Coaches Risk Sidelining - BRW Letter to the Editor

By James Mason, Mindshop, July 2011 (Published in July 20th 2011 edition of Business Review Weekly) 

"Coach class" (brw.com.au, July 1) raises many critical issues about the perceived growth and quality of the business coaching industry in Australia. Over the past two years we have observed factors that would point to an industry struggling with an image problem and potentially even declining in size as the GFC pushes struggling coaches back into full-time employment.

Many good advisors who are coaching or advising don't refer to the fact they are "coaching" so as not to be pidgeon holed by the client as just full of hot air.

However, there will always be a role for quality coaches, facilitators, consultants within an organisation as issues such as strategy development, implementation and people/political issues will always be in existance and require the assistance of an outside, impartial voice.

To stay relevant, business coaches need to adapt their approaches to doing business continuously by being clearly focused on the outcomes their clients are seeking to achieve rather than being distracted by the complexity of their processes, tools or diagnostics.

When you sit with the most successful business coaches they genuinely listen, have true empathy, have the battle scars to prove they know what they are talking about and can simplify the complexity of the problems or opportunities being discussed. The poor quality operators all do the complete opposite. 

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