Excellent coaching can only produce benefits and unfold its potential when properly implemented and used by the person(s) being coached. A slight lack of integrity and quality in a coaching initiative may lead to a significant loss of trust, consistency or functionality and bring about the failure of a coaching program.
So what is professional coaching?Download and listen to this MP3 recording of a recent interview of Coach John Agno for the answer to that question.
Does the price of coaching indicate quality?
The price of a provider of coaching services may have little to do with their professional qualifications and ethics. The key steps or elements of a suitable coaching plan should be the following:
1. Identify and define your company-specific integrity and quality standards for coaching.
2. Get and/or develop suitable people to meet the requirements properly, monitor integrity and quality effectively and carefully.
3. Intervene and act promptly where the standards are not fulfilled and ensured.
It is particularly important to create a learning atmosphere where people, who are being confidentially coached, are encouraged and feel comfortable to talk openly with their professional coach about their setbacks, problems and concerns in order to allow their perceptions to evolve.
No manager or executive within an organization wants their boss or the human resource (HR) department to know their personal weaknesses or concerns. That is why the best solution is to engage an "outside professional coach" whose integrity and ethics will maintain the confidentiality of conversations with the person-being-coached. It is especially important for HR departments and top management to be aware of the risks of breeches of confidentiality and possible conflicts of roles/interests in the context of utilizing "internal coaches" within an organization.
Setting clear rules, in particular regarding confidentiality, and ensuring a safe and respectful learning environment in a coaching program is essential to maintain trust of participants. Top management must respect the confidentiality/privacy of personal and performance coaching and not abuse coaching (e.g. by telling an "internal coach" to manipulate an 'uncomfortable' employee in a certain way).
Source: Frank Bresser: The global business guide for the successful use of coaching in organizations