadays is an intrinsically ambiguous process in terms of its goals. An organization can ask a coach to help a manager perform better against certain company standards, but in that process the coach may find that the person is a real misfit and might work with the person to help him or her leave the organization (even though the company has footed the bill). As we will see, this distinction between working for the organization and working for the individual mirrors closely the distinction I have made between expert consulting and process consulting, and the distinction between indoctrination and therapy.
In my previous analyses of consulting I have emphasized the need to distinguish three fundamentally different roles that the consultant can play in any client relationship: (1) the provider of expert information, (2) the diagnostician and prescriber of remedies, and (3) the process consultant whose focus is on helping the client to help herself.3 In all of these roles, and that would include coaching, the overarching goal is to be helpful to the immediate client, and to be mindful of the impact of interventions on the larger client system and the community.
I have argued that the consultant must move among these roles constantly, but she must always begin in the process mode in order to find out in what way her expertise or diagnostic insight and prescription might be helpful. To gain this insight she has to build up enough of a “helping relationship” to stimulate the client to reveal what is really the problem and what kind of help is really needed. And we know from both therapeutic and consulting experience that clients are notoriously reluctant to reveal what is really bothering them until they have a feeling that the consultant is really trying to help.
In the case of organizational consulting, a further complication is that the consultant will never understand the culture of the client system well enough to make accurate diagnoses or provide workable prescriptions.4 In organizational consulting, therefore, the consultant and client must become a team that jointly owns the consequences of all diagnostic and remedial interventions, even though it must remain clear that it is the client who owns the problem and is ultimately responsible for the solution. The consultant enters into what amounts to a therapeutic relationship with the client system to facilitate in any way possible the improvement of the situation as the client defines it.
Clearly, coaching can then be thought of as one kind of intervention that may be helpful to clients under certain circumstances. In that context I think of coaching as being a set of behaviors on the part of the coach (consultant) that helps the client to develop a new way of seeing, feeling about, and behaving in situations that are defined by the client as problematic. And in that setting, the same issue surfaces of when the coach should be an expert who simply shows the client how to do it, a diagnostician and prescriber who figures out why the client is having a given problem and suggest remedies of various sorts, or a process oriented “therapist” who helps the client to gain insight into his situation and to figure out for himself how to improve his own behavior. The balance and timing of these roles would, of course, depend on whether the coaching was requested by the client or suggested by others in the organization, what organizational role the client is in, and the nature of the problem that the client reveals.
Who Initiates the Coaching Relationship?
Coaching relationships are initiated for a variety of reasons, but who is the initiator? This can vary. Sometimes the boss will initiate the relationship, and sometimes the individual will initiate it. These two scenarios play out differently.
Initiated by the “Boss”
One major source of initiation is when someone higher in an organization “suggests” that someone lower get some coaching to overcome some deficiency that is perceived to limit the person’s effectiveness or career potential. A common version of this is to mandate that a person’s performance appraisal is to be done by the 360-degree method, where feedback is collected from superiors, peers, and subordinates. It is then assumed that an outside coach is needed to go over the data with the person being assessed, because the discussion would be too threatening if conducted by the boss. If the “problem” is primarily defined by the boss, the issue then arises of whether or not the coach is expected to report back to the boss on progress or whether the coaching remains an entirely private matter between coach and client.5
If the coach is expected to report back, we are dealing with a situation that may be called “coaching,” but is really training or indoctrination. In that case, the “coach” is basically working for the boss, even though the coach may claim to be trying to help the individual. In such a situation, the coach should probably function as expert, diagnostician, and prescriber, because the desired behavioral outcome is defined by someone other than the client being coached. The client’s basic choice is whether or not to enter the relationship at all and whether or not to make an effort to learn the new behavior and way of seeing things. If the new behavior and way of seeing things happen to fit the client’s own developmental potentials, the outcome could be beneficial for both the organization and the individual. All too often, however, what the client is expected to learn does not fit his or her personality, so either failure or short-run adaptations without long-run changes are the result. From a consulting point of view this whole scenario is risky, because there are too many ways it can fail—the boss not seeing the initial situation accurately, the boss not communicating the need clearly or the consultant not understanding what is really wanted, the individual not willing or able to be “trained,” or the individual making a surface adaptation without any real change.
However, there is an alternative way that the boss can initiate the process that is more likely to be successful. The boss can outline to the coach (consultant) what the problem is as she sees it, but not expect to have reports back and to license the coach to be therapeutic if that seems appropriate. In other words, in this scenario, the boss should be prepared for the coaching to result in an outcome that might not be organizationally expected but might be good for the individual client’s development. The coaching may even lead the individual client to recognize a mismatch and subsequently to leave the organization. If that is an acceptable outcome from the point of view of the boss, then the coach can try to focus entirely on helping the individual to help herself and to make truly developmental interventions. In that instance, the boss is in effect playing a consulting role as well in trying to be helpful to the individual. As we will see below, this issue interacts with that of what the coaching is about—whether the boss wants to help the individual develop in a broad sense or wants the individual to learn a particular point of view or set of competencies that are organizationally relevant, for example, to learn how to use a new computerized budgeting system.
