CoachCultureSAMPLE

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Coach Culture
I like to think of it as a co-created partnership where
the coach and the client are working together to achieve
the client’s goals. They’re equal partners, so there’s no
subordinate-superior relationship. The coach is an expert
in the coaching conversation. The clients are the experts
of themselves. The coach doesn’t need to know anything
about the client’s subject field—their job is to ask questions
to reveal the client’s own wisdom.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT VERSUS COACHING
If I am an equal as a coach, how can I be an effective
leader? The coaching conversation is one that is appropriate
for aspirational and open-ended thinking. The
leader/manager conversations that involve a directive,
usually referred to as performance management, are
not coaching conversations. A leader can move back
and forth between roles or simply incorporate the
coaching skills within the conversation. The important
piece is that when coaching, the coach does not have
an agenda; in performance management, we do. We’ll
cover this in more detail in Chapter 10.
LEADER’S ROLE