Since there is no way I can do this piece without appearing to be unfair to the author if I just took things out of context,  I've decided to write my comments under his comments to point out distinctions that are important for masterful coaches.

The 10 Myths and the New Realities of Professional Coaching

By Dave Buck

Myth #2: The Client Has All the Answers

Reality #2: In most cases, the client hires the coach for their ability to provide specific knowledge, experience and timely counsel.

---------This is the foundational assumption of Dave's article and I believe it's flawed and narrow. Here are some more of the "cases" that people would hire a coach:

• Can't move out of current stuckness and wants someone to listen to them
• Business said, "b-coached or get-fired"
• Wants to build capability and doesn't know who to turn to
• Is interested in someone holding them accountable
• Needs a thought partner
• Wants to discover something beyond their own current thinking

I can think of other things that would not require teaching in the coaching relations. In my view, what Dave is doing is proving his point through a very limited viewpoint, one where he gets to say how coaching is defined.

Later in the piece, he says a coach is a teacher.

This doesn't surprise me because of where Dave has been trained or his athletic background working with people in sports who may "situationally" need direction, teaching, etc. This is typical found in the athletic venues (where I have a lot of experience myself) and where people are actually being "managed, trained and developed" often through teaching. In this case I call these people [ www.coach2-the-bottom-line.com ]: a person coaching, or a person teaching, or a person managing who uses coaching skills which are germane to a lot of fields because coaching didn't invent them. Listening, observing, teaching, counseling were not invented by coaches.

-----Therefore Dave's foundational assumption is flawed and narrow, in my opinion when he states that in most cases, the client hires the coach for their ability to provide specific knowledge, experience and timely counsel.

It would be better if it read, "some" people, but NOT MOST, unless you're working at very low levels in business, or organization. Other than that, what Dave is describing is more of a consultant, not what many of us deem coaching, where we build capability through the use of skills which do not involve providing specific knowledge, experience (except in the coaching
model) and timely counsel is far better handled by counselors who then can assume PAAR (power, accountability, authority and responsibility over the outcomes of the client, much like teachers, managers, etc. that's why they require professional licensing, in that they DO have PAAR over the client and therefore require protection from the person who does have PAAR over them.)

As a coach "without" PAAR over client outcomes, there is no need of regulation because the client is making the decisions, not the "change agent."

----In Dave's assumption: In most cases, the client hires the coach for their ability to provide specific knowledge, experience and timely counsel. A person who is a trainer, the person's manager, mentor, or even the person's leader all would be more effective at providing these things at a
MUCH lower cost than does a coach on the average. (For coaching average fees, check the article on Stephen Fairley who did research and wrote a book on the subject!) I've also researched this myself and have found mid-level executive coaching in a fortune 100 organization costs around $236 a min when you include all indirect and direct costs of the coaching!


Dave said:

No myth has done more to hinder the effectiveness of professional coaches and constrain the growth of the entire industry than this one. It is an absolute killer. THE CLIENT DOES NOT HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS. IF THEY DID, THEY WOULDN'T NEED TO HIRE YOU.

--------Again, Dave drives a specific assumption as true, or for that matter, a number of assumptions that he is offering to "argue against" and effectively is creating a "straw person" who believes and states the assumptions that Dave states.

In my opinion, Dave doesn't understand this concept very well. What people mean (at least those of us that are scholars of developmentalism) is that in order for the person to create actionable behavior, they have to identify those issues which "fit" their meaning-making or sense-making system. Again as a reference, Chris Argyris in Flawed Advice & The Management Trap basically debunks this notice that giving people advise--UNLESS it carries with it specific criteria--is a waste of time in most cases.

 People don't take our advice. They may take the experience that our advise is contained within, or some bits of it and fit it to their system, but as Argyris eloquently produces vignettes with the infamous Stephen Covey and John Kotter--two of the most well-known consultants/coaches known in the world, there advice is really not much good, without specific framing. I don't see or read any of that framing here in Dave's piece, nor have I heard Dave speak of such framing and therefore in my view, is a model of the problem.

Clearly in my view, a client DOES have the answers because they have the meaning making system where answers come from, even when an answer is a question or a need to go find information, unless it's the client's idea,
most of the time, it's just not going to be much good. Therefore, if you're not working at the actionable level with a client, then what you do isn't going to do much good.

Even in teaching, if you teach concepts which the client has no frame for, the client won't learn, what's more they won't insert these issues into the meaning-making apparatus.

