Benchmark Learning's Blog

Coaching is usually thought of as a process whereby a coach helps someone develop their skills in a particular professional domain; for example, presentation skills or conflict management.  This approach is very helpful for many executives, especially when coupled with a leadership assessment to determine areas of strength or weakness.

However, many executives score very high on leadership assessments and even their lowest scored competencies are quite high.  Therefore, conventional coaching that focuses on developmental needs is not appropriate.

Many executives, though, can use a coach's help when working through specific problems or issues.  Often, the executive has no one in the organization that can be privvy to confidential information regarding a decision or issue being considered.  Or, an executive is sometimes too close to the situation to identify or analyze the alternatives to be considered.

I have found that this type of coaching, which I call issues-based coaching, is very beneficial to executives.  It gives the executive a safe forum to brainstorm solutions with a coach.  It enables the coach to act as an objective commentator to help the executive explore all the options to be considered.

I will present more in issues-based coaching in upcoming blog entries, including how it works and potential pitfalls for the coach and the executive.