Barnabas File

The Gallup organization did a meta-analysis of 100 million employee interviews to identify what makes a highly engaged team.  The key factor is the manager, but one with a particular style of leading.  In a recent blog post, Jim Clifton reported, “ Gallup has discovered -- through studying what the best managers do differently -- that great managing is an act of coaching, not one of directing and administrating.”   At the center of compassionate accountability is coaching.  Good managers engage in regular coaching conversations to encourage, develop, and support team members.  In the blog, Clifton suggests several ways to implement this game changing strategy in an organization.   1.        Recognize that Millennials and Generation Z individuals want to learn and grow.  Coaching provides this opportunity. 2.       Announce to your organization that your leaders will move f...

The best coaches are really teachers.     Marcia Reynolds writes, “The best coaches make us recognize we have gaps in our reasoning.     The moment we become unsure of what we know learning happens.    This is good coaching.” Reynolds is a good coach.  In Coach the Person Not the Problem:  A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry, she draws on learning theory, neuroscience, and her considerable experience in coaching to provide a practical and productive model for coaching--The Five Essential Coaching Practices. She provides some interesting insights.  For example, she writes, “Thinking is the enemy of the coach.”  The work of analyzing the client’s story belongs to the client, not the coach. The role of the coach is to help the client revisit, review, and reframe the narrative in order to generate a learning moment and then to act on it. Reynolds uses case studies to illustrate her observations and each ch...

I attended an all-male military school for 12 years.     This was not a residential school; we all lived at our homes in the community.     When I told people I went to a military school, one frequent response was, “Oh, have you been in trouble?”    No, I entered the school in first grade not because I was an incorrigible offender but because my parents wanted me to have a good education and were willing to sacrifice for me to go to a private school. Fast forward to the present day.  As I work with churches and other organizations, I sometimes hear this statement: “This person has a problem. They probably need a coach.”  I am not sure of the source of this perspective, but it misses the real reason that a person should have a coach. The present coaching movement was birthed through businesses where rising executives were (and are) provided coaches so that they could build on their strengths.  They were already doing ...

The process called life coaching or personal development coaching is gaining traction in many areas--business, education, the not-for-profit sector, and the church.  Those who have experienced being coached attest to its value for their personal and professional growth.  At the same time, there are some who have been given the opportunity to be coached who resist it.  Why is this? In a blog on Education Week, Peter DeWitt suggested some reasons that educators give for not wanting coaching.  His list stimulated my thinking about some reasons a person may present for not wanting a coach. 1. “I am a professional, so I don’t need a coach.”  Certainly no one puts more time and energy into their work than Olympic athletes, but name one who doesn’t have at least one coach encouraging and supporting that person to do better?  A professional wants to continue developing himself or herself and welcomes someone to come alongside and help. 2. “I have ...

“Maybe it’s the final “Oprah-fication” of America.  Suddenly it seems ‘life coaches’ are all over the place.  Lost in your career?  Get a life coach.  Lost touch with your mojo?  Life coach.  Want a big turn or tune-up?  Life coach.  You put down the cash and the life coach goes to work.  Teasing out your dreams, your desires.  Getting you on track to get there.  The challenge may be at work, may be at home.  Maybe both.  Some therapists worry life coaches are getting into their terrain.  There used to be a stigma.  Maybe not now.  This hour On Point:  we’re looking at the boom in life coaching.”-- Tom Ashbrook Tom Ashbrook hosted a discussion today on National Public Radio’s   On Point that featured Genevieve Smith, author of a recent article in Harper’s Magazine on life coaching.  Other guests included Allison Rimm,  a management consultant and life coach, and David Ley, a c...

Although we shrink from talking about pastors as CEOs, a recent survey of over 200 CEOs has some implications for pastoral leaders. The 2013 Executive Coaching Survey poll was conducted by Stanford University and The Miles Group. The study inquired about the kind of leadership advice that CEOs and their top executives are–and aren’t–receiving, and the skills that are being targeted for improvement.  The emphasis, of course, was on identifying the need for and encouraging executive coaching. According to the survey, “Top areas that CEOs use coaching to improve [are] sharing leadership/delegation, conflict management, team building, and mentoring. [At the] bottom of the list: motivational skills, compassion/empathy, and persuasion skills.”  CEOs steer away from coaching around the “soft people skills” because they either are uncomfortable with those skills or feel that they don’t have the capacity to develop them.  The report does go on to say, however, “ When c...