Executive coaching is becoming big business, particularly in the United States, and it’s catching on here. One site I came across suggests there are now as many as 10,000 full-time coaches in the US, up from just 2000 in 1996. It predicts that the number will reach 50,000 in another five years. That said, it is difficult to find good quality websites on the subject, or at least ones that weren’t hard selling the services of specific coach.
Few sites considered the benefits of using coach or specified what overall executive career enhancement coaches might deliver to the corporate performance landscape. To overcome the problem I broadened the search to include sites related to mentoring.
The difference? Well you can read more about that in our feature story on the topic this month (page 34), but in general terms coaching is about equipping the individual to deal with career and life issues, while the mentor helps executives solve specific industry or job problems for the individual and for the organisation.
One site defined coaching as tool for “understanding and tapping intrinsic motivation, directing through questioning, and allowing people to take responsibility for their own performance”. Coaching is an industry still in its infancy but hopefully the sites identified will get you going on the topic.
www.venturecoach.com This was one of the better sites. Venturecoach claims to be “your source for becoming an inspirational leader”. Well, perhaps in part, though it is also your site for meeting coach Steve Robbins and, no doubt, his hopes of securing work from you. Nevertheless, Robbins is one of the few coaches to provide website with some general content on range of leadership issues that people can access without paying. In the resources section there is huge range of materials covering everything from “life skills and life balance” to practical ideas about “starting your business” or “finding finance”. Robbins’ site is generous offering lots of coaching advice especially for company start-ups in the technology sector – apparently his particular area of expertise. Definitely my pick of the sites presented here.
www.executive-coaching.com Another commercial offering but I include this site for those of you who can’t resist tackling personal assessment questionnaires. On executive-coaching you can undertake “self test” to establish “where you are in certain areas of your life”. For example, I checked whether I was headed for job burnout and filed for month’s leave effective immediately on the basis of what I found. Of course, the site also recommends I see coach…
www.corporatecoach.co.uk Corporatecoach is the offering of the Brefi Group, UK-based consultancy, facilitation, executive coaching and training organisation of 20 years standing. No bells and whistles with this site, it’s tidy, easy to use and quite interesting. There is the predictable explanatory preamble which suggests that coaching is really “just-in-time learning” and all about “discovering and achieving your potential”. But after that it offers free interesting newsletter service, list of books to read on the subjects of change management, coaching and training and, again for the questionnaire-driven individual, free analysis under five different questionnaire options including personal effectiveness, effective directorship, managing communications, managing people and understanding the corporate culture of your organisation. Worth visit to see what you might ask of local coach and to bone up on the topic.
www.businessmentor.org.nz As the very helpful person on the other end of the phone explained when I called Business in the Community to get their website address: “our site is pretty basic one but in another three or four weeks we’ll have much better one”. This site is the electronic access to the services of New Zealand’s largest mentoring organisation, the charitable trust-driven BIC. The site was, in early January when I checked it, very basic. But don’t forget the address. BIC has around 1500 mentors who, as the site explains, are “coaches not consultants”. Never mind. According to BIC, “mentors act as sounding board and walk alongside” their clients to “support, develop, stimulate and challenge” them. I won’t critique the site till the new one goes up but take look to get the idea.
Damon Birchfield is an Auckland-based freelance writer.
Email: [email protected]
