Episode 12: Overview of executive coaching and coach training in the UK: past, present, and future

Over the past 25 years, the UK’s executive coaching industry has evolved from a niche service into a cornerstone of leadership and people development. The AoEC has played a pivotal role in this transformation by setting high standards for coach training and accreditation and has helped raise the bar for professional coaching, making significant contributions to the field.

We look back at how the industry has evolved during the AoEC’s 25-year history and look ahead at the future of executive coaching in the UK. We will explore its increasing demand driven by the complexities of modern leadership and assess what will be important in its next phase of growth and innovation.

You can link with the speakers here:

·       John Leary-Joyce, CEO and founder, AoEC – guest panellist

·       Peter Burditt, owner, Strategic Development Consultants Ltd and non-executive director, AoEC - guest panellist

·       Kaz Hazelwood, AoEC - host

  To find out more about coach training and coaching, please visit the AoEC’s website www.aoec.com

Transcript

Kaz 0:06

Hello and welcome to Coaching Conversations with the Academy of Executive Coaching or the AoEC. I'm Kat Hazelwood, part of the business team here at the AoEC, and I also have a counselling and coaching private practice. In today's episode, we're joined by John Leary-Joyce, CEO and founder of the AoEC and founder of the London Gestalt Centre. John has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of executive coaching in the UK and globally. And with his vast experience in leadership development, John has ensured that the AoEC stays at the forefront of coaching excellence, bringing innovative ideas and practices into the profession. He's a master gestalt and team coach and runs programmes across the world. Our other guest today is Peter Burditt, who has also played a key role in coaching evolution. With his expertise in coaching and development, Peter's work as a close collaborator of the AoEC, being on the board and faculty for many years, has helped to shape the AoEC's values and methodologies, ensuring a strong foundation for the coaching community. His influence in the early days helped define the AoEC's approach to executive coaching, supervision, and ongoing professional development. As a reformed accountant and banker, he worked as a senior executive coach and motivational consultant for a number of highly successful business leaders, their teams, and their organisations, and coaches senior executives on both individual and corporate strategies for success. With sound experience in finance and a background in psychology, as well as currently serving as a non-exec director on the AoEC board, Peter brings a broad array of business knowledge. Both key figures in shaping the future of coaching with a wealth of qualifications, expertise and affiliations. Who could be better placed to talk with us on this episode? As we look back at how the industry has evolved over the AoEC's 25-year history from a niche service into a cornerstone of leadership and people development, we also look ahead at the future of executive coaching and explore the increasing demand for coaching driven by the complexities of modern leadership. This podcast recording was a great insight into their experience and predictions. So stay tuned to hear the past, present, and future of coaching. Hello, John and Peter, and thank you for joining for this episode of Coaching Conversations.

John 2:31

Yeah, pleasure being here and real delight to be chatting with my friend Peter Burditt.

Peter 2:38

Likewise.

Kaz 2:39

So today we're looking back at how the industry has evolved and look ahead at the future of executive coaching in the UK. So let's dive right in and start with a question for you, Peter, if I may. From your perspective, how has the coaching industry evolved over the past 25 years? And what do you think the key milestones were that marked this transformation?

Peter 3:02

Well, it's interesting, Kaz, that you use the word industry as opposed to coaching profession. And we could debate that as well. Is it an industry? Is it a profession? If it's a profession, what are the standards? Do people hire coaches because of their professional qualifications, their training, their experience, or for any other reason? I like to think that I was a pioneer some years ago. I had a proper job once when I was head of Global Strategy for Barcap and I was a company turnaround specialist and met John after gestalt therapy had totally transformed my life and which I used in company turnaround situations. I set up a company in those 30 years ago called Chief Executive Mentoring, because as a company doctor, a lot of people wanted to talk to me about them, their heuristical biases, their family of origin, unresolved issues, you know, why they were autocrats, why they were dictators, why they couldn't get their people to do what they wanted them to do. There was a fascinating journey. And I was 45, I think I'm now 74. So I've been doing this for a good few years. And really no one outside of the sports arena had really heard of executive coaching. There were things like outplacement, where people were sort of retreads being fired, and I had a few assignments or gave a few assignments to outplacement consultants to cope with some of the people I had to let go. And certain HR departments, the more enlightened ones, would use coaching as an alternative to performance management, but it was remedial. So I guess the short answer to your question is it's become much more common. The ROI has been more easily understood, ROI return on investment. Although I know John and I try to avoid the quantification of what's the impact of on the PL of someone's transformation. So I think it's changed in terms of being better known. So there weren't many coaches around when I started. I think it's very much moved from remedial to developmental. I think it's also become democratised in that coaching budgets are now reaching people lower down the organisation from just the C-suite. In terms of my opening comments, is it a profession or is it an industry? I don't think the ICF existed. John will probably correct me 30 years ago. So the standards of accreditation, the standards of you know diplomas and the education have also increased. I probably get three or four people a month saying I want to be a coach, where would you suggest I go? And of course I'm totally biased towards the AoEC, but they also mention Ashridge or Meyler Campbell or Henley. The AoEC, I think, helps people get in touch with themselves and what they bring to a coaching relationship, whereas people perhaps go to Ashridge or Henley to get a PhD or an MSc or whatever. So better known, democratised, higher standards, and it's now seen, I think, as a fundamental and necessary tool of leadership and management to transform people's attitudes and behaviors as they get promoted.

