John G. Agno is a recovering management consultant. At some point it seemed to me that solutions for client problems seldom became a permanent fix...especially, when leadership blind spots prevented seeing why the problems arose in the first place. So, I began doing more business coaching, helping executives and owners fix their own business problems.
Consulting is about "telling:" applying analytical brain power to gather data, hypothesize alternative solutions and present the best solution to the client. So what is professional coaching and how does it differ from consulting?
Download and listen to this MP3 recording of a recent interview of Coach Agno for the answer to that question.
Executive coach David Peck, founder of San Francisco-based Leadership Unleashed, says, "Coaching is asking. 'What are you finding most effective and least effective about your situation? In what ways are you getting in your own way?' Telling people what to do shuts them up and shuts them down. A little bit of coaching goes a long way toward getting them to do what you want them to do, and it's sustainable over time."
Looking back, Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005), had a huge impact in establishing management as a discipline and built the foundation for coaching as a leadership skill and practice. "He approached consulting out of his profound wisdom and insight," says Ron Daniel, Managing Director of McKinsey & Company (1976-1988). "Peter let his ideas speak for themselves and was a very laid-back individual. He was very wise, his ideas were very forward-looking, and he was a good listener, despite the fact that he liked to talk and articulate ideas."
Jon Katzenbach, a former director of McKinsey & Company, says, "Drucker was trying to stimulate thinking and get you to think about questions that you had not thought about. Drucker was really trying to stimulate management thinking." Drucker went down the road of thinking more about the frontline workers and the knowledge workers; how you get energy, productivity and creativity out of a bunch of employees. He made us realize that managers were professionals whose job it was to bring collective value out of people.
Warren Bennis, distinguished professor of business administration and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, tells a story about a conversation he had with Drucker about 25 years ago, "I asked him, 'Peter, off the top of your head, if you had to design ideal experiences in education for someone you were mentoring, what kinds of things would you.....?' He interrupted me and said, "Oh, my dear Warren, you violate Drucker's first principle, which is that there's no such thing as 'ideal' or 'good.' The question is: 'Good for what?' And then: "Good for whom?'"
"He really did believe in the idea of individual autonomy and honoring individual differences. He was very much a pragmatist. His primary question was 'Good for what?' And this is what led to his discussion about management by objective. It's all about the result. It's all about what it is you want. It's all about purpose. That's the distinguishing feature of Drucker. Everything else is a footnote."
Today, consulting and executive education schools recognize the power of coaching and the need to integrate it into analytically based consulting and management practices. Now everyone appreciates that business solutions are not sticky when the consultant walks away with the knowledge of why the problem arose in the first place.
Source: Consulting, January/February 2006
John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership ($2.99 ebook formats, $20.87
paperback edition)