The joy of coaching

The Daily Telegraph estimated last month that roughly a third of the bosses of FTSE 100 companies use a personal coach — ‘and not the guy who tells them to do more press-ups in the company gym’. But you would be hard-pressed to find a newspaper feature anytime soon in which any of those business leaders recommended their coach, any more than they would their psychoanalyst.

Despite its growing ubiquity, consulting  a coach is still regarded by senior businesspeople as private and absolutely not something to declare openly. Although good ‘executive coaching’ is something which devotees regard as potent and effective, it often earns a sniff of disapproval from the uninitiated because of the underlying macho assumption that coaching is for business wimps.

Wimp or not, I’m happy to declare that I regularly consult a coach. I consider it both money and time well spent. Ginger Cockerham is one of America’s top practitioners, running programmes at Columbia University as well as taking on private entrepreneur clients like me. In the jargon which probably has some people reaching for the smelling salts — just as they did when ‘Media Studies’ first entered the university lexicon — she is a fully fledged ‘Master Coach’.

When I admit I have a coach I tend to be grilled mercilessly over lunch for free nuggets of time-saving or strategy-enhancing initiatives; but when I say, ‘Try it, it’s great!’, I feel like the character in Dr Seuss’s children’s story Green Eggs and Ham, who has to cajole a reticent creature to try the eponymous green eggs and ham — until the famous Seussian sceptic declares, amazed, ‘I do like it! I do!!’

This may be why the world is now awash with business titles on leadership, coaching and mentoring.