In the case, where you do get a match between developmental level, order of mind or ego complexity between coach and person being coached, then you will
get some natural framing that includes criteria which works for the client. IN this case (which does happen naturally--in our research we've found people when choosing coaches, most of the time choose a coach like them, or like their problem), so we do get a natural match if the person is allowed to select usually between alternatives.


Dave Said:

Imagine that you want to become a great basketball player, and you hire
Coach Phil Jackson (former coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles
Lakers). You show up for the first coaching session, ready to roll up your
sleeves and get busy learning from Phil's wisdom, and he asks "What does
your intuition tell you about shooting the basketball?" Sounds silly right?
You bet it does! You are paying Phil - probably a lot of money - to show
you how to play, not to merely ask you questions about what you think about
basketball!

------Again, Dave in my view is way off here because he's comparing apples and oranges. While athletics calls people who do what Phil Jackson and others do--coaching, they would be better off called something else. This whole idea
that a coach is a jack or jill of all trades just doesn't fly beyond athletics and what Dave is not saying is that in "addition" to Phil, they have more than two dozen people whose job it is to look after the play of these athletes. While they might all be called coaches by Dave, I think we have blurred the line here between sports coaching and coaching outside of sports. I agree with Dave about Phil, although Phil is special (developmentally post-conventional; less than 1% of the population) and therefore should NOT be used as an example for the masses, as you really get into issues by doing that, none of what Phil does is probably actionable for most people, only a few who may respond to Phil's coaching tactics and
development.

While people wouldn't hire me or you to coach those guys, Phil is much more than a coach, what we call a guide. A guide has the ability through the knowledge of self-awareness to function individually and collectively in a
variety of perspectives. What the guide brings to the table is their own awareness, experience, etc. and the "self-knowledge" to know when to use the secrets of effectiveness. http://www.leadu.com/secrets

A coach on the other hand is often limited by their own self-awareness, experience and expertise as a result by their own "conventional" awareness. A guide must have post-conventional awareness or what some refer to as
second tier capability in order to be all things to the right people.

Without this order of mind or ego complexity, one uses a flatland approach like Dave is using here to relate to people and consequently only a narrow subset of people can use this frame. As a guide, one is able to move among
frames, or attractors and is not limited by their own capacity, capability and potential. Nor are they a guide because they teach, train, develop, counsel, mentor, manage, etc. In my view, it's a bit of a paradox, but it is clear that to turn a coach lose who has a narrow view of how people learn, grow and develop is asking for trouble--UNLESS--you teach those people to stay out of the way and away from PAAR over the people they work with. In
those cases, the person being coached is making their own decisions and the coaching relationship is not harmful.

As Dave argues, it is my view that since the coach has so much PAAR over the person they are coaching and are actually becoming a "person who does have PAAR" over the person they are coaching, then you have to regulate these
people so we don't get harm. I suspect that is why there is a scream for regulation by a lot of people and rightly so, if people like Dave are going to be turned loose on people without oversight, then I too would vote for a
form of regulation.

For those of us who believe that might be a mistake for some of the industry, the we are left with keeping people like Dave from "leading other people's lives." In the case of Phil Jackson, he has oversight, is governed by a player's union that is VERY tough about what coaches/players do together and Phil is managed both by the fans and the media. What Phil does is in the public view AND THIS IS WHAT SEPARATES sports coaching from
coaching that is done behind closed doors one on one. There is no media, no direct oversight, no coaching manager in most cases in either personal coaching or professional coaching in business, organizations or leadership.

Career consultants best stay consultants and not become coaches, or they too have this issue of doing harm behind closed doors rather than being governed by consulting and what it brings with it in terms of "personal defenses."
I've made this argument time and time again over the years. Coaches have referent power. Consultants may have some referent power, but the mere voicing of consulting is different than coaching. [As a side note, I think
this could be proven kinesthetically, although I'm not a big follower of the practices, but I suggest if you test consultant and coach, you will find that coaching scores higher in development using methods from David Hawkins,
Power and Force Author]

My point is that all referent power needs to be watched for harm oninnocent people who are suggestible and accommodating to the "leading of people like Dave" who are out there to:

"provide specific knowledge, experience and timely counsel," as Dave states as his fundamental assumption. A coach may do some teaching, but in no way in my view is a coach a teacher. A teacher is a teacher. Again, I don't
think teachers who are regulated who would like Dave taking over their profession with a bunch of people who claim to be nothing more than teachers, anymore than psychology has appreciated coaches become pop psychologists! Again, a cause of contention for this whole thread Dave has created.

