Is that coaching or not? What is coaching anyway? Every Olympic team and athlete has at least one coach. Every Pro Tour player has a coach. Every Premiership Team has a head coach, same for Championship teams. How come?
In many businesses and industrial sectors having a top coach is worn as a badge of honour, though not so it seems in the construction industry. An executive who had gotten himself a coach was told by a peer – ‘that’s not a good look, you’re supposed to know what you are doing’. And some of the execs I have coached over the years have told me they would not reveal our working relationship, concerned about how that reflects on them.
It seems coaching is not widespread in the construction industry.
I think there are many reasons for this, the main one being people don’t know what coaching is including some that call themselves coaches. I even come across HR people who you’d think would know but don’t – one said to me “Johnny is bloody useless; he really needs a good dose of coaching!”.
In an attempt to raise awareness, I am going to set out here what coaching is and is not so you can take responsibility and act accordingly.
Is:
Is not
How to find an experienced and qualified coach
Now we better understand what coaching is, is it OK to work with anyone who calls themselves a coach? I’d say, no it’s not. You need to find an experienced and qualified coach, that you get along with and trust.
Firstly, experienced. They need to be operating at your level. If you are CEO then, someone who works with C suite executives.
Qualified? If you are a recent graduate civil engineer you are academically qualified. You then put in seven years of hard work and gain chartered status – Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, MICE. You are now professionally qualified.
That’s what I mean by “qualified”, professionally qualified. Someone who has done a coaching course at a business school might be academically qualified but as yet they are not professionally qualified.
For me, becoming a professionally qualified coach took longer and was harder than becoming MICE (MICE was and remains massive for me, as does my FCIOB) and I am a much better coach for having gone through the credentialing process and done the work.
I’d recommend you look for a credentialed coach rather than a graduate. I am credentialed (PCC) with The International Coaching Federation (ICF) – “The Gold Standard for Coaching”
Having found such a coach, seek to have a few sessions with them to check out the chemistry between you; do you like working with them? Do you trust them?
Make sure you have a written Coaching Agreement – it’s an ethical requirement of the ICF. And then put your whole self into the work, you will be amazed at yourself and rightly so.
Johnny is amazing too. And he always was.
Leadership Team Coach Dave Stitt works with construction industry executives and project teams enabling them to deliver remarkable results in a remarkable way. Dave is the creator of Coach for Results, an accessible online course teaching the basics of a coaching management style so managers can grow confidence, capability and enthusiasm in the people around them.
Read more blogs from Dave: ‘Coaching management style relieves pressure on younger managers’.
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48 years experience in construction industry, last 24 as leadership team coach