Initiated by the Individual
Any time a member of an organization goes to an outsider or staff insider for some kind of help there is the potential in the relationship for coaching or individual counseling/therapy. Helping the individual becomes the primary agenda. In that situation, the outcome is not prescribed by the organization in any way and the issues may have very little to do with organizational problems. This kind of coaching/consulting then merges with what any of us face when someone seeks our help—do we tell them what to do, do we privately diagnose the situation and come up with prescriptions, or do we engage in a period of building the relationship in order to find out how best to be helpful?6 This issue occurs within the family all the time, between friends, between parents and children, teachers and students and is, therefore, a generic human process that needs to be learned by all of us. The ability to do this kind of individual coaching/consulting should be part of any adult’s repertory of skills. The basic principle that governs this process is to establish a relationship first through process consultation and only when the client’s needs are clear shift to an expert or diagnostic role.
How the coaching/consulting relationship evolves will depend on the rank and organizational position of the person being coached. Sociologically, the higher a person’s status, the more sacred he or she is as a social object, and the more care the person must take in maintaining appearances. If coaching the CEO or a high-ranking executive, the coach must be able to be in a peer or even superior relationship or the client may simply not listen or may even be offended by the idea of engaging in the relationship. Given the potential sensitivities of high-ranking executives, it becomes especially important for the coaching to begin in the process mode to ensure that a helping relationship is built before any guidance, advice, or prescriptions are offered.
If the coach is clearly superior in rank or status, a different dynamic will be active—the client may actively seek and expect expert advice. The risk in giving it is that it will not fit the personality or total situation of the client and will therefore be ignored or unconsciously subverted. The subordinate cannot really say to the higher ranking or higher status coach that she does not understand or agree with what is offered, or that she has already tried that and it did not work, and so on. So even though the temptation to become the instant expert coach is tremendous in this situation, it must be sternly resisted. The coach, to be effective, must engage in open-ended inquiry to establish an equilibrated helping relationship before he or she can determine what kind of help is needed.
If the coach is a status peer, there still remains the problem that the client may feel “one down” for having a problem, for having been singled out for coaching. In Western cultures it is not OK to need help; it implies some lack, some inability to help oneself, to solve one’s own problems. Here too the helper coach must build the relationship first, especially if the coaching involves fairly face-threatening personal issues.
In What Role Is the Client Being Coached?
The key distinction here is whether the client is dealing with a problem that is personal or is seeking help in his or her role as an executive. A personal issue might be how to learn some new skills, such as becoming computer competent or developing a more strategic outlook in order to be promotable to a higher level; an organizational issue might be how to learn to manage the executive team better in order to improve the organization’s strategy process, how to learn to think more like a marketer, because the future of the organization lies in better marketing, or how to learn the new computerized budgeting and accounting system on which the future of the organization depends.
If the person is in an individual development role, the same ideas apply as those mentioned above. A helping relationship must be built first, and then the coaching can proceed as appropriate. If the person is in an organizational role, the issue is more complex because the client is now the organization, not just the individual being coached. Suppose, for example, that the CEO wants to be coached on how to get more out of his team, how to get them to compete more for his job, and how to drive their own subordinates harder. How does the coach/consultant decide whether this is an appropriate goal, given that it might hurt others lower down in the organization? How does the coach/consultant deal with the situation if she feels that this would be the wrong strategy for the organization to pursue? If the coach is outside the organization, he can walk away from such conflicts, but if he is part of an internal staff or HR organization he cannot. It is at points such as these that coaching and consulting part ways. As a coach the person might have to go along with what the client wants and become a trainer/indoctrinator; as a consultant, even as an internal consultant, he must consider the needs of the larger client system and, if necessary, challenge the CEO’s goals.
One might suppose that a similar issue can come up with personal coaching in that the coach might disagree with the learning goals that the client articulates. The goals can then be negotiated between client and coach. However, if those goals have been set by others in the organization, then the coach is bound to them even if the client is not. That is again the indoctrination or “coercive persuasion” scenario in which many coaches de facto find themselves. As a consultant, the helper can “push back,” but as a coach the implication is that the organization decides what is needed and the coach’s job is to help individuals get there.
What Is the Actual Goal of the Coaching?