John 6:49

Can I build on that for a completely different perspective? Because of course, you've been in banking and industry, whereas I was coming from psychology and therapy and as you said, Gestalt. So my side of it is the coaching kind of emerged out of, first of all, way back in the 60s and 70s, we had humanistic psychology and the whole growth of a personal development that was beginning to impact on what we now would call wellbeing and how people start to feel better at work. And there was in the 70s and 80s, there were two very significant OD consultants, Chris R. Gyrus and Edgar Schein, and they evolved what they called process consulting, which meant that managers and individuals would pay attention to the process of what was going on rather than necessarily the outcome. And along with that was something called action learning that was coming up and developing in the 90s. And this combination, I think, set the ground for the emergence of coaching. And I was trying to recall the name of the the chap in the US. I think he was connected with one of the first institutes called Coach U or Coach University that started and started to call this coaching. So that was about 30 years ago, and as Peter said, from that ICF began to emerge as the first professional body, and then it was kind of open house, and it was primarily what we called life coaching. It was primarily focused on a sort of transition from the personal development humanistic psychology movement about how do we live a better life, how do we feel more satisfied with a nod to how would this affect your work? And so I would say that the major transition over the last 25 years, and it has to be said the Academy of Executive Coaching was, as Peter says, we were a pioneer in those days of taking all of that stuff that was evolving back in the 90s and applying that specifically and calling ourselves the Academy of Executive Coaching, because it was very much a connection between Peter and myself, where we were taking Gestalt in particular as one of the primary psychological methodologies around and the business environment process consulting and putting that together and creating the Academy of Executive Coach. And and I think I was the first in the market to run a programme specifically on executive coaching rather than business or workplace coaching. Now if you browse the internet, there are many executive coach training organisations around the world. So it's no longer prerogative of AoEC to carry this title, but that has been the journey from very much the life coaching, personal development side now through to I would say most of the coaching, certainly in the UK, is connected to workplace coaching. But certainly it's become massive in organisations. In fact, I would tend to say that, and I've said right at the beginning, it's one of the major development forces, and it will be going forward, it'll be essential for all managers to have coaching skills of some form or another.

Peter 10:57

Well, it's interesting, John. You talk about in the future, all managers will require to have some sort of coaching experience or or qualifications. One of the things that John is so good at is crystallising and formulating ideas into structure. And I think there's a big difference between leadership and management. And I think it was you that invented the six leadership styles, John. Six leadership styles being autocratic, coercive, pace-setting, affiliative, democratic, and coaching. And I do believe that a leader's repertoire of leadership skills has to embrace coaching. So I see that very much as more important for leaders, because the definition of leadership versus managers is quite specific. A manager directs, whereas a leader empathises, inspires, and motivates. I don't know whether you agree with that, John.

John 11:52

Yes, indeed. And just to make one correction, those six styles were another John, a John Heron, again, part of the humanistic psychology field and the whole rise in the 80s and 90s of personal development. John Heron was a very significant figure in the action learning side of organisational development.

