The Psychology of Business Coaching

Coaching and psychology are complementary to each other. The business coach needs to recognize the underlying problems and the untapped talents of the participants, before he rushes with a teaching schedule. Although the HR team does divulge all the relevant information about the skills, general nature and temperament of the participants, the rest has to be deduced by the coach on his own. Here is where psychology comes to rescue.

Professional business coaches are aware of the fact that mentoring stressed out executives is a major challenge and to coach them effectively, they have to use psychology as an aid along with the other designed coaching methods. Psychology offers behavior change models, tools and techniques that in addition to the coaching modules, helps to achieve excellence and shared vision.

Change in behavior, due to stress, speaks a lot about the personal and professional demeanor and at the same time also helps the coach to understand the kind of teaching module he needs to implement. It is imperative that the coach understands and implements the most appropriate psychology based, industry-proven, coaching tools and techniques.

When psychology is included in the business coaching process, it takes on the role of behavior based business coaching. This type of coaching assimilates the research from many psychology disciplines like behavioral, clinical, social, developmental, industrial and organizational theories and principles and converts it into a corroborated, user-friendly model of coaching. Behavior based business-coaching focuses on work-related knowledge, ability, skill, experience and behavior like feelings, values and general attitude towards work. This helps the coach to know the participants better and predict their future behavior and the work performance. Additionally, the coach can work on any future challenges that may arise due to the executives approach towards his work.

A business coach must understand the cognitive, social and emotional development of the participants. Finding out an individuals expectations from the organization and his attitude towards the organization will help the coach to bring about positive behavioral change in the executive, thereby improving performance.

The psychology of business coaching is divided into three schools of practice. The first and the very rare cadre of coaches are those who use proven psychology, based on business-coaching practices. The second group does not implement behavior-based business coaching completely, but are conducting research on it and are gradually assimilating the concept into their business mentoring lessons. Then there are those who are a part of the business-coaching organizations that continue to repackage the same out-dated coaching practices and market them to unsuspecting and unaware companies.

Using behavior-based coaching enhances the achievement of change sooner. Therefore, for a successful business-coaching stint, it is very essential for the coach to identify and put into operation individual psychological strength and talent, for optimum learning and best performance. In addition, the coach must not forget to monitor and control his own emotional and psychological responses. The coach has to develop a psychology that he is a part of the organization to assist the client in changing initiatives in a profitable direction, to bring out the best performance from the existent team. The coach intuition and insight, combined with a practical coaching approach is invaluable for the success of any business-coaching organization.