CASE RESEARCHERS SAY A POSITIVE APPROACH IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL IN CORPORATE COACHING
31 January 2007 - Case Western Reserve University

Richard Boyatzis, professor and chair of Case's department of organizational behavior, said the focus of most corporate coaching is on improving or changing what is wrong with the person instead of focusing on what drives them to accomplish their dreams.

"On the whole we are lousy at developing people," he said.

According Boyatzis, the successful "coach on the corporate sideline" must encourage the "coachee" to take five critical steps. These steps, outlined below, help the individual develop their ideal selves as well as goals for personal and professional transformation:

Develop an image of the desired future or person that the individual wants to be.
Assess the strengths and weaknesses and find the gaps between the "real self" and the "ideal self."
Develop a learning agenda or action plan to close those gaps between the real and ideal self.
Experiment with new behavior, thoughts and feelings and practice them until mastered.
Establish and develop trusting relationships that support and encourage change.
"When adults change their behavior, they follow this series of epiphanies or discoveries," said Boyatzis, whose department of organizational behavior at Case is ranked number one in the world by The Financial Times of London. "If the first discovery does not occur, people don't change."

Boyatzis is the lead author of the report in a recent issue of People Management, the official magazine of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, on discoveries about business coaching in the magazine's cover story, "Target Practice." People Management is the United Kingdom's leading human resource magazine.

Collaborating with Boyatzis on the paper were Case researchers Anita Howard, Brigette Rapisarda and Scott Taylor. They found, in three years of observing people in workshops and from 17 years of longitudinal studies, that when people are asked who has helped them the most, 80 percent identified someone who nurtured their dreams or encouraged them to aspire to something better.

Boyatzis said the best business coaches help others create a new ideal self or personal vision that plays to their individual's strengths and even helps them to see their abilities in a new way.

By dwelling on weaknesses or past failures, "we are often doing the wrong things to encourage and support the exploration of change," he said.

Coaching involves understanding how the brain works, according to Boyatzis, who is also a psychologist and among the Case "bold thinkers" at the management school whose cutting-edge research is having a lasting impact on the business world. He also is the co-author of "Primal Leadership" with Daniel Goleman, a pioneer in emotional intelligence.

Boyatzis and the Weatherhead researchers suggests professional coaches promote positive emotional thoughts that trigger the parasympathetic nervous system and put the individual into a thoughtful, optimistic and hopeful state.

When someone mulls over what went wrong in the past, these thoughts arouse the sympathetic nervous system that sets the individual into a defensive mode and elicits a stress response that can cloud thought processes and interfere with change.

The positive emotional reaction, Boyatzis said, "opens the individual to new possibilities," while the negative emotional reactions "push the individual to fix things that are wrong."

"People can change in desired ways and that change can be sustained over years," he added.

http://www.case.edu

More News:
  • For January 2007
  • From Case Western Reserve University
  • For University