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A Personal Report on a Coaching Conference

Gail Broady

The Corporate Soul

Consulting & Coaching Director

 

The first Australasian Coaching Conference was attended by over 400 delegates, including a large cohort from the US, and individuals from the UK, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand. Coaching is one of the fastest growing 'industries' (or professions?) in the world and the conference program was divided into streams reflecting the variety of levels and areas of interest for practitioners.

 

The streams were:

 

The majority of the participants seemed to be members of ICF who had trained with, or were in training with, CoachU (a US based on-line training and credentialing organisation). The majority identified themselves as Life Coaches (rather than, for example business, workplace, corporate, management or executive coaches).

 

Since this is a personal report of my experience and perceptions of the conference, it is inevitably coloured by my own biases (professional and personal). So, before I continue, let me put my biases upfront. My professional background (see footnote below for details) biases me in favour of management and executive coaching and coaches who have

 

I made my choice of sessions with two things in mind Ð I wanted some professional development and so wanted papers of depth and substance to add to an already reasonable knowledge base. I also wanted to avoid marketing sessions along the lines of 'how to make a squillion dollars in your first year as a coach' and pseudo-scientific sessions 'pop-psycho-spiritual-instant-one-size-fits-all' approaches to coaching and clients. Selecting sessions from the streams on Organisation & Corporate Coaching, Emerging Trends and Mastery, seemed to be the surest way to get some real professional development and avoid (what I considered to be) flakier aspects.

 

I attended all key note addresses (bar the last which I missed in order to make a flight to Singapore) and the key note speakers Ð from Australia, the US and China/Canada - were world class engaging, thought provoking, challenging and professional. They made my $2000+ investment in the conference worthwhile - which was just as well since the remainder of the program didn't turn out quite as I had hoped!

 

The organisers are certainly to be congratulated on their choice of key note speakers, their success in getting so many of such high-calibre, and of course in attracting so many delegates to this inaugural conference.

 

It is interesting and important to note that almost without exception, those presenting papers throughout the conference program were practitioner coaches or trainers of coaches. While this means that they can talk from experience, it also means that the voice of the neutral observer, unbiased researcher or critic was not generally heard at the conference.

 

What critique there was occurred mainly outside of the formal sessions and seemed somewhat self-interested

 

As I mentioned already, some of the best sessions involved the key-note speakers, who without exception demonstrated the contribution coaching can and does make to organisational change initiatives.

 

Margot Cairnes, in her key note address, showed why she has developed a world-wide audience and such an excellent reputation internationally as she talked about her work with the CEO and executive team of Portland Aluminium.

 

Madeleine Holman and Scott Blanchard combined forces to provide an exploration and experience of their deceptively simple framework for promoting executive reflection and development. I was reminded of the elegant simplicity that emerges from twenty years of work and real depth in their knowledge and understanding of their area.

 

Eva Wong gave an exciting report of her experiences and the model behind her work in Guangzhou province, China, coaching the executive team and developing 30,000 workplace coaches (yep, that's thirty thousand!) to create a financial and productivity turnaround and cultural transformation in the Guangzhou Materials Group.

 

This was exciting stuff presented by well-grounded, highly experienced and professional coaches and I found myself learning from and enjoying their expertise as both practitioners and presenters. (For those interested, I am pretty sure that tapes and CD's of conference sessions can still be purchased from ICF Australia - you can find them on the web.)

 

The coaches presenting papers throughout the rest of the conference were, on the whole, skilled and engaging presenters, and the sessions delivered what many of the 'life-coaches' seemed to want Ð entertainment & fun, validation of a particular spiritual-humanistic (dare I say white middle class, even American?) philosophy of life and growth, and some simple tips or coaching techniques/tools.

 

The length and format of sessions left little opportunity for serious discussion or examination of the material presented. But for relatively new coaches, unschooled in management or counselling/psychology, this was clearly great stuff Ð simple concepts, tools and techniques were presented in fun ways, seemingly easy to pick up and use, and prescribed as 'suitable' for the range of coaching clients and situations. Just as in the coaching literature, the majority of papers presented at this conference seemed to me to be marketing exercises, showcasing and promoting the particular approach, personal theory, techniques or proprietary tools of the presenting coaches.

 

Disappointingly, I left more than one session irritated and concerned about the poor quality of the 'survey tools' or 'coaching models' presented without caution or consideration of contraindications and with little or no research base.

 

I found the most offensive and disturbing inclusion in the program a paper on 'face-reading' in which the presenter (who also had a booth at the conference promoting her books and 'readings') revealed the secrets of 'face-reading' a 'reliable' system 'discovered' by an American judge for determining key psychological traits through facial characteristics such as set of the eyes!

