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Challenging Coaching summary

Name: Challenging Coaching
Rating: 4.4 (79 reviews)
Author: John Blakey and Ian Day

John Blakey and Ian Day

Going Beyond Traditional Coaching to Face the FACTS

4.4 (79 ratings)

22 mins

Brief summary

Challenging Coaching by John Blakey and Ian Day offers an alternative approach to coaching that challenges traditional methods and promotes questioning, disobedience, and authenticity. It encourages coaches to focus on creating a safe and supportive environment in which clients can challenge themselves and grow.

Topics

Coaching

Table of Contents

Challenging Coaching
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me: Find out why coaching needs an update for the twenty-first century.

Coaching became popular in the 1980s as a direct consequence of the “war over talent.” As the economy became more knowledge based, the development and retention of top talent became necessary for success. So companies started hiring coaches to ensure that their employees reached their full potential.

But have you ever asked yourself: from where did coaching appear?

Coaching developed from existing support-oriented professions like counselling and psychotherapy that are based on certain core-principles, such as being non-directive, and helping clients find their own solutions. These principles are effective for helping people in need of care, but are they effective in the case of coaching?

Challenging Coaching argues that this approach might have led self-obsessed financial traders to focus only on their own personal rewards – with catastrophic results for their companies, and even for the financial market as a whole.

So what’s wrong with the old approach?

Traditional coaching tends to fuel leaders’ egos with praise, rather than challenging them with honest feedback. And instead of focusing on accountability and the bigger picture, traditional coaches just help the client fulfill their personal goals, and stand back when they see their client breaking their own values.

Challenging Coaching believes this has to change.

In the following blinks, you’ll find out:

how traditional coaching works,
what its original inspirations were,
how those roots are holding it back, and
what a better alternative looks like: the FACTS approach, which moves away from myth-based coaching to a model that actually works.

Traditional coaching’s original influences were mainly support oriented.

Even though it might seem to have existed forever, the coaching profession is actually still in its teenage years. When it first emerged in the 1980s, it was still very much a toddler, and easily influenced by its older peers – like psychotherapy and counselling.

This influence means that coaching shares a core foundation with support-oriented counselling disciplines where the client gets unconditional positive backing.

For example, active listening and powerful questioning are the two skill sets that are fundamentally required for counselling, mentoring, therapy – and coaching. These skills are considered necessary for developing an understanding of a client’s needs – which is the starting point of all progress – and helping them find their own answers, which is key to self-determination, a major value of support-oriented disciplines.

But when coaching was born, it knew none of all this. So, in search of orientation, coaching took its biggest inspiration from person-centered therapy.

Person-centered therapy was developed by Carl Rogers, one of the most influential therapists of the twentieth century, renowned for his humanist methodology. His non-directive approach is based on the fundamental belief that a client already possesses the vast resources necessary for development. The therapist's role is to help the client find their own solutions by creating a safe space for growth using empathy (seeing through another’s eyes), congruence (being completely open and honest) and unconditional, non-judgmental positive regard. These principles have become the foundation for traditional coaching models.

For example, the popular Co-Active Coaching model significantly overlaps with Carl Rogers’ principles: the client is considered naturally resourceful, the agenda comes from the client, and the relationship is an alliance designed for the client’s growth.

Another example is the well-known GROW model, which also shares its main assumptions with Rogers: The client is considered able to find their own solutions, empathy is focused to create a safe space, and understanding is developed through non-directive questioning.

This support-orientated foundation led to three core coaching principles.

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?

These core principles limit progress and bear great risks.

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.

FACTS-based coaching is fundamentally more effective than traditional coaching.

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.

F: Coaches must overcome their fear of giving Feedback.

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.

A: Clients must be held Accountable for their commitments.

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.

C: Courageous Goals are crucial for thriving in the current business environment.

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?

T: Tension is essential for optimal performance.

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?

S: System Thinking helps prevent individuals bringing down entire companies.

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?

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What is Challenging Coaching about?

Challenging Coaching argues that traditional coaching is limited by its therapeutic origins. Blakey and Day introduce a better alternative for the twenty-first century business environment: the FACTS approach. Its emphasis on demanding challenging Feedback, Accountability, Courageous Goals, Tension and Systems Thinking drives a client to achieve their full potential.

Best quote from Challenging Coaching

I love it when you challenge me, so challenge me more!

—John Blakey and Ian Day

Who should read Challenging Coaching?

Anyone interested in coaching or being coached
Anyone interested in peak performance

About the Author

John Blakey and Ian Day both have extensive experience coaching board-level leaders all around the world.

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