Peter 12:21

Well, it was interesting that you you said in the development, Kaz's early question was what are the milestones? Before the recording, we just discussed briefly the difference between evolution, emergent, the journey, and milestones. I mean, we all sit on giant shoulders, I guess, and we amend, adopt, and adapt. So it's not so easy to pinpoint, you know, in December 1975 this happened, or in January 1980 this happened. But but I think in terms of human evolution and society and personal awareness, you know, I like to think that our awareness as coaches and coach supervisors both preempts the evolution of the human soul and also supports the development of the human soul. There have been a couple of milestones, I think. There have been some economic crises along the way. There's been COVID and there's been digitisation. We haven't yet talked about digital coaching. So I think there have been some broad milestones, but I'd like to think as people become more self-aware, more in touch with you know, mind, body, and spirit, that they yearn to find meaning of life type support. And we spend an awful lot of time at work, and as John said, we now call it wellbeing. And I think people need to have purpose in their jobs. I often use a phrase which is a difference between being washed up as a flotsam and jetsum of fate versus tuning into our destiny. And I like to think that coaching helps people really unlock their potential within finding their destiny. And I know I'm darting around a bit. COVID was important, certainly for my practice, because although my practice was not just UK, I became much more global because I was allowed to access clients in different parts of the globe. And then there became an acceleration of the digital. A lot of my clients say they don't like digital coaching because it's more of the same. I've got to turn on my computer, I've got to look at my screen. Whereas when you come into the meeting room, the energy changes. I think there's something in the personal connection. I call it the intimacy of silence. And I think that's much better manifested in person than it is on a screen. Some of my clients will say to me, Oh, today was a good session, you didn't say very much. So I think also the professionalism, the awareness and the empathy of coaches has developed because coaches no longer need to direct and tell and say, I think they need, they begin to understand their mere presence of acknowledgement, attention, connection, empathy is where the magic happens. So to summarise that, I think as coaching develops, it's either preempting what the universal response is, or can support that universal change. Where the AI and the digital comes in is that the computers are telling you no, or we are now the slaves of computers because I have to fill in all sorts of forms and click this button and click that button. But the human psyche, I think, is still a long way behind feeling dehumanised. And therefore, I think there's another milestone, which is to help we as coaches help people feel human again.

Kaz 16:05

Yeah, and I'd really like to talk about AI a little bit later on, actually. But my question is now is you mentioned, John, about humanistic side, and it and like that's really become integrated into executive coaching. And also as a result of that accessibility and democratisation, the industry has really evolved. And with that, the standards have become higher. But how important are those standards today?

John 16:33

Well, this is the same with any evolving profession, if we stick with that word rather than industry, because way back, and I just checked there, 1994, the ICF was established by Thomas Leonard in the US. And of course, then it was new, it was a free-for-all. People could do whatever they like. But as the profession grows and it gets more theoretical underpinning and structure and framework and definition, then of course, if you're going to call yourself a coach, we need to have some clearer distinctions about what level you are at. You know, of course, we just have a look at the medical profession 200 years ago and it was just, in the same place. So this is the evolution of every profession. I was involved in the evolution of the psychotherapy profession some 20 years ago. So you know, it's all developing and growing. And that means that as we become more refined and are clearer about what's expected of our coaches, and we are clearer about companies and competency frameworks, then of course we get definitions and expectations, and of course, the standard develops. Now, sometimes that can become a bit mechanistic, as we know, but it helps to raise the quality of the profession. And back in 1994, when Thomas Leonard formed the ICF, it was really a bunch of people coming together to say, what do you think we could call this thing that we're doing? And now, of course, what's that, 25 years later, 30 years later, it's now looking at yes, we have standards. And if I'm going to call myself a coach, what sort of coach am I? If I'm an executive coach as the buyer, what would you expect from that? And one of the massive changes over the 25 years I've been involved in coaching is the clarity of what you would expect of a coach. When I started anybody called themselves a coach and could claim anything, now it's much tighter, much clearer focus. And that means that we are able to manage quality and ensure the customers' clients get the results that they are promised.

Peter 19:17

And if I can sort of big up the AoEC a bit, Kaz, I think the difference between the AoEC is it's very experiential, whereas some of the other accreditation bodies are not. And you can have a degree, you can have letters under your name, and you can write a great thesis, but if you cannot engender the trust and the connection in the room, then the coaching isn't going to work. And I get very passionate about this. And I also say to companies where I'm involved with HR or the buying level of coaches, you know, don't be hoodwinked by the degrees or where they've actually been trained. Do your one-to-one with them and put yourself up as a coachee to see how you relate to the person that calls themselves a coach.

