In a conversation today, I was asked about my thoughts about what will move Coaching as an industry into more general acceptance.
My thought went like this:
If we look at the history of management through the ages, oversimplified, much of what is today’s management structure came from the military structure of the Roman Empire. Top down management still stands as the form most people think of when they think of Management. The President wants us to do this, the Board supports him, and somehow small pieces are translated into actions that individual workers are expected to perform.
Fast forward through reengineering the corporation, dancing with elephants, ebusiness, friction free commerce and information superhighway, and 2005 looks like the year that everything is about the “knowledege worker.”
If “knowledge workers” are expected to take inputs like data, add their own intelligence and insights, and deliver a value-added product as their output, top-down doesn’t support that work style.
Coaching, as I’ve been learning it, supports people in finding their own insights. If we as coaches can teach people how to better look at what they see around them, and what they experience, and find better insights, we not only help them in their own lives but we help them be better knowledge workers.
Coaching as a management style needs to transition from an experiment in organizations to the way we teach people how to manage knowledge workers.
There’s more to this. My thoughts are still clarifying. Stay tuned.