No sideline observer
Coaches help executives improve performance, gain balance in their lives

by Lisa Antonelli Bacon
for Virginia Business
October 2007

Do you leave board meetings with your opinion still stuck in your throat? Do you have trouble saying “No” to unreasonable or untimely requests? Have you arrived at the top but can’t see your next step? Maybe you want to turn your million-dollar company into a billion-dollar conglomerate. Or perhaps you just want to make your work force hum. There’s a way to address these problems, a simple, albeit costly, one. Hire a coach.

Companies do it. Universities and colleges are doing it more and more. Even the federal government does it. In fact, in the dozen or so years since coaching expanded beyond the sports arena, executive coaching has become a substantial industry, employing some 30,000 people worldwide, both full- and part-time, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the International Coach Federation. Full-time, professional coaches make an average of nearly $83,000, as they work with clients paying between $250 and $300 an hour.

So how do you know when you need a coach? When you’re not moving forward.

The executive coaching profession initially was designed to help corporate leaders take a fresh look at themselves and their businesses. That assistance helped execs identify their next level of performance and strategies to get there.

Then the concept of professional coaching spread like an amoeba through our culture, enveloping virtually any aspect of life.

“It starts out focused on business,” says Smokie Sizemore, a Richmond-based executive coach with seven years experience. “But it becomes life coaching. There’s always something that happens in life that affects business. It could be aging parents. The economy affects things significantly, too. And there are things executives have no control over, like the weather.”

Or terrorist attacks. If executive coaching had been perceived as Rent-A-Friend up to 9/11, it proved its value that day when all of America’s leadership — business, economic, political — instantly faced questions with no ready answers. Uncertainty pervaded the American consciousness. “Emotions were all over the place,” says Sizemore, whose busiest coaching week ever began on 9/11. “No one knew what to expect. Everyone knew that their business would forever be different, but they didn’t know how. And everyone was looking to their leaders to get them through it.”

Chris Thurston, the president and CEO of RightMinds, a strategic marketing company based in Richmond, hired Sizemore around that time. “It was a critical period in everybody’s businesses, not knowing what to expect. Coaching is particularly appropriate during times of transition, when you’re trying to focus on your organization.” Thurston saw fast results. “Clarity was the first result. Then it was taking defined, measurable steps that the coach holds you accountable for.”

Now executive coaching has worked its way into common parlance, even if many don’t understand all its dimensions. “When I started, the question was ‘What’s that?’ People have some familiarity with it now,” says Sizemore.

The International Coach Federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” Sizemore defines it more succinctly. “You have something you want. You need to make some changes to get it. I’m the partner that walks that journey with you.”

So what’s the payoff for a $300-per-hour payout? Results are measurable. It could be a promotion. It could be an acquisition. Or maybe you just learn to say “No,” freeing yourself up to be more productive. And when do the payments for coaching sessions stop? More than reaching an end, the coaching journey often peters out. Clients either achieve a stated goal or hit their own stride, requiring only occasional maintenance. “When I was coached, I created a three-year plan,” says Sizemore, whose goal was a career change from owning a decorative flag business. “I completed it in two years.”

But does executive coaching change lives? Are executives and their companies better off? Based on the Pricewaterhouse-Coopers figures, thousands of companies are pumping more than a billion dollars into the global coaching industry.

Kim Robson says the process worked for her. Robson, a government executive in the defense industry in Vienna, started to undergo coaching in late 2005 as part of a leadership program paid for by her government agency. “Within a few months, I saw some results. By four to six months, things were very different,” she says. And within the year, Robson had moved into a new position with more responsibility and more visibility. “I am definitely pleased with the outcome.”

Robson, who defines her goal broadly as “trying to find out what I needed to get out of my job, and what I needed to be happy,” now touches base monthly with her coach. “I think now I’m where I should be,” says Robson, who initially met with her coach every two weeks. “I don’t want to revert to my old thought patterns. It takes a long time to change your habits. That’s what you’re doing: replacing certain behaviors with new ones that are more effective.”

Gary Bowman also is a believer in the benefits of coaching.

The founder and president of Bowman Consulting in Chantilly began working with an executive coach three years ago to create a vision for the company and define the role of its leadership. He decided it would be worth the time and money to have an in-house coach to keep his 300 engineers moving forward. “Our staff is mainly engineers who have either been thrust into or evolved into a general managerial position,” he explains. “Typically, they need management skills to transition, and they’re probably not wired for those skills.