Kaz 20:07

So you feel that there is a need for further development, Peter?

Peter 20:10

Well, I think before one can say what are we developing, one has to define what it is we're developing. It's a question of somehow monitoring the quality of the conversation and the output. And that's not easy to do or to define. So I mentioned the ROI return on investment thing that both John and I try and steal away from. That the best, it was Einstein who said the only truth is experience. And I think the only true assessment of quality and whether it's worked is for someone's stakeholders to give feedback on what they have acknowledged or observed about that individual who's been coached for six months or twelve months. Because the spin-off of someone being happy, someone being a good team player, someone feeling licensed to express their vision, their ideals, you can't measure it in numbers because it becomes a positive, contagious energy. And that person who is expressing themselves fully without necessary competition, but cooperation, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The synergies, the energy that's unleashed in terms of the morale of that of those departments. I worked in Germany for a fourth generation pharmaceutical company, and I worked with the finance department, and everybody saw every year how amazing that finance department had become and how they wanted some of it. So rather than someone phoning up the finance department and then saying, Oh yeah, what do you want? Even the phrase, how can I help changed the perception of the finance department, not as a cost center, but as a department that was partnering the front of the business.

Kaz 22:04

Yeah, so really getting alongside that client. And I just wondered how you feel as well. Perhaps John, you could answer this about how the needs and expectations of clients seeking coaching actually changed over the last few decades, do you think?

John 22:20

Well, of course, people didn't know really what they were signing up for. There were a very precious few books. People like John Whitmore wrote a performance coaching that set us up. I was just remembering to Tim Galway, who wrote The Inner Game of Tennis and probably was one of the key influential people way back in the 60s and 70s, who was looking at the process through traditional tennis coaching about one's attitude to the game of coaching. So these were the early pioneers, and they began to set a standard. Miles Downey was another one. He was a key influential person that was writing.

Peter 23:08

Miles Downey said, there are no rules to coaching, but you've got to know them.

John 23:16

That is typical of Miles.

Peter 23:19

can I butt in here, John? Because you wrote this as well. You defined, I think, the four types of coaching: skills-based, performance, developmental, and transformational. And I think it's very important, Kaz, that when you're with a contracting client, the person that pays the bills, to get them to understand and for the coach to understand precisely what sort of coaching they want. And at my age, I tend to do more transformational coaching, skills-based coaching, there has to be some element of subject matter expertise, I think. But you know, John invented those four labels, I think.

John 23:57

Yes, yes. Well, I certainly, in my own Master's research in 2000, was looking at that and building on the work of other people around that. But definitely, yes, I find that those four levels give a clearer picture about what the customer, the coachee could expect, whether they were just wanting to upskill and learn how to do something better, whether they want to improve their performance generally, or in terms of what I call developmental coaching, how to develop themselves, who they are, issues to do with confidence and their capability to influence their presence, which was really important for leaders. And then the transformational or what I sometimes call the existential level, which was who am I? Why am I here? What's the point? Where am I going? And this is the level that Peter will be working at as he is working with leaders at the top, who, if you take the say 2008, the financial crisis or COVID, it's like, where are we? Who are we? Where are we going? We don't know. And solution-focused performance approaches just aren't relevant there because there are no answers. There's just a way of exploring the complexity of what is. And this is where developmental and transformational existential coaching becomes really helpful. But you know, I have been part of helping to shape the way coaching evolves, along with many, many other people who have written and researched and created models that help shape the way coaching is today. And now there are thousands of books on coaching, all of them each time trying to elucidate another area of coaching. A big area that's right at the forefront is neurodiversity, for instance. We're now exploring what happens when how do we understand ADHD in senior leaders or autism. So, as coaches, we're now understanding these neurodiversity and of course the whole field of brain development has been a key part in the last certainly 10 years.

Peter 26:36

That's a fascinating subject, neurodiversity. I work with a lot of hedge fund traders, and their communication skills are not as developed as their intellectual, mathematical, logarithmic skills. And my job is to help them simplify the complex. And I'm not an academic, I don't think I'm that bright really. And I say, I don't understand what you're saying. Can you put it another way? And they put it another way, and I said, That's what you need to tell your boss. And there are more and more people. I've got four grandchildren, one of whom is extremely bright and possibly ADHD. And I can see she's 16, so I can see the influence of the social media, the fact she's addicted to her phone, and it troubles me. But when she explains something to me, I say, don't understand that, put it in another way. And that helps her with her essays because she simplifies I think that what the question is asking is the following, and just putting that down helps her concentrate on what question she's answering and what is needed, because otherwise they can go off at a tangent because they've got so much data in their heads, which is scrambled all over the place. Yeah.

