Don’t hire a coach if you need a consultant.

Smith: “Well, you have a good experience of coaching and working with big brands. Will you be interested in coming on board and coaching our team ?”

Anna: “Sure, can you please share some more detail about the role ?”

Smith: “ I’m creating a community of practice for Business Excellence, formed by a team of coaches, You will be training and coaching the people on the floor on best practices, processes and tools. Especially, I want you bring your expertise and solve the efficiency issues raised by the senior leadership. By the way,do you have experience of coaching senior leadership ?”

Anna: “Yes, Thanks for giving the background about the role but I think you need a good consultant not a coach”

…..

These days many companies are busy hiring coaches for various requirements though there is a real requirements for coaches,  many companies are not clear about the role. There is a need to build awareness about coaching and it’s benefits.  

“ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential.”

The focus of Professional coaching is on

• setting goals
• creating outcomes and
• managing personal change

The skills required for coaching have significant overlap with skills required for other personal or organisational support professions like mentoring, therapy and consulting.  

Mentoring

A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counselling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counselling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.

Models like People Capability Maturity Model have given frameworks to implement organisational level mentoring programs.   

Therapy

Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways.

In contrast to coaching, therapy focuses on the past whereas coaching is focused towards future, based on self initiated change process.    

Consulting

Individuals or organisations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions.

Peter Block mentions in his book Flawless consulting the definition of consultant as

“a consultant is person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group, or an organisation, but who has no direct power to make changes or implement programs.”

The credit for starting consulting as a profession goes to Marvin Bower, founder of  McKinsey & Company, who is considered as father of Management Consulting. He insisted on impeccable professional standards in substance, ethics, and style; that gave the credibility and an identity to the profession of consulting.

Organisations like International Coach Federation (ICF) are doing their best to make the profession of coaching to maintain it’s credibility and value in the industry through developing and enforcing code of ethics and Standards of Ethical Conduct for the community of professional coaches.

In the HBR research report on coaching, “What Can Coaches Do for You?” by Diane Coutu and Carol Kauffman,

The management guru Ram Charan says

“ The industry badly needs a leader who can define the profession, the way Marvin Bower did for management consulting.”

---