Bowman says coaching helps the engineers with communications, time management and people skills. “There’s no directly measurable return on investment, but I’ve seen them become more effective managers of people and business units.” Bowman says. He estimates that nearly 10 percent of his employees so far have been coached in-house.

When you cut through the jargon (“realizing full potential,” “newly identified behaviors,” “conscious self-management”), coaching involves, at its heart, intense listening and honest feedback — given in ways colleagues and friends can’t do without risk to the relationship. “It’s an interesting concept to have someone else focus on your goals,” says Thurston. “They call your bluff. They challenge your own self-honesty. And their only agenda is to see you succeed.”

Coaches offer one thing that even friends and partners don’t always provide: unadulterated, untainted, unilateral support. “I believe that my clients can do anything they want to do, whereas there are other people in their lives who don’t want that,” says Margie S. Heiler, who coaches clients all over the Washington, D.C, area from her home in Warren County. “It’s a very intimate relationship. Many people tell us things they don’t tell their spouses or other people.”

Heiler is quick to point out that coaching isn’t therapy. “It’s not about fixing people,” she says. Heiler works through a range of assessments with her clients. “Assessments tell someone how they behave, what motivates them, and how they can get results. We use those as a structure. It helps them get clear about what they want.”

Heiler then looks to other tools used in coach training, like the Wheel of Life, basically a pie chart dividing the client’s life into chosen categories, such as family, community, finances, etc. Clients plot their level of satisfaction in each of their categories. “The problem most executives have is finding balance and boundaries, self-imposed boundaries, like how long I’m willing to work,” says Heiler. “It becomes a matter of establishing priorities.”

Bob Scudder, the head of Scudder Associates in Richmond, works with clients to accomplish goals in three areas; incremental change, transformational change and acquisition of new skills sets. Incremental change can involve better time management and setting priorities for day-to-day activities such as answering e-mail.

Transformational change involves more conceptual adjustments, such as learning to work as a leader within a larger team and communicating with people throughout the organization. Acquiring a new skill can involve a client earning an MBA or certification in certain field. The coach helps the client negotiate with his or her employer to get time needed for study and training.

Scudder uses a variety of tools to establish where clients are and where they want to go. These tools include a highly detailed Myers-Briggs personality type assessment and a 360 evaluation, which gets input from a variety of people who deal with the client, including employees, superiors and family members. These assessments help to gauge how clients become energized, make decisions and communicate with others. “Sometimes our weaknesses are strengths that are overused,” says Scudder, explaining that an executive who persistently asks his staff probing questions may wind up intimidating employees instead of motivating them.

But beyond assessments, the dialogue between coach and client depends on the coach’s skill. “You have to provoke thoughts that would be out of the box for them,” says Sizemore. “That takes intuition, finesse and experience.”

Lastly, there has to be solid buy-in from the client.

Accountability is a large part of coaching,” says Sizemore. Typically, coach and client sort out what actions are needed to move the ball closer to the goal. It’s called homework for a reason. The client must execute a certain set of actions before the next meeting. It’s nonnegotiable, part of the contract the client signs. “You’re paying them to hold your feet to the fire,” says Thurston. And if your feet resist the fire? “Sometimes you work through it,” says Sizemore. If a client digs in, it nullifies the contract. “Sometimes you just have to admit that it isn’t a good match.”

Still in its nascent stages, the executive coaching industry has no licensing requirements. Nonetheless, professional coaches can be certified by the organization that provides their training. With 11,000 members, ICF is one of dozens of organizations worldwide that offer training and certifications. Certification lets the client know that a coach has received coach-specific training, put in a designated number of in-service training hours and been coached by a mentor coach.

Now the marketplace for coaching services is expanding even further, as colleges and universities latch on to the concept. While many, including the University of Virginia and George Mason University, already offer coaching to their administrative and academic staffs, other schools such as Georgetown University now offer ICF-accredited courses in leadership coaching.

“Anyone can call themselves a coach,” says Sizemore, whose living room sideboard is filled with pictures of her clients. (One is shown in midswing on a New Zealand golf course.) “We either should be self-regulating or come under licensure like any other profession. We are a profession. And we should strive for advancing high levels of certification.”