John 27:49

So as coaches, what we're doing is really beginning to understand how the brain functions through neuroscience and how we can accommodate that and help people actually live their best lives within their capacities and their strengths and their capabilities. And we are now much more accepting and understanding of neurodiversity and the strengths that come through that brain functioning. But again, you're asking about the developments of the coaching profession and what clients can expect. And we can expect their going forward to be even greater clarity about how coaches can support neurodiverse clients to work in a better and more effective way and to have organisations accommodate their very special and unique skills.

Kaz 28:47

Yeah, very reassuring. What other trends have you noticed in the challenges that leaders are bringing to coaching sessions, Peter?

Peter 28:56

Well, a lot of leaders haven't led before. There's a lot written about leadership, but until you've done it, you don't know what you don't know. And as I said before, the extreme is when someone says to me, It's been a great session, Peter, you haven't said much. I had a lovely compliment last week of a guy I've coached for 15 years, from a banker to a CFO to a CEO. And he says to me, Um, it's lonely. I don't know who to trust, I don't know who to bounce my ideas off. Peter, you're a great listener. You tune in and feed back what you've heard me say. I don't always know what I've said, but in talking to you, it helps me clarify what I've said. He got a bit poetic. He said, there's a difference between looking at myself in a fast-flowing river and looking at myself reflected back in a calm pond. And you are my calm pond. So I think leaders want a combination of things. They want a safe place to talk, they want some acknowledgement, justification, a permission. Because you probably know that there's a triangle of the organisation being the persecutor, the coachee being the victim and the coach being the rescuer, and there's a fine line between colluding with your client and supporting the client. And one can support the client by asking open-ended questions. But what does a leader want? To check in, to get some external acknowledgement that what they're doing is right. I've got a complex client now who I've worked with for 12 years. He's become the CEO of a company when before he was a chief risk officer. And I tease him and say when they took alchemy away from the priests and gave it to the scientists, it didn't work anymore. Now, his father is a very, very senior scientist. He said, Oh no, I'm not sure I do feelings, I only do facts and science. But doing the employee engagement survey, he was given the CEO baton from the owner of the company. People were saying, There's no vision, there's no charisma, there's no energy, it's all too scientific. We've lost the personal touch. So, you know, there are four different styles of leader. There are the ones that want to get things done, ones that want to get things right, people like Boris Johnson, who have great vision, perhaps no follow-through, and people that actually follow us, supporters. And somehow, if someone has got to the top by being a great analyst, they need the support of someone who can communicate the vision. If someone's got to the top by being an entrepreneur with great ideas, they need someone to support them to bring some process structure and discipline. So I can't answer that question because it depends on who the leader is, what their style is, what they believe in, because they need to be complemented with other people that can do the things that they don't do. But a bit like me and John, you probably can gather that we're very different, but we're extremely close. Sometimes we work through telepathy. We don't have to say things. And it's wonderful because you know it creates, I don't know, John, how long have we known each other? 30 years?

John 32:34

Yes, at least.

Peter 32:36

And you know, we know each other socially as well, and we enjoy each other's company. We can have some heated debates, but in the service of the coaching profession. So he's a leader in his own right. And he can probably tell you better than me what he wants out of coaching.

