Most people would agree the primary purpose of coaching is to improve the performance of an individual or a team of individuals working to a common goal. I went to a thought-provoking presentation this week delivered by Rowly Williams, who has coached at rugby clubs at the highest professional level. (By the way, here’s a plug for Rowly – if you want an entertaining and excellent speaker on coaching and leadership, you should talk to him, care of Bath Rugby Club).

One of the two biggest challenges of sports coaching is to have players REALLY understand their role. They practise and practise, but until the penny drops, performance in a match may not mirror what’s been practised on the training field. The other big challenge, especially now sports have become totally professional and players far better remunerated is coaching people of stellar ability. How do you drill into a character like Ronaldo that this is what he must do for the good of the team? Even Sir Alex was not altogether successful in having him track back and defend when he’d lost the ball!

There’s a great little article in the November 2000 edition of the Harvard Business Review in which Bill Parcells, former Head Coach in the NFL at the New York Giants, New England Patriots and the New York Jets, describes how he transformed the fortunes of each of these teams from failure to success. One of his key strategies was to confront players who were not performing to their potential. Now, if you think about it, these are huge men, mainly with egos to match. However, he requires that a coach does not shirk this responsibility.

OK, what does this have to do with coaching in business, I hear you ask? There’s no doubt that the position of coach at a professional club means that he (or she) can impose their will on players. They are, de facto, line managers. The coach in a business is much more about encouraging, guiding and enlightening rather than enforcing. Nevertheless, you come across real tigers in business – particularly alpha males - whose objective is to succeed pretty much at all costs even if that creates enormous difficulties in the teams they head up or belong to.

If you are coaching one of these individuals, the problems should soon become apparent. So what do you do about it? Leave it, because it’s tough to confront? Tell the individual’s line manager so that somebody else has to deal with it (disastrous for the coaching relationship)? Or address the issue directly with the coachee?

If the latter, how do you go about it without risking a complete upsetting of the famous apple cart? “It seems to me that what you want and what your team wants may not be exactly the same thing. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“I don’t think you’re performing to your true potential. Shall we have a chat about things?” I’m sure many of you will have hundreds more examples.

I’m hoping to write a much fuller paper on this topic by Christmas, for publication on the Deep Vision website.

In the meantime, look out for the next blog on Leadership in Sport vs Leadership in Business.

I’d like to ask readers what they feel about business advisers and consultants. It’s the business I’m in and in these times of economic difficulty, the engagement of an adviser or consultant seems to be one of the earliest things a business owner will forego. Why is this? Poor experience in the past? No spare cash to invest in such a thing? Maybe both of these and probably lots more! I do invite you to share your thoughts on this question.

Any worthwhile consultant should be able to offer you as a business owner or manager the following:

• A snapshot analysis of the state of the business at a particular time
• The opportunity to discuss confidentially any pressing issues
• The opportunity to reflect with an independent party any imminent changes proposed to the business
• The opportunity to increase bottom line performance

From my perspective, business consultants are like every other group of workers. There are great ones, good ones, average ones and downright poor ones. So if you are thinking about engaging some kind of adviser, what are the qualities you should look for?

Industry experience?

Unless the business is so specialised and niche that it has unique issues, then probably not. Most companies experience broadly similar issues and concerns – in their particular context, of course. Your consultant should be able to bring to bear previous experience gained in many different sectors.

Expert knowledge?

There are broadly two categories of consultants. Some are very clearly specialists in their own fields e g Finance but may not claim to know a great deal about HR or Marketing, say. These people operate vertically, drilling down into great detail. The second category might describe themselves as Generalists, i e they operate horizontally, knowing sufficient about most parts of business to be able to offer good and proper solutions. However, if there is a need for specialist intervention, the generalist must be prepared to bring one to the consulting relationship.

Ethics.

Any consultant you contract with must agree complete client confidentiality and to operate within the bounds of his/her competence. This is where the introduction of specialists can be so important.