 

Discussions with a range of people between sessions revealed that I was not the only delegate concerned about what was being 'peddled' in some sessions. I met quite a number of highly experienced consultants, managers and psychologists whose practices have, over the past five or six years, developed to include one to one and small group coaching, and who were attending in the hope of some real professional development. Like me, these folk were looking for papers of substance - well-researched, carefully developed, literature-informed papers to inform, challenge and extend their already well developed thinking and practice. Like me they were generally disappointed with the 'pop psychology' and 'easy answers' offered in many sessions. Thankfully though there were some excellent papers.

 

Papers by Tony Grant and Michael Cavanagh, from Sydney University's Coaching Psychology unit, Helen Paige, Peter Webb and Suzy Green were, for example, scholarly, practical and informed by experience, research and the existing literature of psychology and management. These papers offered satisfying substance in amongst what I found to be too many marshmallow sessions!

 

Michael Cavanagh challenged the thinking and practice of coaches whose training has not prepared them to identify or develop/exercise appropriate referral mechanisms for clients with underlying psychological problems such as depression, anxiety or personality disorders. Tony Grant, in his session on working with people who might be described as 'uncoachable', demonstrated practical use of two reputable change models (Bridge's transition model and Protchaska & DiClemente's stages of change model). Helen Paige presented research findings on the effectiveness of executive coaching from a qualitative study of the experiences of executive clients in Australia, while Suzy Green presented research findings in regard to coaching for 'happiness'.

 

It is notable and heartening - that these papers of substance, underpinned by or reporting research, were all presented by Australian practitioners and researchers.

 

While it is possible that overseas researchers simply didn't have the money to travel down-under to present their work (maybe you had to be a successful coach to afford to make the trip even with the favourable exchange rate!), it suggests to me that a solid base of research and teaching might be developing to underpin future coaching practice in Australia. That in turn makes me hopeful that we might see a coaching profession develop here rather than just an industry.

 

A number of interactions and encounters with fellow delegates, and a few too many presenters, reinforced my prejudice against what I might call overnight or 'instant coaches' (those with shallow pop psychology approaches, instant answers, little or no ethical framework and 'one size fits all' spiritual solution to everyone's problems).

 

I left the conference with some concerns heightened in regard to the number and quality of people suddenly calling themselves coaches (particularly 'life coaches') or offering coaching 'credentials'. Fortunately other encounters gave me real hope for management and executive coaching in Australia Ð I can say with confidence that there are some very skilled, knowledgeable and experienced people out there with sound ethical and professional frameworks, whose coaching practice has developed out of a length and depth of training and professional experience with both management and counselling/psychology, and there is some solid research developing to support, challenge, extend and inform their work. As well, while there might be some pretty shonky 'credentials' and 'credentialing processes' out there, there are also some very solid Australian, university based or ANTA linked training/certifying providers supporting and developing professional Australian coaches for business and management.

 

Flying out of Sydney after the conference I remembered that if you get one great paper and learn one new thing from a conference it's been a worthwhile investment. In the case of the first Australasian Coaching Conference, I got both these things. In addition I made contact with a range of coaching practitioners and researchers from around Australia and overseas who seem truly professional and solid, and who operate from well-developed theoretical, ethical and professional frameworks. The opportunity to expand my network in this way was a definite plus and made the investment of time and dollars worthwhile.

 

FOOTNOTE: The Origins of my Biases in Coaching

 

I spent ten years in training, supervision and personal work in Transactional Analysis (TA) and Gestalt based counselling/psychotherapy with the Western Institute of Group & Family therapy in both Australia and the US. I obtained certification in TA, conducted a counselling and personal development practice in Sydney over almost a decade, receiving and providing professional supervision over that period, and receiving an International Award for Excellence in Theory & Practice.

 

I have spent the past 14 years specialising in organisation behaviour and the development and strategic management of the human resource in organisations in Australia and abroad. As well I've been teaching both management and counselling skills at university (undergrad and post-grad) throughout that time. I am currently undertaking doctoral research in executive coaching.

 

I have managed my own business since 1983 and been a company director in another successful small business for the past 12 years. I am not a member of the International Coaching Federation and attended the conference, at my own expense, with a mind to joining.

 

 I work in Asia with clients of different religious persuasions and have a personal sensitivity to westerners and others - who assume shared spiritual beliefs or who foist their spiritual beliefs and agendas upon others without regard to, or awareness of, their personal beliefs or comfort.

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Nothing in this article constitutes advice for specific matters or issues you may be considering - so please ensure that you source appropriate, professional advice on specific matters you confront.

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