Written for China STAFF, September 2001

Coaches provide the ability to understand problems, offer support and effectively communicate expert advice. Angela Spaxman explains the development of coaching in Hong Kong and identifies the benefits that coaching has on productivity. 

Wouldn’t you like to have someone who you could always count on to stand for your success? They would listen to you, understand your point of view and share their honest expert opinion about your potential and possible courses of action. They would lift your spirits when times are tough and give you a reality check when you need to face the truth. They would support you as you have never been supported before. You would discover ways to improve your performance and find more fulfillment. The word ‘coaching’ is showing up in human resources budgets and management training sessions all over town. Coaching is being talked about in career counselling centers and new age gatherings. But is everyone talking about the same thing? 

With this appeal it is no wonder that coaching has quickly become so popular in the United States of America (US) and Europe and is now spreading to Asia. 

The coaching relationship 

Coach U, a US-based virtual training institute for coaches, defines coaching as “a powerful, collaborative relationship between a coach and a willing individual which enables, through a process of discovery, goal setting, and strategic actions, the realization of extraordinary results. Coaching is also a body of knowledge, a technology, and a style of relating that focuses on the development of human potential.” 

The definition makes clear that coaching is a relationship and a process, not an event. Its key attributes are: 

• Personally relevant
• On-going
• Learner-focused
• Action-oriented 

In addition there are some key philosophies that guide the coaching process and distinguish quality coaching from training, consulting, managing or directing. The quality coach will:

• Listen and understand without judgment or criticism
• Ask questions to promote self-discovery
• Focus on the client’s strengths, motivations and needs, to bring out their best
• Help the client find the source of problems before offering solutions that might not be appropriate
• Honour the truth by communicating all that they sense
• Display a high level of trust and care for the client
• Let the client take responsibility for their own results

Why Now? 

Coaching was first named as a profession in the late 1980’s and has developed steadily throughout the 1990’s to be the one of the fastest growing fields of consulting in the US. It is estimated that there are over 10,000 part-time and full-time coaches practicing worldwide. The number of people entering this emerging field has doubled in size in each of the past three years. 

The growth and development of coaching is a natural outcome of the evolution of organizational wealth from physical capital to human capital. Where human capital is critical, the most productive investments are in staff retention and development. Communication, leadership and creativity become more important and organizations step up the search for methods to enhance their staff’s capabilities. Individuals searching for career advancement also strive to continuously improve. Coaching is the next step on this pathway to provide better personal development support in both the corporate world and among individuals who want to invest in their own success. 

Companies in Hong Kong  and their branches are taking part in the human capital evolution, striving to create more value for customers through the value of people. Since the economic downturn, competition has increased and companies are forced to be more creative to get more from less. There is really no choice for organizations that aspire to success but to make huge strides in their people power. So it’s not surprising that coaching is steadily becoming a buzzword for forward-looking management development initiatives. 

Coach Requirements 

The coach is usually an outside person with an objective perspective who is hired by a company or an individual for their professional skills. Their detachment from the client’s situation gives them the advantage of being able to see and tell the truth about a situation from a different perspective. Their primary interest is to help the client to achieve their goals. 

Managers can also coach their own staff, just as family members and friends can coach each other, but this type of coaching requires a strong belief by the coach that honouring the individual’s desires is the best way to meet the irorganizational (or family) goals. For example, it might be difficult for a coach manager to listen objectively when a staff member talks about dissatisfaction with his job. Few companies or managers are sufficiently secure to allow this kind of open discussion. Conflicts of interest can crop up unless the top management and company philosophy supports the staff in pursuing their personal interests. Only when staff and company needs are in alignment can morale and productivity be maximized. For those that are ready, the benefits in people development and productivity are evident. 

Many companies in Hong Kong designate ‘coaching’ as one of the job responsibilities of managers. However the extent to which coaching is actually carried out is dependent on the personality of each manager and the company culture. Few companies in Hong Kong fully capitalize on the power of internal coaching. Most large multi-nationals that have adopted coaching programs use specialized internal coaches in addition to managers. 

Corporate Coaching 

Diane Wilcoxson, an executive coach who has been working in Hong Kong for the past 15 years, maintains that coaching is merely a new word for the one-on-one consulting that she has been doing all along. While human resources trends come and go, she believes that coaching, by any name, will continue to be the fastest way for organizations to implement change. She sees many more consultants now offering coaching services, although they have varying degrees of knowledge and experience in how to influence human behaviour. The relatively unstructured environment in Hong Kong companies (compared to the US or Europe) means there are many opportunities for consultants to try a hand at coaching.

 There are many offers of coaching services, and many ideas about exactly what coaching is. Some see it as the realm of sage advisors or mentors with vast industry specific experience. Such mentors tend to offer advice but not coaching, as they are hired for their specific knowledge and experience, not for their abilities in helping people understand and change behaviour. 

Others envision the quintessential athletic coach with a bullhorn on the sidelines making strategic decisions, shouting orders and pushing the athletes to work harder. Some sales force coaching may resemble this push to achieve specific short-term goals. In hierarchical workplaces, this motivational style is more easily accepted and understood, but it is vastly different for the kind of coaching services discussed here. 

Ivy Ning, a corporate trainer in team-building, communications and leadership skills for PeoplePlus Training and Consulting is in the process of educating her clients about coaching. 

She says her clients are accustomed to using training to create the kind of attitude and skill improvements that the combination of training and coaching could achieve more effectively in the long run. However, companies are not used to investing time and money on individual development. And managers may still see coaching as a remedy for problem staff rather than a development tool for themselves. 

