Credibility and Coaching

A former client called recently to tell me she had a new job.

After the usual “congratulations-and-good-luck” chat she admitted that she was a bit nervous about her new post. She’s working for a very large corporation, supervising 50 employees, spread across several offices in various parts of the state.

What makes her most nervous is that it’s in a new field and the panel that interviewed her made it clear they need a ‘change agent.’  She has supervisory experience and has worked for large corporations but she was worried that her lack of expertise would lead to mistakes.

I encouraged her, explaining that if the hiring board thought she could do the job, she shouldn’t worry and pointed out that she may not have expertise in the field where the main business makes its money, but she did have plenty of experience in  marketing, which is what she will be doing.

I then offered to act as her coach again to which she replied, “They already assigned me one, I haven’t met her yet, but I know she’s best friends with my boss.”

I was encouraged that they were astute enough to have coaches on staff, but I wonder how unbiased the coach might be if she’s that close to the boss. Who knows when something, told in confidence, might slip.

I’m willing to assume that the coach is professional and can separate personal from coaching relationships, but it seems to me that she already has a a credibility issue with my friend and no matter how hard she works there will always be some doubt about who’s best interests the coach considers paramount.

It was clear from our short chat that my friend had the same reaction but it left me wondering how committed to coaching the company really was.

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