Coaching as training or indoctrination covers everything from helping people to learn a new computer system to helping people broaden their whole outlook on what the company is doing. Our most familiar version is, of course, athletics, where the coach helps a person to improve his golf or tennis stroke by observing, diagnosing, providing feedback, demonstrating, and setting training routines and targets. The goal is chosen by the client, but the coach functions as an expert and trainer, often being quite coercive in that process. Such coaching can also involve broader goals, as in the previously cited case of having a coach go over the results of a 360-degree feedback process with the client who has been assessed. In a case that Flaherty cites throughout his book, the goal is how to broaden an executive’s outlook so that he can become promotable to a higher level in his company.7
My own assumption is that, for any of these goals, from the most concrete skill development to the most abstract reshaping of basic mental models, one will not succeed without establishing a helping relationship first. This is relatively obvious in the more abstract personal arenas, but it is often overlooked in skill development coaching. I notice, especially in coaching people on the use of computers, that the coach quickly falls into the expert or doctor mode and “instructs” without any sensitivity to the problems the learner is experiencing. No such coach has ever asked me what my problems were in dealing with the computer or what my learning style is. We jump in with instructions and I find myself struggling, resisting, and not learning.
On the organizational side, this distinction has an important counterpart. Are we talking about coaching on mission, strategy, and goals, or are we talking about coaching on the means, measurement, and remedial processes the organization uses to accomplish its goals?8 I think coaches are much more sensitive to the needs of the client in the mission and goals area because those are more abstract. When it comes to coaching on the means and processes, coaches quickly become “trainers” and forget to build helping relationships. This tendency to become experts may account for the poor implementation of many programs, such as new computer systems, reengineering, quality circles, total quality programs, and 360-degree feedback programs. If the learners are not involved in designing their own learning and if they do not have a relationship with the coach in which they are comfortable, they will not learn to the level that the organization expects and needs. To avoid this, coaches must become skilled process consultants as well.
Coaching is a subset of consultation. If coaching is to be successful, the coach must be able, like a consultant, to create a helping relationship with his or her client. To create such a helping relationship, it is necessary to start in a process mode, which involves the learner/client, which identifies what the real problems are that need to be worked on, and which builds a team where both the coach and the client take responsibility for outcomes. How the coaching relationship develops then varies according to who initiated the process, the status differential between coach and client, whether the client is working on an individual or organization problem, and whether the content of the coaching concerns organizational mission and goals or organizational process and means. In each of these situations, the coach should have the ability to move easily between the roles of process consultant, content expert, and diagnostician/prescriber. The ultimate skill of the coach, then, is to assess the moment-to-moment reality that will enable him or her to be in the appropriate role.
Paradoxically, indoctrination and coercive persuasion do not work when the target person or group does not have a relationship with the coach, but can work very well if such a relationship has been created by involving the learner at least in the process of learning. Whether or not one wants to call this process “coaching” depends on how broadly one defines coaching. What one calls it matters less, however, than understanding the psychological and social dimensions of the different kinds of relationships that can exist between a coach and a client.
Edgar H. Schein is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and continues at the Sloan School part-time as a senior lecturer. He is also the founding editor of “Reflections,” the Journal of the Society for Organizational Learning, which is devoted to connecting academics, consultants, and practitioners around the issues of knowledge creation, dissemination, and utilization.
Professor Schein has been a prolific researcher, writer, teacher, and consultant. Besides his numerous articles in professional journals, he has authored fourteen books, including Organizational Psychology, Career Dynamics, Organizational Culture and Leadership, and Process Consultation Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Process Consultation Revisited, and The Corporate Culture Survival Guide. He wrote a cultural analysis of the Singapore Economic Development Board entitled Strategic Pragmatism and has published an extended case analysis of the rise and fall of Digital Equipment Corporation entitled DEC Is Dead; Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation. He was coeditor with the late Richard Beckhard of the Addison-Wesley Series on Organization Development, which has published over thirty titles since its inception in 1969.
Professor Schein’s consultation focuses on organizational culture, organization development, process consultation, and career dynamics, and among his past and current clients are major corporations both in the United States and overseas.
Notes
1. E. H. Schein, Process Consultation: Its Role in Organization Development (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969).
E. H. Schein, “Empowerment, Coercive Persuasion and Organizational Learning: Do They Connect?” The Learning Organization 6, no. 4 (1999): 163–172.
2. Schein, Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley-Longman, 1999).
3. Schein, Process Consultation.
E. H. Schein, Process Consultation, Vol. II: Lessons for Managers and Consultants (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987).
E. H. Schein, Process Consultation, Vol. I: Its Role in Organization Development, 2nd ed. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988).
Schein, Process Consultation Revisited.
4. E. H. Schein, The Corporate Culture Survival Guide (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999).
E. H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004).
5. J. Flaherty, Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999).
6. Schein, Process Consultation Revisited.
7. Flaherty, Coaching.
8. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership.