In Coaching, is experience useful or dangerous?

Last Wednesday I facilitated a discussion on this topic at the Hong Kong Coaching Community. You are probably curious about the outcome. Well, the answer to the question whether experience could be dangerous in coaching other people is, yes, if you use it in the wrong way.

What does that mean? Our discussion lead us to the equally important question as to how is coaching different from consulting. The point is, if we use our experience or knowledge to recommend to the client what to do in a given situation, that is not coaching, but consulting. Nothing wrong with that, this is especially appropriate where the client has a clear deficit in expertise.

However, usually we handle people's issues in coaching and we could say that everyone knows something about people, especially about him- or herself. In fact, no one knows better about one-self than we ourselves. The only problem is, we often lack awareness. Here is where the coach can become very valuable, if he manages to raise our awareness, expand our horizon, etc. The masterful coach does that by asking the right questions, by provoking through exaggerated statements, by a process of clarification and discovery. Needless to say that excellent rapport between client and coach is a precondition for this process.

Also, experience can be very valuable for the coach to 'smell' where the issue could be and then tap into that area and see whether something valuable comes up. Someone with out experience, may not be able to get to the point so quickly, if at all. So here we go, experience can be very powerful in coaching as long as it does not lead the coach to consulting where it is not appropriate.

During that discussion I also shared some results from my research on outstandingly successful coaches. If you want to know more about it, don't hesitate to contact me.

How many countries have you traveled?

Today I got an interesting link to a website where you can create a map of the countries you have traveled. You get even the html code to post this map on your website or your blog (like I did).



It was interesting for me to see that I've already been to over 60 countries. This is due to the fact that my previous positions in International Management required me to travel considerably. Also, I always like to explore new places when I travel for fun.

When you tick the country boxes on the above mentioned website, memories are triggered and I realized how much time I had been spending in Asia even before I moved to Hong Kong three years ago. This is perhaps one of the reasons why I felt at home almost instantly once I arrived here.

Karate & Coaching

I was 17 years old when I started learning Karate (traditional Shotokan Style). Until that time, I had never been a very sporty person. Hence, it took me a couple of years of intense practice before I was able to join the first Karate competitions.

I was in a way lucky to have a great trainer despite of living in a small German city, famous for its jigsaw puzzles: Ravensburg. The trainer of our Dojo, Guenther Mohr, was at the same time national team coach, won numerous titles such as Vice World Champion (1 time), European Champion (5 times) and German Champion (12 times).

Our junior (age 18-21) team won in 1983 the State Championship of Baden-Wuerttemberg and in 1984 the National Championship of Germany. I was proud to be member of this winning team. In the same year, I completed high-school and went to the army for a bit more than a year.

Being away from Ravensburg during the army times, I had little opportunity to practice Karate. Having returned for my mechanical engineering studies, I picked it up again, however, due to study-related work, I would only go once, max. twice a week to the Dojo.

After completion of my engineering degree in Ravensburg, I went to France for post-graduate studies in International Marketing. That was the time when I quit Karate...

...until August 2004, approx. 16 years later...

It is amazing how much the body (yes, the body, not the mind) remembers. Of course, it took my quite a few lessons to catch up to come even close to the level I have been 16 years ago. And I still didn't reach this level after 3 months of not very regular practice. But I can see that I make great progress every time and it reminds me of catching up with a language not practiced for a few years.

How is all this related to Coaching?

I realized during these training sessions that I had a truly great coach some 20years ago and that I benefit from the great learnings of that time even today. Would I have progressed at that time with an average coach? For sure. Would I have become a member of the winning team at that time with an average coach? Rather not. Would I be able to pick up things so quickly now, after a pause of 16 years if I had an average coach? Unlikely.

Executive Coaching basically has the same target as Sports Coaching, that is, to help the coachee to reach peak performance. Average coaches may help you to improve faster than you would without the coach, masterful coaches may help you to be the best you can - be it in Karate or in Leadership.

Talking to Top Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith

Yesterday evening I had the unique opportunity to talk to Marshall Goldsmith who is considered by FORBES to be one of the Top 5 Executive Coaches in the US.

I was quite excited and somewhat nervous when I dialed his number. I guess he sensed that and suggested immediately to introduce himself first and then I would have the chance to introduce myself. This approach immediately broke my nervousness and the talk was very relaxed from that point.

I prepared a long list of questions, however, only approx. 50% of them I needed to ask, for the rest of them he gave the answers without me asking. I learned how he got into coaching and a few secrets of his outstanding success.

After talking about his work, I asked him whether he had a chance to have a look at my website which he confirmed. Then I asked him what he thinks about it and he said “It’s good.” Hmmm, I thought, this is a bit short, let me dig deeper and so I asked, “What do you think I could improve?” And then he took off and basically confirmed some thoughts I already had and that is that I need to become much more focused in what I am doing. He said that you will be considered as a top expert only if you narrow down your expertise to a few areas, even though you might be competent in a no. of other areas. The point is that you won’t get the credibility unless you clearly focus.

It is a leap I was hesitating to make but I realize more and more that this is a necessity to progress to a new level.

Also, I was asking him what he thinks about networking and he said that one can make a decent living from working within a network. However, you will be somewhat limited to this network. If you want to get broad exposure, then you must expose yourself. Good ways to do this are to get published (articles, books, etc.) and to do a lot of public speaking. A couple of months ago I started with such activities and very recently I even started writing a book about leadership which I plan to launch in Spring 2005.

After this phone conversation I am even more determined to follow my vision and to do the necessary. Marshall acted as a true ‘coach’, that is, he moved me forward faster than if I would have ‘walked’ by myself.