Executive Coaching - A Guide For The HR Professional.pdf

98 EXECUTIVE COACHING
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Experienced coaches will have a good sense of when the timeline
is stretching out and will dig into the causes. It could be
the client’s workload, but it could be lots of other things too. If the
assignment in fact turns out to be more difficult or a bigger one than
was thought, recontracting is in order. If the cause is “resistance” of
some kind, then it’s up to the coach and the client to deal with it.
Scope Creep
Scope creep is a different matter. Coaching differs from other kinds
of consulting in that the focus is entirely on one individual. It is obvious,
of course, that the individual client is embedded in a web of relationships
within the organization and elsewhere. It is not uncommon
for some of those other people to become engaged in the client’s
coaching process in more than a passing manner.
Most often those other people are the client’s direct reports
and/or boss. What began as individual coaching slowly shifts into
team building, conflict mediation, or some other form of professional
service. The initial contract might have set limits about this
kind of “scope creep,” but most do not.
Depending on how extensive the additional work may be, the
coach may simply incorporate it into the original assignment. However,
the additional work may require a greater commitment of time
or resources, as well as exceed the boundaries of the original agreement.
Even if the coach does extend the assignment in this manner,
it should be done with the informed agreement of all the
stakeholders.
As a matter of good practice, we would encourage coaches to
stick to the original deal. When that work is done, then a new proposal
can be put forth to outline the additional work.
Professional Limits
Professional limits represent another kind of boundary that coaches
should be thinking about. Coaches usually have a reasonably broad
repertoire of competencies, but no coach knows how to handle
every kind of client!