What do you think of the coaching - consulting divide?
I call myself coach, mentor, trainer. So far, I have never called myself consultant. But now I am rethinking.
Here is why I am rethinking –
The Coaching vs. Consultancy Divide – Have you ever heard of it before?
In a recent session organised by Global Team Coaching Institute, Peter Hawkins elaborated the possible roles a team coach can play in an engagement with the coachee(s). He emphasised the fact that these roles are fluid and can fluctuate, rather than clearly staying on one side.
For me, this was a relief. As someone who has adopted coaching as a profession after 30 years of corporate life, it does not come easy to go into a state of only asking questions and withholding any and all information that I draw from years of experience.
I have never been comfortable with the rigid structure of traditional coaching that is built on probing the coachee.
One question put by Peter Hawkins several times during the session hits hard – “How can you use models and maps and frameworks as a coach? Isn't that you becoming a consultant, aren’t you stepping into teaching the client?"
I think that part of the problem around all that debate is that we're stuck in a paradigm that many of us were trained in, but no longer works (story of our lives!).
Many of us may have been trained as traditional coaches, where we were taught to focus on the individual's agenda.
The steadfast rules-
We must only ask open questions.
The only expertise we should bring into the room is about the process, not about the content.
My way out of it, has been to make it explicit to my coachees, when I am stepping out of the traditional coaching role into a state of mentoring or even consulting.
In one ongoing relationship, I have found myself contributing from the two ends – this is so much more than what traditional coaching defines and encompasses. I have space to be so much more authentic and real. I do feel obliged to make the coachee aware of when I am playing which role, to avoid any resulting confusion.
The caveat of “Leave your experience outside the door. Be agenda free” has always flummoxed me. If you recognise this statement, you probably have gone through a similar traditional coach training program. I never resonated with this. How do I leave myself at the door? Isn’t it precisely why I am me that the coachee expects some kind of engagement with me?
This brings me to what I eventually end up with. I ask. But I also tell. I am quite simply switching gears from being a coach to a mentor to a consultant and sometimes to a person who has seen different aspects of life, not just work.
Peter’s session has helped me put a name to this practice -
Collaborative Inquiry: Discovering insights together
This approach suggested by Peter Hawkins in the session, focuses on collaborative success of the community. It’s not about the team leader or the team member(s), it’s about the team future and it’s about discovering requisites for that future.
And we discover it together.
Peter Hawkins uses a very relevant phrase - "We should never know better or never know first, we should discover together".
And how do we go about it?
Peter Hawkins talks about how we use our observation, not just observing team meetings, but observing what happens at the reception, and at the front door and at the back door. In my engagements, I try to be as future focused as possible. Impossibly though, the more you talk about the future, conversations keep leading back to the past. I have learnt to share my learnings along the way too and keep nudging them towards what they expect from tomorrow.
The past conversations give us great data and helps with discovering the future.
Peter says – “We don't have to repeat what's already in the system and then maybe come on to using questionnaires.”
After Peter’s introduction to collaborative inquiry and team coaching and what coaching can look like there, I am wondering when the coaching community will open up accordingly in the 1:1 business coaching space.