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Coaching - An Emerging Profession
Anjali Aroul, Instructional Designer, The Business Workshop

Every week Betty Mahalik* makes a 30-minute phone call to her "reality checkpoint" - a professional coach who helps her balance competing interests to keep her life on track. A vice president in a leading multinational, Mahalik said she sought out her coach, a year ago after feeling her life was growing out of control. Mahalik says. "This has enabled me to enjoy the journey and reach for new heights and destinations that I wanted to pursue," said Mahalik, who calls herself a "recovering workaholic perfectionist."

What Betty is doing is no longer considered uncommon. Until a few years ago, the word "coach" would have implied the person who coached the school/college team to perform better on the field. This no longer holds true! Coaching as a profession has spilled over from the sports field into the business field. An increasing number of people are turning to professional coaches to get ahead harmoniously, in their personal as well as professional life. This is particularly applicable to people in senior positions, who have a greater need for a flexible and tailor made programme suited to them.

So how exactly did Betty's coach help her ? Well, first he helped her analyse and set her priorities. Once this was done (this was the tough part!), it wasn't very difficult for him to help Betty reach her goals by providing support in terms of the skills and attitudes that she needed to focus on. Specifically, the coach helped create a context where her priorities and goals fell into place.

In this case and in most others as well, the coach plays several roles. But chiefly, he does the following:
      ·   helps set achievable personal and professional goals,
      ·   helps to focus his/her activities in order to achieve these goals, and
      ·   provides support in terms of skills and knowledge required to meet these goals.
In short, a coach plays the multiple roles of a teacher, mentor, guide, advisor and friend all rolled in one.

As more and more people are discovering, having a personal coach has many benefits. Some of these are:
      · A sense of motivation and being accountable to one's own self,
      · Increased self-esteem and confidence,
      · A sense of increased commitment to personal and professional life, and
      · A more creative approach towards problem-solving.

This is what Ian Smith** , CEO of the placement firm, Asia-Pacific Consulting, in Hong Kong has to say about his experience of hiring a coach: "I have learned to better motivate my employees and our team is delivering incredible results. The more the business grew, the more I had to deal with subjects I had never heard of before". Ian had difficulty dealing with problems that were alien to him. Because of the coaching in the last 18 months, he has learned to treat his employees more sensitively.

Individual coaching as an emerging profession, is slowly but surely gaining prominence in the developed markets. This can be gauged from the fact that the demand for coaches has doubled over the last year in the United States alone. Going by the current trend, it should come as no surprise if coaching takes the corporate world by storm in the next millennium. Will it be your dream job too?

*   Example taken from http://www.coachreferral.com/success.html

** Example taken from http://www.http://www.coachreferral.com/success.html

Graphic done by Himani