Publications Lecture

Possibilities and limits of coaching

Lecture by Dipl.-Psych. Eberhard Hauser, hauserconsulting Augsburg

“In the last two years, the word ‘Coaching’ has cropped up repeatedly in connection with the intensive advising or individual development of personnel within companies.(…) The search for literature on this subject was a letdown: apart from a few small articles in newspapers, which were mostly just adverts for the respective author, I could not find anything solid on the subject ‘Coaching’. I am therefore using the opportunity to define coaching myself and to develop a coaching mode. My working definition (still clumsy and perhaps incomplete): ‘Coaching is an individual advising process, in which the coach – as a sort of male midwife – supports the coachee with observation and feedback, so that the coachee can release his capabilities for the solution of a problem.’ ”

For many reasons, nothing came of the dissertation back then, but the subject is now extremely topical after more than 15 years. Today, if somebody chooses the subject of coaching for a dissertation or doctoral thesis, then he will have a whole range of literature to deal with.

In speaking about the possibilities and limits of coaching, it seems necessary to me that I take a brief look back upon the developing of coaching to date in Germany. Unlike team and organization development or management training, the history of coaching is relatively short: it begins sometime in the middle of the 80s, so, about twenty years ago. This development was driven on and maintained by qualified psychologists trained in psychotherapy, who had in various ways found themselves working in commerce. They were better able than their industrial-psychology-oriented colleagues to recognize the essential weakness in the development of management personnel: the taboo attached to the loneliness of managers. 

The most important arguments against coaching – also against my first coaching project in 1987 – was the conviction of many colleagues that managers would never, ever get involved in such psychological navel-gazing. A further argument was that management personnel would be unlikely to tolerate anyone other than themselves in such a role. A third argument was that such work was entirely inappropriate in the context of a company.

We now know that management personnel happily make use of the opportunity for reflecting upon themselves with a coach, and will probably continue to do so in increasing numbers.

The development of coaching in Germany, and also in England and France, is one of the biggest of all success stories in management development. By the middle of the 1990s, at the latest, coaching had lost every bit of exoticism and become an ordinary instrument of personnel development. The possibilities of coaching continue to appear enormous. Demand is growing and more and more new target groups are looking for support from a coach. For some time now, being coached has no longer been reserved for the top management, higher and medium-level management personnel, and even up-and-coming personnel and specialists are enjoying this individual advising. The differentiation of different types of coaching is fully underway, as is – unfortunately - the inflation of the term and its misuse by dubious advisors.

It is precisely for these reasons that we must now look very carefully at the limits of coaching, and name these very clearly. The continuing, gigantic demand for coaching and the lack of binding quality standards caused the proliferation of an increasingly large gray area, which is on the point of causing lasting damage to the product of “coaching” as a whole.

Serious coaches will very soon have to give clear answers on this subject, and I am confident that they will also do this effectively.

At the same time, awareness is growing of the high complexity of coaching – which goes far beyond the immediate concern of the client. Proper clarification of the task – often in the form of tripartite or quadripartite contracts – remains a challenge that every serious coach must set himself. It is amateurish to want to limit the consideration of coaching to the person of the coachee or the coach/coachee relationship.

Because coaching normally takes place in private, but it is an individual advising process, in which we not only advise this one person, but always also the work system to which he belongs.

If we take this statement seriously, then entirely new dimensions arise for the discussion of quality – and thus also for the question of the possibilities and limits of coaching: in addition to the demands for professional clarification of tasks, realistic formulation of aims, transparent invoicing, safety of method, and clear demarcation from psychotherapeutic work, which have already been discussed for some time, new observations emerge:

Observation 1: the success or failure of coaching
depends on the interests of the observers

Previously, quality criteria relating to the process and boundary conditions of coaching have been named. To date, however, little attention has been paid to the question of how the quality of coaching can be defined in the sense of the benefit to be achieved. The success or failure and therefore also the quality of the coaching can be seen very differently depending on the standpoint of the observer:

Has the coaching succeeded if …

the coachee is satisfied?

• Or if the client is satisfied?
• Or if the coach is satisfied?
• Or if the personnel department is satisfied?
• Or only once the aims have been achieved?
• Or is it necessary for there to be benefit to the company?

Observation 2: When the coach, coachee and personnel departments
like something, it does not necessarily need to be useful for the company

An essential element in the great success of coaching is the individuality and intimacy of the process. Here, coaching in companies is reflecting a wider social trend: individualization and the expansion of the private. If coachee and coach are satisfied with the process, then the HR specialists normally are too - after all, they have usually suggested the coach who has been used. The whole thing is usually paid for by the company – but is it ever of any use to them? This creates – unconsciously and unintentionally - what I call the silent alliance: a shifting of organization-internal conflicts and problems into the private sphere.

Observation 3: If coaching is also to benefit the company,
then the coach must understand how that company functions.

Ever more advisors are striving to stake their claim in the booming coaching market. Career-changers from social professions, psychotherapists, and supervisors are seeking their professional and financial well-being in coaching. This is natural and perfectly in order – as long as we are measuring the quality of coaching by the development of the individual personality.

However, if we accept the benefit for the company as being an at least equally prioritized quality standard, then it is in my view essential to understand something about commercial companies. I would go even further: he must understand how this particular company functions. This cannot normally be learnt through the coaching of one particular individual.

Observation 4: Responsible coaches have clear values and positions

The greater the acceptance and spread of coaching becomes, the more important it is for coaches to develop a clear position and inner attitude regarding certain questions of values. Especially in a time in which many companies are fighting for sheer survival, coaches need clear answers to the question of what they are taking on responsibility for. They need answers to the question of who they want to place at the center of their work: the individuals, the company or both. I believe that, above all, they need to be able to judge accurately what type of support this person now needs in this company. This may be coaching, but it may also be that this individual method is precisely the wrong approach and that it will make interaction in the organization more complicated instead of easier. Recognizing these systemic connections, talking about them openly and recommending something better requires organizational knowledge, experience, and inner independence, and the courage to do the right thing even against one’s own interests.

Over the past few years we have discovered and experienced the wonderful possibilities of coaching. In our enthusiasm, we have failed to examine the limitations of coaching with the required seriousness. What has been achieved is now in danger, if we do not clearly and emphatically distance ourselves from the dubious people and practices that are swimming along in coaching’s wake. Clear and binding quality standards are a good first step. But beyond this it is important to have well-founded coaching research at the universities and a lively exchange of experience between like-minded practitioners. And – last but not least – closer networking between practitioners and researchers.

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