Coaching

A DA P T I V E COACH ING

A DA P T I V E COACH ING
The Art and Practice of a Client-Centered Approach to Performance Improvement

TER R Y R. BACON

•

K AREN I. SPEAR

Davies-Black Publishing Mountain View, California

Published by Davies-Black Publishing, a division of CPP, Inc., 1055 Joaquin Road, 2nd Floor, Mountain View, CA 94043; 800-624-1765. Special discounts on bulkquantities of Davies-Black books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact the Director of Marketing and Sales at Davies-Black Publishing: 650-691-9123; fax 650-623-9271. Copyright 2003 by Davies-Black Publishing, a division of CPP, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittedin any form or media or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Davies-Black and its colophon and FIRO-B are registered trademarks and California Psychological Inventory is a trademark of CPP, Inc. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,Myers-Briggs, and MBTI are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust in the United States and other countries. Visit the Davies-Black Publishing Web site at www.daviesblack.com. Printed in the United States of America. 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bacon, Terry R., and Karen I. Spear Adaptive coaching: The art andpractice of a client-centered approach to performance improvement / Terry R. Bacon and Karen I. Spear.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-89106-187-8 1. Coaching. 2. Performance improvement. I. Title. FIRST EDITION First printing 2003

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii About the Authors xi Introduction xiii

Part 1: Assessing Clients’ Needs
1 2 3 4 5 TheContexts of Coaching Negotiating Expectations The Needs Compass The Real Issues Adapting to Clients’ Preferences 3 21 37 57 85

Part 2: Practicing Adaptive Coaching
6 7 8 9 10 11 Initiating Coaching Sessions Managing the Dialogue Listening and Questioning Sharing Your Observations with Clients Pushing and Pulling Closing Coaching 119 133 151 175 197 219

Part 3: Coaching Special Populations
12 1314 15 Coaching Cross-Culturally Coaching Women and Minorities Coaching Across Generations Coaching C-Level Executives 303 235 253 269 285

Epilogue: Helping Clients Change References 325 Index 329

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book of this nature is not merely the product of two minds but is the result of years of accumulated experience and the thoughts and contributions of hundreds of people, notleast of whom are the countless professionals, executives, and students we have coached in the course of nearly three decades of experience as coaches, educators, and managers. We therefore begin by thanking the many coaching clients with whom we have worked during the course of our careers. Without their problems, questions, challenges, and faith in us, we would know very little about coaching. Theplain fact is that without the thousands of dialogues we have had with them, we would not have understood what successful coaching looks like or how critical it is to be adaptive to our clients’ needs and preferences. We also acknowledge the help we’ve received from our many colleagues in the Lore Division of Heidrick and Struggles. The fine men and women of Lore, who coach thousands of executivesevery year, are a source of inspiration and wisdom. One of the values of working in a collegial environment of professionals is the sharing of insights and experiences, which makes each of us more effective in our individual roles with clients. In this regard, our experiences at Lore have been invaluable. We are especially grateful to Andrew Ackemann, Nancy Atwood, Caroline Ballantine, Ben...