Catherine Sandler is a trained psychologist with her own flourishing practice as a coach to senior executives.
If I understand it correctly, her view is that in order to coach people successfully, it is essential to help each individual understand their own personality, their implicit underlying values, the experiences that have shaped their character and the effects on others of their behaviour and attitudes.
As an introduction to this theory, Sandler describes her own coaching practice and style and the challenges that high-level coaching brings. She considers the emotional pressures on managers and the high expectations that they face because they are never off-stage and are having to lead in turbulent times.
In successive chapters, Sandler outlines psychodynamic theory, which was developed by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Melanie Klein. She also describes the way that the approach enables her to get closer to her clients and develop deeper insights into the factors and emotional pressures that impel their behaviour in order to help them change.
Sandler introduces two valuable models as an aid to understanding people’s underlying conditions, issues and behaviour, remembering that few human beings are consistent in what they do and how they react to a given set of circumstances.
Thought-provoking
She illustrates her views with some 40 case histories based on her own experience. In each, Sandler outlines the steps that she took to try and gain acceptance of the need for coaching in order to get to the source of each individual’s problem and behaviour.
She also shows how receiving that coaching support led to a change in the individual’s behaviour and attitudes. It is a process that I would describe as ‘deep coaching’. But I have some reservations.
During 40 years of consultancy working with senior managers and at board level, I have come across very few people whose behaviour and problems in working with others were as severe as those described by Sandler. Only one, for instance, was demonstrably paranoid.
I have, however, come across many individuals who felt unable to open their hearts to their managers, subordinates or colleagues. As a result, I feel that guidance from mature, unrelated seniors and colleagues could be more effective.
Catherine’s view is that executive coaches do not need to be trained in psychotherapy to be able to use such concepts in their work. I take the complementary view that those who wish to undertake coaching should adopt a ‘human’ approach, have a wide range of experience and be able to elicit the problems that executives face. They should also be able to give them guidance – in appropriately measured doses.
Nonetheless, ‘Executive Coaching’ is a thought-provoking and valuable book that should stimulate coaches to evaluate, and perhaps modify, their own approach.
- The reviewer this time was John Pope, who is founder and director of management consultancy, John Pope Associates.
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