John 32:58

Yes. Oh, what do I want out of coaching is well, of course, it's exactly as you say, it's support of my style of leadership and recognising where I am strong and where I'm good and where I play to my strengths and where I'm not, and then what do I do to fill the gaps where I'm not so strong? And then that requires being able to lead a team. And I would say now the next major evolution in coaching in organisations is team coaching. How do we help the leader understand what it means to be leading a team in a collective way rather than, as Peter started out talking about in a sort of dictatorial, maybe even arrogant way, where they think that they know best and they're not utilising the strengths of the people that can fill in for their gaps. They have blind spots, and part of the coach's job is to shine a torch on the blind spot, not expect you to fill it yourself, but be able to say, okay, so I have a blind spot, who can I get to help me to fill in? So part of the whole evolution of coaching is looking at how do we coach a team and then there's an evolution of team of teams, how do two teams get together? So the profession is growing and evolving in these ways and really supporting leaders by saying, let's go for more of a collaborative leadership rather than a dictatorial one, because we can see that shared leadership has much greater resilience than actually what we sometimes call hub and spokes. So you've got the the leader in the middle sharing or sending out orders via the spokes to the organisation. That's a great methodology. If you've got an emergency, you've got somebody to cut through, make decisions and and get us through the other side, and of course, might be moving into political areas, but Boris Johnson gave the impression that he was cutting through the red tape. He was going to get Brexit done and gave the impression that he was going to get there now. In actual fact, as Peter has alluded, we know that as Prime Minister, he wasn't good at getting things done. He was charismatic, he was inspirational, but he was not a getting things done person. And sadly, I think part of the failure of the government of the time was the ability to collaborate and work together.

Peter 35:58

Yeah, let me add to that because something we haven't actually commented on, which hopefully will link in when you talk about the milestones, Kaz, the use of psychometrics. The use of psychometrics has run in parallel, I think, with the evolution of coaching. There was a very old-style psychometric called Myers Briggs, and one of the textbooks that's paralleled uh Myers Briggs was the title of the book was Gifts Differing. And what's what John's just explained is the psychometrics is a short form of working out what people's preferred style is. And once they've taken responsibility for what their style is, they need different types of management, different ways of dealing with things in a group setting. So you can have someone with ideas who may be usually extrovert and talks a lot, but the person who is introvert doesn't always speak up in a team session, and so a skilled facilitator like John will notice that individual and say, you know, uh Frida, Fred, you you haven't actually spoken. What do you think? Now, analysts think, visionaries feel, people that want to get things done thump the table, and you can tell by the way the words people use, the way their bodies behave in team sessions, what sort of preferred communication style they have. So to summarise that milestone, increased use of different psychometrics, the concept that the team is stronger than the individual. And I think the dumbing down of the old-fashioned autocratic leader.

John 37:48

Yes. It's something that I always say these days is that managers have and leaders have to develop a coaching style because as parents, this is what we how we've brought up our children. We've brought up our children to think for themselves, to ask questions, to be curious. And of course, when our children go into the millennials and thereafter go into the workforce, they will expect to be treated the way they were at home. And if you've been brought up to speak your mind and to be heard and listened to, then of course you will expect that. And autocratic leaders and managers will very quickly lose out as we go forward if they don't adopt a coaching style, which is why I'm very confident that coaching will continue to grow and develop and to be a major force in any leadership and management development activity. It kind of is now. I don't think you would do a leadership programme, certainly in the UK and Europe, without having coaching as a key part of it. But you know, it I think it will become even more so as a household name. And in due course, we'll see that when we get comedy shows poking fun at coaching and coaching styles. Then we'll know we've got there. I think Miranda also did one of her sessions around coaching, so she had a life coach, I think.

Kaz 39:31

And it's interesting you mentioned about children because I was just thinking of the saying it takes a village to raise a child, and it feels like that with leaders as well. You need various different people to be able to support you in that setting. So we're talking about new generation of leaders emerging, Looking to the future. How do you anticipate their coaching needs will differ? You mentioned AI earlier, perhaps as part of that.

Peter 40:00

It's all contextual, isn't it? We have a model, John and I, which is person, role, and context. So who is the person? you know, what is their preferred star? You know, being silly, you could have blue eyes or brown eyes, are they left-handed or they're right-handed? What is the role that they're fulfilling? Are they too big for the role, too small for the role? Is the role tightly defined or is it open to interpretation and adaption? And then there's the strategic context. Companies go through different stages of growth. So you have the entrepreneurial company where people are generalists and they all pitch in. You then get to a larger company where the founders are no longer around and it moves from a family company to more of a managed company. And then they might buy something big, and you've got two different cultures coming together. And then you get the more mature companies, the household names, where the leaders sometimes of those large companies, particularly banks, have to be much more diplomatic, aware of the politics. I mean, if you think about a clearing bank, whose side are they on? Are they on the saver side, the borrower side, the the government regulatory side? So I don't think I can answer your question because it's too big a question to be specific, but because it depends on the context as well as the backcloth. Are we in peace time? Are we in COVID times? What is it that at least got to be fairly instinctive to know how to tune in to the people that he or she are leading? And they normally then come to someone on the AoEC, someone like me who's has their own practice to say, help, I'm navigating a different terrain and I don't know how to do it effectively and ethically.

