Hosted by APECS.
Many people in the executive coaching industry support John Whitmore’s view that “coaching requires expertise in coaching but not in the subject to hand”. That view certainly has a strong influence on the coaching training sector. But it is interesting that the buyers of executive coaching do not always agree that coaches’ roles should be limited to facilitating clients’ self-learning and be strictly non-directive.
CPOs, HRDs and L&D directors often say that they like the coaches they select as potential matches for their senior colleagues to have had direct experience of working in senior executive positions themselves. They feel that sort of prior experience is important in giving coaches the credibility they need to be ‘thinking partners’ or sounding boards for their Exco and board members.
In this session we will look at some research published in 2023 on how coaches’ prior career experience can influence their relationships with their clients and explore participants’ own experience of the phenomenon.