As I received the task, at the end of 1986, to find out for our department whether or not the new management concept that our American mother company had thought up could also be implemented in Germany – I would never have dreamt that I would still be dealing with this subject 15 years later. As a young graduate, I had found my first post at an American computer company that made me enthusiastic with its creativity, speed and relaxed atmosphere. The US management concept that I was to examine was called “Coaching” and met with little interest from experienced colleagues. But I liked the word and also the subject – which I then used to associate more with boxing or Boris Becker than with modern management personnel development.

I drove to Paris, where the coaching concept was presented to myself and other European colleagues. I was very disappointed when I realized that it was a thoroughly structured learning program according to a firm plan, which left hardly any individual room for maneuver. So that I would not have to give my project up straight away, I decided to put forward my own suggestion on the implementation in Germany. This was based on the principle “helping self-help” and contained many elements that I had got to know in my training to be a Gestalt psychotherapist. The concept met with great skepticism, but also with astonishing resonance. It was argued that such “coaching” would never find out anything interesting, that the concept was much too psychological and not sufficiently relevant to business. Nevertheless, I was instructed to develop the idea in two directions: on the one hand, as a management advising service of our department, and on the other, as an employee management instrument. In the middle of 1987, the overall concept was implemented with great success and I submitted a publication on this subject (“Grundlagen des Coaching (Fundamentals of Coaching)” 1987) – presumably the first of all in the German language.

Shortly afterwards, the coaching boom really took off, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published the first article followed by Wirtschaftswoche and Manager Magazine. The specialist press reacted somewhat later but all the more fiercely for that. There were a dozen variations on the “Coach / Couch” play on words, as well as the question of whether coaching was not just “old wine in new bottles”. An exciting time began for me: business journalists asked for interviews, which were probably like running the gauntlet for our press officer in view of my youth and inexperience, Prof. Lutz von Rosenstiel invited me to write down my experiences for his new textbook (Rosenstiel/Regneft/Domsch: “Führung von Mitarbeitern” (“Management of Employees”), 1991).

At the start of the coaching discussion, the positions were still relatively clear: early authors such as Looss, Geissler and Sattelberger regarded coaching as a process of individual advising that increased problem-solving competence, and thus had helping self-help as its goal, which was precisely my own view as well.

Böning was the first to bring about a watering-down of the term, by introducing “team-coaching” and “system-coaching” into the discussion. In this way, not only team development work and OE processes, but all verbal advising work became “Coaching”.

The issue became entirely confused when it was said that a good manager was “his employee’s coach”, and this requirement is still repeated today like a mantra. From then on, managers no longer wanted to manage but to coach, which is not really the same. (Incidentally, coaching was usually quickly abandoned if something turned out differently from how the boss had intended).

So coaching had become a catchword that could be used to refer to almost anything.

This is still largely the case. The expression “coaching” is still used in very different and sometimes contradictory contexts.

At the same time, however, a marked differentiation has taken place: coaching has now become a recognized instrument in the development of management personnel, and it continues to spread, probably because success can be achieved even in a short space of time. The willingness of human resources personnel to call in external coaches for managers is increasing. Many seasoned managers no longer worry about their self-image when admitting something to their coach. Today, nobody seriously doubts the benefit of good coaching. Also, in specialist circles, the term “coaching” is again increasingly being associated with the individual advising of managers and specialists, which is certainly good for the profile and appraisal of the product “coaching”.

Astonishingly, the spread of coaching has not lead to binding quality standards being formulated for this field of advising, which would be entirely possible, and has been practiced by hauserconsulting for many years. One example: at one of the last conferences of the Bundesverband Deutscher Unternehmensberater (BDU, German Association of Management Consultants) – still the elite association of the German advising fraternity – there was discussion of the great interest of clients in coaching. There was talk about methods and approaches – and about the difficulties of drawing up appropriate accounts for coaching – because, it was said, it was often not clear whether it was a matter of acquisition or already one of coaching. After I had asked around, it turned out that none of the – thoroughly renowned – colleagues had based his coaching on a clear contract, i.e. a clarification of tasks or an agreement upon aims. Here, clear quality standards would certainly be of great benefit to clients and advisors.

In our opinion, other elements of quality assurance for coaching would include:
• unambiguous stating of the customer (client, manager of the client, personnel manager – key question: who pays?)
• clear demarcation from other processes, especially from individual psychotherapy
• clear approach in the event that the need for psychotherapeutic treatment should become apparent in the course of coaching (“the coach as guide”)
• limiting of the coaching agreement to a manageable period of time (at hauserconsulting, a maximum duration of five coaching sessions is initially agreed, which can be extended if necessary and after examining of the aims).

The still ever-increasing individualization of our society and the stronger focus upon the development of key personnel in companies (who have to struggle with the ever greater complexity of their tasks) have made coaching an important supplement to the development of personnel. At the same time, it is an instrument that can only have full effect – especially in larger organizations – if the necessary confidentiality does not become the darkroom of the company. Binding quality standards, which the coaches voluntarily undertake to adhere to, are the next necessary step.

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