Executive Coaching - A Guide For The HR Professional.pdf

34 EXECUTIVE COACHING
............................
agreement on the following topics:
• What criteria to use for coach selection. Using some
of the criteria outlined above, you and the client can
determine which factors are important and how a
particular coach meets the desired criteria.
• How to proceed in meeting and screening coaches.
After you have found one or more potential coaches, it
is likely that you as the HR professional will conduct
the initial interview. You will need to determine at
what point the client enters into the process and
weighs in with an opinion.
• How the final decision will be made. This may work
differently depending on the level of the client in the
organization and the culture of the organization. After
consideration and discussion of all relevant criteria,
both you and the client must have confidence in the
coach you have selected and expect that the investment
of time and resources will have a successful
outcome.
Things to Avoid in a Coach
Coaches aren’t perfect, of course. There are some danger signs, however,
that are good predictors of potential problems. They tend to fall
into two categories—how the coach works and who the coach is.
Some coaches have settled on “the one right way” to do coaching,
and neither wish to nor can use alternatives. This kind of
inflexibility opens up possibilities for disputes about how, when, or
what needs to be done. Rigidity of style is a matter of degree, of
course. Sometimes the coach really needs to take a firm position on
a topic. But if it happens too often, the problem may be more with
the coach than the client.