Although the terminology is similar there is a big difference between what a personal trainer and a personal coach will do for you. The personal trainer provides one-to-one consultancy to help you make the best of your body and they will encourage you to develop a fit and toned physique. By contrast, the personal coach doesn't care if you're a couch potato because their focus is on getting your grey matter into good shape.
Personal coaching began in the US about 20 years ago but it's a recent arrival on these shores. It has also grown in popularity in Britain, and companies in both countries now use it as part of the incentive package (alongside the company car) they offer to attract and keep senior managerial talent.
Personal coaching has tended to be used by senior managers or team leaders who often felt isolated by their positions. They used personal coaches as sounding boards for their ideas; as allies when trying to drive through organisational change and as guides to help them develop satisfying and challenging career paths.
"It can be very lonely at the top, as many managers discover, and having a personal coach can overcome this," says Hilary Maher, a psychologist and management consultant with Penna Consulting, a company that specialises in personal coaching. "It's not for everyone but it can be a big help to someone who is going through major changes at work or to someone who no longer feels challenged by their job or to an executive who simply wants to keep their self-development on target," she says.
Managers usually come to their jobs with ideas about how things should be done. They bring a style and methodology they've developed over time to the task in hand and they expect to get results. If the outcome is not satisfactory they may not find it easy to see or adopt an alternative strategy and problems arise. It is at this point that a personal coach can be helpful.
"Managers may be used to using one particular `map' to get where they want to go. But because organisations and the general business environment is changing so rapidly those maps may be out of date or there could be a simpler way of achieving the same goals," Hilary Maher says. "But if you're in a frontline management position you're often too close to the situation to see this and you don't always have time to reflect on why you're following a certain course of action.
"Personal coaching is the most customised form of management development around. It is completely confidential and centres on helping senior managers become aware of the thoughts, feelings, values, perceptions and routines that they bring to their day-to-day work. Once this awareness is achieved managers can consciously choose the basis on which to make decisions and act," Maher says.
"Personal coaching works as a partnership; it's not instructive or prescriptive - and it's based on personal needs. It gives managers the edge and leads to improved performance by offering managers an insight into and an understanding of themselves in their specific management role. It does this by incorporating elements of psychology, business practice, ethics and personal awareness. So it's very different to the types of courses and training methods normally offered to managers."
PERSONAL coaches do not come cheap. Coaching is normally conducted over a fixed period of time and a minimum period of 10 hours is recommended. How long the coach stays really depends on the individual. If the coach is there to address a specific problem, the coaching period may be quite short. If the coaching is more personal in nature, such as helping a manager to make fundamental changes to their style or approach, then it may take longer.
"Hitting a crisis is probably the most common reason for hiring a coach," Maher says. "Change management is a particularly challenging task that managers face and they may feel they need a little bit of support to see it through. Coaching also works well for managers who are planning an upward move and who need to tease out the implications and it's also useful for those who want to review their career progression and to set goals for the next phase and for entrepreneurs and managers in very competitive or changing markets who need to stay ahead of the pack."
Hilary Maher has a master's degree in psychology and an MBA and she has worked in management training and consultancy in Ireland and abroad. Maher is the co-author of Agents of Change: the manger's guide to planning and leading change projects, and she is particularly interested in the whole area of management development.
"I think the growing interest in personal coaching reflects the fact that opportunities for personal growth and professional development are really very rare for senior managers," she says. "There are, of course, formal programmes such as the MBA, but that's not quite the same.
`MANY senior managers feel uncomfortable about signing up for a course because they're supposed to be highly competent and to be possessed of considerable wisdom already and they are unhappy with the message they may be communicating to their staff or shareholders by going on a course. Yet they may well feel a need for continuing personal development, but where are they supposed to go to get it?
"To benefit from coaching people need to be honest about themselves and open to learning. They may hear things they don't like, but in a totally confidential and non-judgemental environment. They will also get a service that's almost impossible to tap into in any other way, namely a dedicated listener who is your number one supporter and who can help make personal change as safe as it can be."