John 42:13

I see that the role of AI will be helping people at a sort of skills and performance level to answer some of the basic questions to get them to think for themselves. But we have so much screen time and so much digital exchange that actually being more experienced and comfortable about leading face to face or emotionally connecting will be something that leaders are going to have to maybe develop if we're so caught up with digitisation, we are losing the human touch. Now hopefully people get that at home, children get that at home, but of course I can see that with my children and the constant desire to be on their phone or their screens or on videos and television that we're losing touch with the basics of human existence. And I think our coaches will be supporting people on that senior level, just how to be more human and in touch with themselves and the environment.

Kaz 43:37

But are there any aspects of coaching that technology perhaps enhances with?

Peter 43:43

Well, I think there's some structure. Again, if we go back to the skills based, performance based, developmental based, not so much the transformation, but some people require to be disciplined around have they actually done what they say they were going to do. So some of the digital programmes are to be clear that someone writes down what are their goals, to be clear about what it's the grow model, um, G for goals, what's their reality? What experiments can they do with the options? What are the obstacles? What are the opportunities? And also, I use the W for will. And have they got the energy? And sometimes these screen-based stuff where you fill in boxes allows you to keep almost like a digital diary. Have you done what you said you're going to do? Because you can't move on to the next chapter until you have. But that's quite mechanical and it's quite basic.

Kaz 44:46

And do you think there are any other key trends that will possibly shape the next phase of coaching?

Peter 44:53

A lot of companies now bring in independent, I'll call them consultants, but they bring them in for a project. So the film industry CAS, which I mentioned, you bring you know a lighting engineer or a sound engineer, a design engineer. I live next door to a film producer who's relatively famous for something he produced on TV. And he lives a very nomadic style. And he has different teams for different shoots. So I think this word democratisation is interesting, and I think people don't want necessarily to be owned by a company. So I think coaching will exist to help people be autonomous and know how to relate to a corporate entity, but I think a lot of people don't necessarily want to be owned and be seen as an employee.

Kaz 45:51

Yes.

John 45:52

And the coaching aspect of that is helping people manage their own self-employment. Yes. Yeah, very much, yeah.

Kaz 46:01

And John, in terms of what to focus on in the evolving landscape, in order to be successful, what advice would you give to those aspiring to be executive coaches who are entering the field today?

John 46:15

Is to capitalize on their background and experience from their career to date. While coaching is not about having an answer. If you understand a sector or an industry, so if you've come from a catering background, then it's most likely that you understand that industry and that you can offer a coaching service to chefs, to hospitality managers, to hotel construction, because you understand it, you can not advise them, but you can ask probably more pertinent questions. So, generally, I recommend that whatever your background profession is, to stay within that profession, at least to start with, so that you understand, you know the sector, and you can then have credibility in that sector. So it's interesting, of course, Peter grew up in the banking industry and he's become an incredibly well-known coach and very successful coach in that sector. If we asked him to go and operate in the scuba diving industry, he might struggle to break into that area.

Peter 47:42

Uh-oh, I'll have you know that I'm a good coach in biochemicals and the caravan business.

John 47:49

I was worried I would get myself in trouble there. Now, the difficulty is that you fall into traps, you think you know the answer and you can get very quickly caught up in it. So I often recommend people who've come from the legal profession to stay within it, but also to be careful that you're not offering advice and guidance, but simply being able to ask very pertinent and focused questions because you know the sector.

Peter 48:18

I think the magic of your question was in the first part of your question, because new coaches. So I totally agree with John about new coaches, stay where they've got credibility. But nearly all my business comes from word of mouth recommendation, and I get to the wives or the husbands or the fathers or the brothers of who I'm coaching in different industries, they seem to get as much value out of me, even if I'm not brought up in that particular industry.

John 48:47

Yes, but I think we are talking, you're absolutely right, Peter, to pick that up. I was speaking to new entering coaches, and then from there you broaden.

Kaz 48:58

Yeah, being careful to stay within their frame of reference.

John 49:01

To start with, because that gives you confidence, and one of the most important things the coach needs to come with is a self-belief, show up in a way that they are feeling resourced and capable, they understand the world.

