Where did business coaching come from?

WHERE DID BUSINESS COACHING COME FROM? Coaching in the workplace is not new. Most people associate coaching with sport.

You might be very surprised to know that the roots of business coaching go back to the Inner Game system developed by Timothy Gallwey back in the 1970’s. In 1971 Tim Gallwey (the founder of the Inner Game method) was working as a tennis coach. He had previously captained the tennis team at Harvard University, and he was taking a sabbatical before starting his career (in other words, getting a proper job!) He noticed that when he left students to practice on their own, they would often find ways to correct faults or develop a new method on their own without his help. He began to realise that when people were given the time to carefully analyse what they were doing, they began to coach themselves. Gallwey started to develop an alternative approach to coaching his students. This was based on helping students become very self-aware and raising the awareness of their own body movements, the motion of the ball and the relationship of racket to ball. By using specific awareness-generating questions he was able to get his students to become conscious of exactly what their body was doing at each level of activity in the sport. He realised that in every person there are two Selves. Self One provides a running commentary of everything that Self Two does. Self One’s commentary is usually a critical one. For example: “you are going to hit the ball in the net” “you know you can’t control a slice spin” And more damaging… “you’ll never be any good at this” and so on.

Self One reminds Self Two of all its previous failings and faults and represents all the negative baggage that we all carry around with us and plays to all our self-limiting beliefs. This creates an inner tension that gets in the way of releasing the true capability or potential of the player. Gallwey created the Inner Game equation: Performance = potential – interference (inner voice) Effectively, removing the mental baggage or interference will enable the individual to perform to the very best of their potential. Some of the students of the Inner Game asked Gallwey if the same ideas could be applied to work situations. The first company to try the Inner Game method was AT&T where Gallwey was asked to improve the quality of customer service, in particular the courtesy of customer service representatives. He got operatives to think of the customer’s voice as the tennis ball and asked them to give it qualities of tonality - loud, soft, angry or nervous - and then to think about the tone of their own voice. They were then asked to rank these qualities on a scale of 1 to 10. The impact of the Inner Game approach was radical and immediate. Customer Service staff completely changed their view of customers - and enjoyed their work far more. All because they were thinking about their work as a game. So, how do you choose a coach out of the many offerings available?

Coaching is only effective when both coach and student can develop a positive and empathetic relationship between themselves. So you must choose a coach whom you get along with. Coaching is a deeply personal relationship and must be underpinned by trust and security. All accredited coaching relationships are governed by strict codes of conduct which demand a safe space for you to develop your skills.

So you should first look see if your coach is qualified and accredited by one of the global coaching organisations. The ICF (International Coaching Federation) is the largest global accreditation body. To be accredited by the ICF, a coach must have gained a professional qualification certificate from a credible institution like a Business School and also undertaken a number of paid coaching hours with clients. The next step is to look at the relevant background experience of your coach. Have they actually worked in industry? What roles and positions have they had? Do they have any specialist skills which are relevant to you? Check out their website or LinkedIn profile to see what other people have to say about them. Why not contact some of their previous clients and ask them for a reference?