Hamish Downie’s Five Questions with Leslie Taylor of The Human Element

I first became interested in coaching when I worked in the field of expatriate management. In that context, coaching leaders who were new to roles in Japan and other Asian countries — in real time — and over the course of their assignments seemed a much better approach than typical pre-departure training. Later, as a senior consultant (and practicing coach) working in the Japan branches of U.S. HR consultancies, I developed a deep appreciation of coaching because it could be customized to the individual leader’s objectives, delivered great results for the participant and the organization, AND, and this is important…

I felt coaching to be less culturally-biased than other development methods coming out of the West. I saw it as a ‘clean’ approach.

And, I think this was the case, at least in my early coaching practice, meaning that coaching participants were provided with information — and that could be psychometric data, feedback from their boss, peers and team members and coupled with self-assessment — but, really, it was very much up to the client to decide how he/she would interpret and respond to these messages and it was the client who created and owned the development agenda and the work of the coaching engagement. Again, I would call this a ‘clean’ and respectful approach, with well-defined roles and boundaries.

What I noted, though — and over time — was that coaching was being inflected with agendas other than those related to business goals, or the participant’s aspirations — or, what I would bucket under the desired outcome of behavioral change. As for other agendas, these seem to have emerged from what many call the Human Potential Movement, and relate to constructs like self-actualization, and states associated with peak-performance. So, I think we see a great deal of coaching bought, sold and delivered based on dramatic claims that the participant (and his organisation) will be ’transformed’ by the experience; that he/she will achieve ‘peak’ or ‘heightened’ states of effectiveness. Note, I just google’d the terms “peak performance” and “coaching” and got 22,000,000 hits!

I guess I should back up and say that another reason I initially gravitated to the coaching field is that I believed to to be research-based and data-driven. While many coach training programs and methods now claim to be evidence-based, I have not seen compelling evidence of the benefits of approaches labeled as ’transformational’. If a reader is in possession of such research, please send it my way. Please note, there is a difference between ’testimonials’, a client reporting a subjective state, and others perceiving it.

OK, what is Non-Directive Coaching? By definition, all coaching is non-directive, meaning that coaching by its very nature does not involve the transfer from coach to client of business or other kinds of knowledge, but relies on the client’s intrinsic ability to identify and solve his/her own issues, to attain his/her stated goals. That said, good coaches do have expertise in facilitating self- and other-awareness and in structuring a learning process; and they do provide empathetic support to the client during this process. Many coaching approaches that claim to be non-directive seem, in fact, to contain the imperative to transform the client’s perceptual, thinking, and decision-making styles, and, I would add that a range of tools and techniques are covertly brought to bear in the work. These may include NLP, constructs associated with neuroscience, e.g. neuroleadership, and epigenetics. While I can allow that clients may derive some benefit from these approaches, or think they do, I: 1) don’t think adequate research has been done to merit broad-based adoption in the coaching field, and 2) techniques used in both coaching and coach training have proven harmful to some participants. For me, non-directive positioning means that we rely on the client’s internal resources to accomplish changes the client has identified, and we do not use technologies that are potentially harmful. It also means that the client sets clear, and measurable goals, and that progress against these goals is measured in some way.