Peter 49:15

And I think one of the most difficult things I do, Kaz, is what's called the chemistry session. So an organisation will probably put me in front of a person, put two other people, and the biggest bit of advice I can give to a new coach is not to oversell. It's to ask poignant questions and build up that relationship. And I'm told I get 85% of the beauty rates I go for with one organisation because I don't really say very much.

Kaz 49:50

Allowing them to bring what they need to bring. Absolutely. So, over your years as professional coaches, what is the most valuable lesson you've learned that you wish you had known right at the start of your career? John?

John 50:05

Uh it's so hard to say, probably not to rush, to take my time. I find this sort of question difficult because I think of the pitfalls that I've gone into that if I'd known I wouldn't have fallen into them have been such great lessons. If I'd known not to rush, I wouldn't have really understood the importance of it because I would have not really understood the deep meaning of taking your time and the pitfall of of rushing ahead. So maybe I'll hand over to Peter to see if he's got one. But at the moment, I tend to look back on all of my foibles and mistakes as yep, okay, they were just yet another learning step. And in a sense, you know, I needed to have that in order to progress to where I am now. Peter, how would you respond?

Peter 51:08

Well, think it has to be authenticity. I've got two examples of that, one of which is in John's famous book, Coaching the Void, where I was asked to go and see a client, and within about 15 minutes I said to him, I don't think I can work with you. He said, Well, I've called you in, of course you're going to work with me. And I'm saying, Well, I don't feel safe. My experience of you is that you're quite bullying. He said, You're hired, because that's why I'm told I have to have a coach, because I lose 50% of my team every year. But I had to be authentic. And the other example would be I have a new client, and she brings in her Kleenex to every session, and for the first 15 minutes she just cries. And I think the worst thing you can do to anybody who is that vulnerable is to say stop crying. So I encourage her to cry, and she says, Oh, this is such a relief, such a release to be able to feel not self-conscious that I can sob my heart out because in every tear there is a problem. In every tear, there is someone that's told me off in the organisation, and some people don't feel comfortable with people crying around them, and I just there and look and nod. Sometimes I cry. I cry with their pain, and of course, the word compassion it comes from you know, with pain to be with someone's pain and them not feel judged.

Kaz and John 52:54

Yeah, that realness. When you say that, Peter, I think yes, I think if I had been more confident to trust my own internal experience earlier in my career, I think I would have been more effective in communicating, building the relationship, building the rapport, and being more effective.

Peter 53:18

I think, you know, if I was John at the AoEC and people wanted to come and get an accreditation or a diploma, the first question I'd ask them is how do you deal with trauma? Because I find those people that have actually had trauma in their lives are the best coaches.

John 53:35

Yeah. They've had the trauma and they've come through it. They've found they've healed those elements. Yes, absolutely. You know, life experience is a huge teacher on how we can be and how we deepen and shape up our compassion and empathy.

Kaz 53:56

Final thought, reflecting on your career as a whole, what impact do you hope you've made on the field of coaching and what legacy would you like to leave behind?

John 54:05

I think that where I've come to in my coaching practice is helping exactly as Peter said, and I think we might be very much on the same page here, how to be authentic in the coaching relationship, how to bring yourself there and be genuine and to actually work less hard. So be present, be engaged, be compassionate, and take your time and be open and upfront. And I hope that I have been conveying that certainly in the last 10 years, where I've become really solid and understanding the power of dialogue, the power of connection in the coaching relationship.

Peter 54:59

I think I can look back and say there have been a small number, I don't know whether it's 15, 100, but I've been doing this for 30 years. A small number of people that have become chief executives who've become much more humane, much more collaborative, and created a better environment for the people to work within, and have managed to stay in touch with their wives and kids. Because I do sometimes get asked to talk to their spouses, whether it's female or male chief executives. And I learn a lot about what they're like at home and how they're bringing up their kids, as well as how they're leading their companies.

Kaz 55:50

Thank you so much to both of you. It's such a fascinating conversation for your insights and your wisdom. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Peter 55:58

And Kaz, I know we're coming to time, but I want to thank you very much for your very poignant, pertinent questions, your patience and your courtesy in listening to two senior men, talk about being allowed to reminisce about their careers.

John 56:19

Two old guys. Thank you, Kaz. Thank you, Peter, and thank you for those of you who are listening to us reminiscing and sharing our experience. It's been a pleasure and a privilege. Thank you, Kaz and the AoEC.