Carol Wilson explores tools and skills in a new series of ‘Tools of the Trade’ that describes the basic tools of a coaching conversation or culture. This month, she examines the fundamentals of coaching: its history and what the term actually means, Training Journal May 2010

Coaching is a relatively new profession and yet, arguably, as old as human communication itself. Socrates is sometimes deemed to be the first coach because of sayings such as: “I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.”

So how did the skills we term ‘coaching’ become recognised as the method of communication we know today?

In the 1950s, the western world embraced a new sense of optimism, self-responsibility and focus on the future. Over the next three decades, these trends showed up in psychology, business, sport, culture, politics and the way parents raised their children. To name just a few examples:

• in psychology, Brief Therapy focused attention on building solutions rather than analysing the problem
• in commerce, business owners like Ricardo Semmler turned over control to employees, even down to setting their own salaries
• A whole new area of personal self-development emerged, encouraging people to create their own solutions for their physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

The principles now identified as coaching showed up in all of these areas and have been particularly identified in the writings of psychologists, especially organisational. However, the only direct link between the ideas and the word ‘coaching’ that I have been able to find came form the sports arena and offers an answer to the question of why the term, with its inappropriate implication of instruction, has been applied at all.

Timothy Gallwey was a Harvard graduate in the 1970s who, while on sabbatical, became captain of the Harvard tennis team. He noticed that, when he left the court, his students tended to improve faster than when he was there to instruct them. Already a disciple of spirituality and psychology, he explored this paradox and developed a series of techniques.

One of his key developments was ‘directionality’ – naming one’s goal before starting out. He wrote a series of books called The Inner Game, applying his theories to performance in life and work as well as sport.

During the 1980s, Gallwey’s work was embraced by Sir John Whitmore, who brought the techniques to Europe and founded schools of skiing and tennis to develop them. At one point, his team was asked to provide a day of ‘self-directed’ tennis coaching by a large organisation that wanted its managers to incorporate the Inner Game approach into their leadership styles.

This was termed ‘performance coaching’ to differentiate it from conventional sports coaching, and Whitmore wrote a book about it called Coaching for Performance, which has since been translated into 19 languages and has become a kind of bible for coaches and organisations.

And this, it seems, is how the term ‘coaching’ originated. I would guess that one of the reasons for its adoption in business is because the overtones of sport have been found more acceptable in the workplace, rather than anything to do with psychology.

There has been much confusion over the application of a word that means ‘instructing’ to an area whose guiding principle may be described as ‘self-directed learning’. The overall principles of coaching may be summed up as follows:

Responsibility: A core principle of coaching is self-responsibility, or taking ownership of our decisions: we prefer to create our own solutions than be told what to do.

Coaches have only one agenda: their coachees’. In terms of leadership, where the organisation’s agenda has to prevail, this means treating people with respect and providing opportunities for their development where possible.

Self belief: There are two components to building people’s confidence: first, allowing them the space to practise, stretch themselves and make mistakes and, second, giving them recognition for their achievements.

Confidence that we can do something is a key factor in achieving it. Giving people praise builds their belief that they can achieve more and raises the energy required to do that. It is important to remember that all praise must be authentic, specific and deserved.

Blame free: children cannot learn to walk without falling over. Imagine what would happen if the child was scolded every time it fell – it would stop trying and all the potential that might have come out of the ability to walk would be lost.

When mistake are treated as learning experiences, individuals are motivated to try again and learn from them. Blame stops them in their tracks and sometimes creates a belief that achievement is impossible and not worth trying for.

Solutions focus: When we dwell on a problem, it seems to be bigger and drains our energy. When we focus on the solution, the problem appears smaller and we find more energy to deal with it.

Challenge: Most of us like to be challenged and stretched within a supportive and encouraging environment. In coaching, we encourage people to set their goals as high as possible, because we tend to impose limits when setting goals for ourselves.

Action: Coaching uncovers new perspectives and awareness. Coaches gain new insight, which leads to more options, which in turn lead to a desire to take action and make change.

Trust: Without trust between coach and coachee, no coaching will take place. Trust is pivotal to the coaching relationship and is a common reason why some managers can successfully coach their reports and other cannot.

Awareness: This is the most common outcome that coaching delivers and many of the benefits that the coachee encounters arise from this. There is a misconception that coaching is about pushing people into action. The opposite is really the case and yet the result is that, through their own new insights, coaches identify their goals and take challenging actions.

Self directed learning: This is the core principle of coaching and behaving in a coaching style. Coaches believe that everyone has their own best answers inside them and that their job is to provide a space to draw them out.

Adding to the confusion around the term ‘coaching’ is a proliferation of categories, such as executive, business, career or personal coaching, all based on the above principles. ‘Life coaching’ is less in favour now as it has been used to describe forms of personal help that do not apply those principles.

The process of coaching remains the same regardless of the context. Some coaches tend to emerge from a psychology background and other from business or education; all benefit by being on a continual learning path during which they can acquire skills, models and tools form other disciplines that will enhance their practices.

Other specialities have developed such a positive psychology, neuro linguistic programming, appreciative inquiry, clean language and mindfulness.

Overall, it is easier on the brain to accept and rejoice in the proliferation of ways of helping human beings be happier, more fulfilled and more productive, than to try to identify a hierarchy of who discovered what first. The field continues to grow, reshaping and redefining itself all the time.