The Genesis of Coaching:
Where it all came from

by Don Brown

Like most practicing managers, a lot has being asked of you over the years; supervisor, leader, manager, mentor, and now coach. Organizations have desperately tried to leverage you, a single limited resource, toward multiple (and sometimes conflicting) performance development roles on the job. The problem - if you Google the word “coach”, you get back 159 million hits! Perhaps you can better meet organizational expectations given a clearer definition, and a workable understanding of where the role of “coach” came from.

Coaching someone was not long ago just a euphemism for a last chance effort to save someone before you let them go. Being “coached” was often a scarlet letter you wore when your performance slipped below acceptable levels.  However, as the term is most commonly applied today I would propose the definition as offered by Morgan, Harkins and Goldsmith:

“…how to take good people and make them the best they can be” ¹

Coaching today no longer carries the stigma of non-performance, quite the opposite.  In many organizations it is the most successful individuals deemed worthy of coaching.

But, where did the concept (as we now understand it) come from? The role of coach has grown out of three unique phenomena within western culture; clinical practice, sports psychology, and the personal growth movement.

·    In clinical psychological practice, therapy moved in the 1970s from the deep understanding of why there was dysfunction, to “BSFT” (“Brief Solution-Focused Therapy”) characterized by goal setting for short-term change, future orientation and client-centered responsibility for change – all hallmarks of coaching as you would find practiced today

·    With the advent of sports psychology, applying clinical practices to the highest levels of athletic performance, another facet of today’s organizational coach was cut.  Tim Gallwey put it best; “…the opponent in one’s head is greater than the one on the other side of the net!”² These concepts have all transferred to the realm of business-based coaching (and many astute athletic coaches have made far more money on the lecture circuit than they ever did on the hardwood or gridiron).

·    The personal growth movement, while finding its birth in the 1950’s with Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking³, blossomed from the 60s through today with countless popular works espousing the coaching principles of personal awareness and responsibility.

The good news is – as a coach on the job today, it isn’t all on your shoulders.  The “coachee” owns the responsibility for his or her growth and development…and you are a lot better prepared to take on a role in which you can communicate what you can and can’t do to help.


References
¹ The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching – Morgan, Harkins & Goldsmith
² The Inner Game of Tennis – Tim Gallwey
³ The Power of Positive Thinking – Norman Vincent Peale