Coaching Managers 

Many organizations are implementing training in coaching skills for managers. Training budget cuts maybe the impetus for companies to consider training their management staff to coach internally as they are forced to look for more effective ways to support change. As mentioned earlier, the success of this strategy will depend on the commitment of upper management to trusting and empowering their staff. The most effective way to achieve that culture shift would be for upper managers to start developing their own attitudes with the help of coaching. 

Coaching services in Hong Kong are most well established within branches of multi-national companies which already have significant experience with coaching in the US or Europe. These organizations are more likely to be using coaching strategically in line with their long-term organizational goals. Coaches are briefed on the organization’s cultural and philosophical values so that executives and managers develop their personal styles in ways that are most beneficial to the company. In Hong Kong most companies are still using coaching in an ad hoc way to support particular managers or for certain projects. When coaching is used strategically, it is more likely to support long-term organizational development. 

Corporate coaching is being used for different purposes within organizations. The primary ones include:

• Executive and senior manager development
• Development for high-flyers and rising stars
• Remedial behavioural changes for executives and senior managers
• 360 Degree Feedback Assessment results delivery and implementation
• Team work development for project teams 

Some other developing uses for corporate coaching include:

• Workplace change implementation
• Coaching skills development for managers
• Group coaching for communication and teamwork skills development
• Group coaching for inter-developmental groups such as non-competing executives, marketing managers etc. 

Personal Coaching 

As more people hang out their shingle as coaches, coaching is becoming an accessible alternative for individuals who want to achieve various personal goals from career transitions, to relationship changes, to spiritual development. Many Hong Kong career-focused people were caught off guard by the relatively sudden tightening of the job market since 1997 and are now seeking ways to enhance their careers. The usual solution of continuing education upgrades is expensive and not as effective for improving the key job skills that get people hired and promoted –communications and leadership skills. But with only a hand full of coaches working in Hong Kong, and even fewer with Cantonese language skills, the widespread discovery of coaching for individual development is likely to take a few more years. 

The graduation in August this year of 18 Hong Kong based coaches from Coach U will certainly make a difference to the availability of personal coaches. The graduates will be offering services based on their background and experience ranging from executive coaching to youth coaching. Personal coaching is also offered through some out-placement firms, counselling centres and therapists. Some coaches in North America are now marketing their services in Hong Kong to take advantage of cheap long-distance telephone rates and ready demand. 

One of the largest growth areas for personal coaching could be business coaches hired by entrepreneurs, professionals, small business owners, or career corporate employees who are looking for ways to work smarter instead of harder, to make more money more easily, to find more fulfillment in their work or to create more balance in their lives. Making time for your life seems so counter to the typical rushed Hong Kong life, where money is central to lifestyle improvement and everybody wants more of it. But for this city is to stay ahead in the developing world economy, companies need creative employees who can take initiative, take risks and think out of the box. Those people can only maximize their potential for creativity when they are healthy and leading balanced fulfilling lives.

Coaching Benefits 

Corporate training methods are continuously improving to include experiential training, accelerated learning, Neuro-linguistic Programming and many other specialized techniques. While training can be effective in building teamwork capabilities, communication and leadership skills, lasting personal breakthroughs are rare. Often the sources of behavioural weaknesses are too personal to be broached in group activities, particularly when senior staff are involved. In addition, it takes time and persistent focus to make behavioural changes. One-off training workshops are not sufficient to inspire participants to implement changes in their working environment where new barriers and stresses are faced daily.

 Coaching offers a convenient, relatively cost-effective way to support behavioural changes or complex decision-making processes that have the potential to create tremendous value for organizations, as well as the individuals involved. Two recent studies bear this out. 1) An article in Public Personnel Management (Winter 97, Vol. 26 Issue 4, p. 461,published by the International Personnel Management Association) revealed a study where training alone was compared to coaching combined with training. The study showed that training alone increased productivity by 22.4% while training plus coaching increased productivity by 88%. 2) A study in the Manchester Review (2001, Vol. 6, No. 1) on executive coaching showed that companies that invested in executive coaching received an average return on investment of more than 5 times. 

According to Wilcoxson, the greatest benefit to clients and organizations is the chance to hear the truth told. Her outside perspective allows her to identify sources of problems, trends or patterns that insiders cannot see, and to describe them in ways that they can accept. The degree to which organizations benefit depends on the sphere of influence of the coached individuals. In other words it pays to start at the top. 

From her experience with group coaching for sales force development, Ning reports a burning desire by staff to talk in private about organizational politics with someone neutral who can advise them in how to handle those common complications of corporate life. In medium to large size companies, political issues often consume more of people’s energy than getting the job done. Coaching helps people learn to deal with difficult people and to create win-win working relationships so that they can use their time and energy for productive purposes. 

Business coaching clients report greater confidence, enhanced self-awareness, more effectiveness in communications, greater focus on results and improved relationships which all lead to more productivity. The benefits achieved depend on the skill of the coach, but even more on the willingness of the individual being coached. When people are motivated to change and ready to take action, their coach can be the catalyst to move them towards their goals. 

Where Are We Headed? 

According to Corporate Coach U International, a corporate-focused coach training institution, “Corporate coaching is central to a cultural evolution process that shifts the landscape of the workplace from one where people receive direction from others to one where people commit to doing things they care passionately about.” In Hong Kong this process is being driven by both competitive demands and individual aspirations. Some Hong Kong corporate groups, led by the branch offices of multi-national companies, and followed by private corporate entities with forward-thinking leaders, are on this path. Many of Hong Kong’s well-educated worldly, ambitious professionals are choosing to work in such environments. The vast majority of companies and individuals are not involved. This evolution is happening, but unevenly. The further development of both corporate and personal coaching in Hong Kong will speed the process and is an important element in Hong Kong’s continuing competitive advantage.