Friday, October 8, 2010

The Need For a Validated Executive Coaching Competency Skill Set

By David Hale

Executive coaching, over the past 20 years, has emerged as a field that, as its central function, facilitates change and development. During executive coaching sessions, relationships are formed between a client, who has managerial authority and responsibility in an organization, and a coach, who uses a wide variety of behavioral and cognitive techniques. The coach assists the client in achieving identified goals to improve his or her professional performance and personal satisfaction in conjunction with improving the effectiveness of the client's organization. This is accomplished by designing an agreed upon individual action plan. Executive coaching can take place across a broad spectrum of fields, challenges, and situations, and by its very nature, is a flexible, adaptable, and fluid way of achieving measurable results.

Researchers have offered that despite the embryonic stage of executive coaching, there exists great disparity between the core competencies used, not only during coach training, but also in practice. In past years, executive coaching practitioners relied solely on their psychological education and learner outcomes to develop personal coaching methodology and skills. However, the performance of executive coaches and the outcome of clients additionally depend on the coaching environment, the coach's skill proficiency, and coaching buy-in from the client.
Executive coaching not only lacks a validated set of core competencies, but as a profession, has relied on anecdotal evidence to propose competencies "believed to be" vital to the coaching process.

Researchers and coaches have identified the need for commonality with executive coaching protocols and the necessity for a standard set of core. Kilburg's (1996) discussion of peer-reviewed literature discovered numerous articles concerning general coaching; however, a dearth of empirical data existed then, and remains absent concerning executive coaching to support the techniques and approaches top coaches utilize.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) suggests that with the expansive direction the executive coaching field is taking, there will be a requirement for experienced and proficient coaches. As more corporations begin utilizing executive coaches to develop their high potential employees, this career field will experience exponential growth.

As with any profession, there are employees who operate at higher levels of proficiency than others. Without specific guidelines of what enables high performers to obtain greater results, companies can only teach employees basic skills and leave it to them to develop competency.
McClelland suggests employees working at higher proficiency levels possess precise competencies, which are comprised of knowledge, skills, and aptitudes (KSA), along with specific methods and techniques. Identifying the competency variables of high performers in any field could be useful in training new employees to a higher standard and possibly be used to predict job performance without being biased by sex, race, or socioeconomic factors.

Dr. Dave Hale is the CEO of DHI-Communications, an international business coaching and training consultancy, specializing in ecommerce business development and marketing. Dave is widely regarded as one of the top business coaches for Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs. He is the author of The High Performance Entrepreneur: 12 Essential Strategies to Supercharge Your Startup Business. Dave's work and books have been featured on national television, radio, and print media. To obtain more information on how to make barrels of cash in business and instantly receive my FREE CD and Business Journal go to http://www.DrDaveHaleOnline.com and

http://www.buyhiperbusinessmomentum.com

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