Challenging Coaching summary

The newborn coaching profession was able to derive its methods and ethos from the theoretically established and practically proven foundations of psychotherapy and counselling. These predecessors have influenced coaching down to its core, and coaching literature widely agrees on three support-orientated principles that are emphasized as fundamentally important:

But while psychotherapy has gone through many paradigm shifts since its creation, and has constantly updated its core principles, coaching still holds on to its founding principles. Are these still up to date? Or is it time for change?

We’ve now learned about the origins of traditional coaching. But what if its fundamental principles are flawed to their very core? What if these principles need to be challenged?

FACTS coaching believes that traditional coaching’s core principles hinder progress.

Have you ever had a teacher who became a good friend? Who filled your lessons with laughter and joy? That’s great – but for the sake of your progress, it might have been better if you had felt challenged rather than entertained, and had seriously tackled your weaknesses instead of focusing on fun. The same logic can be applied for coaching.

FACTS-based coaching aims to find the right balance of challenge and support, in contrast to traditional coaching, which focuses too much on support. This lack of challenge leads to limited action, because taking risks could mean disrupting the cosy coach–client bond.

There are three main reasons why traditional coaches don’t provide honest feedback:

1. Feedback might have been experienced as judgmental. We’ve all felt angry when someone has criticized us, which can make us reluctant to make suggestions of our own.

During the oil spill crisis in Louisiana, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward found himself at the eye of a political storm. Giving his testimony before the US Congress, he distanced himself from the company’s mistakes and struggled to recall any of the events he was asked about. His behavior provoked fury among not only the direct victims of the oil spill, but also the public at large.

This kind of behavior has led society to demand greater transparency and accountability on a governmental and economic level. Political parties and major public debates have even formed based on these issues – for example, the Pirate Party and Snowden’s NSA revelations both revolve around this topic.

In May 1961, US President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and proclaimed that the United States “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” But a traditional coach would never have agreed with Kennedy on setting this goal.

Why?

Alexander Karelin felt pretty relaxed. At the 2000 Olympic Games he was the three-time defending champion of Greco-Roman wrestling, and had never lost a single match in his 15 years of international competition. His opponent in the finals, Rulon Gardner, had never finished higher than fifth in any international wrestling competition, and was arguably perceived as the easiest opponent Karelin had ever to face in a final match. But although Alexander Karelin had won 887 wrestling matches, he lost this one. There was no cheating, no injury, no bad luck – nothing out of the ordinary.

So why did he lose?

We’ve all heard of the bank employees who took down the whole bank. Nick Leeson is one of them. A former broker at Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank, he earned Barings £10,000,000 in his first year as general manager of future markets, which translated into a £130,000 bonus for himself. Motivated by his bonuses, Leeson started investing in increasingly risky trades – which led to the demise of the entire bank. By the end of 1995, his investments totalled a loss of £827,000,000, and Barings had to declare bankruptcy.

What went wrong?