global views
“How do you communicate
the value of coaching to
prospective clients?”
When a prospective client
relationship with a coach
develops, a target comes in
his mind— a target he will not
reach alone or with his team. He
expects the coach will help to
reach it.
Philippe Declercq, PCC
Belgium
With the coach, he wants
to produce results, achieve
goals, realize successes, boost
performance, improve the
quality of life and develop
his leadership.
The value of coaching lies in the
process. The coach does not
Most of my coaching work is
with organizations, so there
are two challenges that I
face: First, I need to convince
the responsible “buyers”
that coaching represents
an important value-added
intervention for their leadership
development programs.
Over the past 10 years, here
in Singapore, the HR and
leadership-development
communities have definitely
come to understand, appreciate
and value good Executive
Coaching. The cumulative
do the client’s job for him. The
coach’s presence creates a safe
and intimate environment for
the client. The coach sustains
the thinking, helps the client
make decisions, supports the
planning of actions and audits
the realizations. During the
process, the client finds value
in leadership development,
personal life quality, longterm developments and
realization of the initial target.
An extraordinary value of
coaching is the learning process
that drives the client to the
impact of good coaching
on leadership skills and the
positive feedback on coaching
from leaders themselves, have
established coaching as a
proven intervention.
The second challenge remains
the individual coachees
themselves. Nearly all of the
individuals with whom I initiate
a coaching engagement have
never experienced coaching
before. Often, they start off
with some healthy skepticism
as well as some entrenched
South Africa
During the coaching process,
the client changes speed. Down
from the jet, he walks through
the fields and cities, discovers
landscapes and variety, takes the
time to meet others, and uses
forgotten capacities to come
back to his business with new
energy, ideas and views.
reluctance to talk about their
strengths and weaknesses with
a total stranger. My strategy is to
establish a relaxed atmosphere
in order to build rapport. My
coachees do like to talk about
their jobs and what they are
especially proud of or excited
about. Once we get to this place,
then good coaching questions
and good listening can be
deployed. This leads inevitably
to one or two “aha” moments,
and the coachee begins to see
how coaching can work and the
value that can be attained.
Leadership presence is a
powerful conversation and
at the same time not easily
articulated. I am often curious
with prospective clients as to
how they view the impact of this
often intangible quality.
Sharon Jansen, PCC
autonomy necessary to answer
similar questions by himself in
the future.
Choosing role-model business
leaders who display presence
and having a conversation
about the role of coaching in
building leadership presence will
often pique the curiosity of the
prospective client.
I refer to the leader’s way of
being and we talk about the
aspects of language, body
and emotion that comprise
this package.
Translating these elements
from the admired role model
to the prospective client is
a creative and right-brained
exercise that enters the
Donald Huse, ACC
Singapore
world of future possibility and
gives the client a taste of the
coaching experience.
I aim to bring my coaching skills
into all my conversations and
trust that my way of being as a
coach itself becomes the model
and demonstrates the value of
the work that I do.
Coaching World 35