Dave said:

For over a decade, coaches have been taught (yes, taught) to believe that
the client has all the answers and that great coaching consists of asking
insightful questions to evoke those answers. This is only a VERY SMALL part of the coaching process. The majority of the time when a client hires you as a coach, they want your answers, and they want them now! They don't want to have to be interrogated or asked leading questions to get them to say what you already know. They don't want to be held accountable for finding their own solutions. They want your solutions from your experience.

---------what Dave again is arguing is that people are hiring coaches to
consult. Again, it's easy to point this in the direction it needs to go.
One to one consulting is still consulting. If you call it something else,
then you're just clouding the issues. Consulting is consulting and that is
what Dave is describing. And because Dave says that is what people want,
then he automatically assumes that people who do that are coaches. In my
view, he is just mixing up things and not making clear enough distinctions.
A coach with consulting skills is better left as a coach if they do that
more than they actually coach, in which case the distinction is clear. If a
person has PAAR over the outcomes of another person, they are not a coach in the terms of the emerging coaching industry. They are something else and that can be defined through the current definitions we have for people such as consultant, teach, athletic coach, mentor, manager, and leader--they all use coaching skills, but that doesn't make them a coach. It is a xxxx coaching.

This blurring of what people want and what it is called by some people is
doing a disservice to the industry directly, however it may be helping
indirectly. When some of us see that people like Dave are trying to make
definitions for an entire industry because they have a bully-pulpit as some
might say, then I say we have to speak up.

Dave is basically championing consultants or what some would call a personal "trainer" who use coaching skills. to train and develop, which is still not coaching in my view, but personal training. In athletic coaching, almost always you have people who are "more mature" in life and experience training and developing athletes. In business, that is not normally the case, or training and development at a personal or one to one level would be more effective in my view. In the case where people are far superior in terms of experience or perhaps development, they are called gurus, and we have plenty of those as well, but I wouldn't call them coaches.

I'm perfectly fine with with any of this--I believe in doing what works, but when Dave blurs the lines and starts calling everybody who does anything a coach, rather than what it is they do, then we have BIG issues. It's not what we call ourselves, it is what we do. If you're practicing therapy without a license, then you'll have an issue with psychology. If you are doing mostly consulting, then you are a consultant. If you mentor, then you are a mentor. If you manage someone's accountability you are a manager. If you teach people new material, then you are a teacher. Don't get caught into the trap of trying to be whatever the client wants you to be or you'll cross ethical boundaries which are currently clear to some extent in the industry, although I question some of them because they fall victim to
the Dave philosophy.


Dave said:

If you want to be paid for coaching, you have to come to the table with some demonstrable expertise that the client needs. Of course, asking questions to assess the clients existing knowledge and ability is a very smart way to start the coaching process. Once you know what they need to know, TELL THEM.

--------Again, this is nothing more than consulting. I'm not saying it's bad to do this, but don't call yourself a coach if most of what you do is handing out
fish. It's clear in my mind that Dave has not made distinctions and is
offering to support opportunism without regulation and I think that is what
the problem is in the industry. The "opportunists" who will do whatever it
takes to make money by "doing something with a person" is not a coach. In my view, this is in large part what happens in consulting. This would be the same if a medical doctor advised you in psychology, skin care, or insurance.

Many people have indicated that consulting is nothing more than a manager out of a job. In this case, Dave is describing it perfectly: "come to the table with some demonstrable expertise that the client needs."

When I hear this, all I can say is YUCK.

Dave said:

Warning: This doesn't mean that coaches have to be all-knowing gurus.

Remember the coaching framework: "The answer is somewhere". Often you'll be required to use proficiency #10 Shares what is there - your knowledge, your experience, and your wisdom. Many times you'll be counted on to know where to find the answer by having great resources and great connections. Sometimes you'll have to call upon your insight to explore a clients' inkling by using proficiency #2 Reveal the client to themselves.

-------Again, this is nothing more than consulting and again, I don't think
it's wrong. What's wrong is for us to be calling it coaching with no clear
distinctions about what coaching is, except what Dave is indicating and
there has not been one thing in this treatise of Dave's that indicates he
has either defined coaching, compared it with other forms of intervention or interaction, or makes any kind of distinction except opportunism with people in a one-on-one venue.

The other thing I want to point out here is that this is all "directive" in
nature. While Dave may call it collaborative, I see it and feel it as
directive, as the coach being the expert, as Dave indicates: "when a client
hires you as a coach, they want your answers, and they want them now!"

He also goes on to describe a consultant who--I believe creates dependency by being in the "fish" business:

Dave said:

"The majority of the time when a client hires you as a coach, they want your
answers, and they want them now! They don't want to have to be
interrogated or asked leading questions to get them to say what you already know. They don't want to be held accountable for finding their own
solutions. They want your solutions from your experience."

