Coach Coach Hota Hai

I am currently reading Sun After Dark by Pico Iyer. He writes about the Dalai Lama who is considered to be the spiritual Coach to a nation and to many world leaders. He says though the Dalai Lama is "increasingly famous as a speaker, his real gift, you see as soon as you begin talking to him, is for listening." That ability to listen makes him a true Coach. The world leaders listen to him because he in turn is a world leader who listens.

Organizations want to see their managers become one, each employee wants to become one and the parents want to be one to their kids. While one half of the world is looking for an effective Coach, the other half is trying to reach that sweet spot and proclaim themselves as experts while the fog is still thick. Every HR professional is not the de-facto Coach of the organization. They ought to be - but in all likelihood they are not equipped to be. One test is to ask the person to differentiate between the role of a Mentor and that of a Coach. Some organizations use the term Mentor and Coach interchangeably. No wonder they say if you don’t know where you are going, you can’t get lost.

So all those who believed that you were the first Mentors to walk the earth, sorry, the prize goes to Odyssesus. According to Greek mythology Odysseus entrusted his son Telemachus to guide the young man into adulthood in the absence of his father. A Coach is different from a Mentor. While Coaching is task related, Mentoring is about life itself. The role of a Mentor is to link up all the roles of the mentee - as an employee, as a parent, as a spouse, a sibling etc and then identify the patterns of dysfunctional behavior that the individual displays. A Mentor guides you through the journey of life. The reward is learning and insights for both. The Mentor is best selected by the individual himself or herself rather than assigned by the organization. So when organizations launch a "Be Mentor to a Young Mind" campaign, they need to leave the choice of the Mentor to the "Young Mind".

The Coach needs to be able to diagnose various group processes that are happening in the organization and craft their interventions accordingly. The measure of success of a Coach is to finally make a difference to the functioning of the individual and the organization. The executive Coach when successful will impact the performance of the executive. While the Human Resources folks will hand over the 360 degree reports and other state secrets to the Coach to get a headstart in identifying areas of development, the main deliverable for the Coach should be to help the individual learn new processes. There is always the danger that the Coach becomes yet another manager in the organization because of the power this relationship has. So periodically remind them that the football Coach teaches new techniques, based on the insights they have about the psychological makeup of the players they coach. Their job is not to take the ball during a tough moment and score the goal themselves, no matter how tempting that is.