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When executive coaching goes wrong

When done badly, executive coaching can severely damage an employee’s development, finds Professor Konstantin Korotov from ESMT European School of Management and Technology. He identifies five situations to watch out for.

1. The coach is just a messenger for the company

Coaching is used by the business or a manager to ‘deliver a message’ disguised as support. It’s a coward’s way of giving feedback.

2. The coach is psychologically abusive

The coach imposes what they believe to be ‘the right way’, unconsciously trying to resolve long-term issues with power, authority, and acceptance.

3. The coach simply can’t help

The employee may need sponsoring or visibility, but gets coaching. They may even need counselling or psychological support, though this isn’t noticed by the coach.

4. The coach encourages dependency on coaching

The executive gets increasingly dependent on meetings to explore their choices and seek support in their decisions. The coach fails to notice, or worse, helps it to grow.

5. Coach imposes their own values

The coach may become privy to the things that the manager takes for granted and never doubts, but they have their own strong set of values that they work to impose instead.

“Low barriers to enter the coaching profession and high effort to meet one’s own needs, biases, and choices on the part of the coach may produce situations in which coaching hurts,“ says Professor Korotov, Director of the Center for Leadership Development Research at ESMT, who engages executive coaches in his programmes and runs the annual ESMT Coaching Colloquium dealing with challenges in leadership coaching.

“These situations can cause employees to stay as far away from coaching as possible, but there are many great professionals in the field who constantly analyse their coaching practice, receive supervision, and engage in self-development.“

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ESMT European School of Management and Technology .