---------I have to agree that client's don't want to be interrogated, but that's why we learn to master inquiry. I don't agree that people don't want to be held accountable. I do see that as a domain of coaching, even though to me it is management. In business, the manager has PAAR. In a personal coaching situation, there is no manager and I think clients in personal venues can utilize former school teachers, retired managers and coaches who insist on directing, as it will be of service to some clients. In business and organizational work, it's not necessary because that's what managers/leadership is paid to do and that is to set expectations and to hold people accountable. It's up to coaches to build future capability and to improve present production through methods used in professional coaching.

Dave said:

"The point is: Coaching is an extremely dynamic process. To do it well you can't be restrained by mistaken notions. Coaching is teaching. If you can re-orient your thoughts around this truth, your coaching business has a real
chance."

---------This is true and not true. Yes, coaching is a dynamic "system" not a process which stands on it's own and that's perhaps where Dave's thinking is flawed more than anything he's doing by narrow-banding. I disagree with Dave because if one is not aware of themselves--and notices that the biggest share of mistaken notions are coming from Dave's philosophy, so at this point, in my view, DAVE needs regulating because he is unable to do it on his own.

Dave has outlined a specific philosophy of one-on-none consulting which operates behind closed doors (assumption, since all coaches I'm aware of subscribe to confidentiality and the only way to get that is behind closed doors with one or a select group of persons, without media, openness or fans to watch (although as many of us have found that's a great way to do it), which to me--means relying on the expertise and knowledge (self, as well) to self/other regulate. In the case of Dave, I wouldn't allow him to operate as an opportunist, which he describes calling himself a coach. If he wants to do what he does, then he could call himself a consultant, a personal trainer, a personal teacher, a personal advisor, etc.

When Dave starts dictating that all of us out there working as coaches are doing what he is doing, I have to stand up and say, "Wait a minute Dave!"

Dave said:

"Remember, the client has worked hard in their area of life to accumulate enough money to be able to pay for your service so that they can start where you are now. They don't want to retrace your steps. They want to spring forward from everything you've already gained. That's why they are paying you. AND this is how coaching is going to rapidly forward evolution in every area of the human experience."

------Still, this is a description of consulting and as long as Dave calls this coaching, it's not going anywhere as an industry because it is not distinct enough from what's already being offered by a plethora of people practicing
in many industries already doing these things. There is no reason to believe from Dave's remarks that he has discovered anything new and is doing anything different than all the other people out there calling themselves
whatever--who do what Dave describes. And yes, they will change every area of human experience, but it won't have to do with anything coaching is doing as a particular industry, it is just what happens normally. Every area of human experience at this time is changing rapidly, coach or no coach. It's just the way things evolve--nothing new or transformational about that--it just is. Whether people work hard for their money or not, they expect results. In my view, it's up to coaches to coach those people to efficient and effective solutions EVEN when it means that they refer the person to someone else who can provide a more efficient intervention method, such as those I've discussed. Rather than being an opportunist and working with someone on "whatever it is" they have going, as Dave suggests you can do "because" you have experience or success in a particular area. Again, as I've stated, that is no guarantee of success and in many cases, YOU and the person being coached SHARE the same blind spot, if the truth be known. So experience is no indicator on its own of coaching effectiveness!

Dave said:

We'll explore this notion even further next week when we debunk Myth #3: A good coach can coach anyone.

--------I just wish you wouldn't Dave, until you've done more study and work in the industry. Because you "inherited" the bully pulpit of a great man, you have not done the work to lead and to be a leader because your comments are naive and narrow in my view. Because you work under the guise of the "great man" people--unknowingly give you the benefit of the doubt and think you know what you are talking about--modeling EXACTLY what I've been talking about in this debunking--as a coach you should know better?  I hope some of the words that I've shared today support the contention that you are naïve to a lot of what is going on in coaching and that you will take some time and study and talk to people around the coaching world and see what we've been doing while you've been out on the soccer field.

The last part is tongue in cheek, however I had someone say almost that very same thing to me a few years ago...so I took them up on their advice and put the thousands of hours into research, study and scholarship to be able to paint the words I've shared. I certainly don't pretend to know much, but then again I'm not the one flashing around the rhetoric that Dave, by virtue of his inheritance is pervaying on an unwitting public.

There have to be other opinions, that is why I've proposed the first annual "coaches congress" to be held in 2005 which will finally bring together coaching into a dialogue that will produce a meeting of the minds.

mike

http://www.b-coach.com/
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Mike R. Jay
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