History of Coaching

1960-170 - government and large organization planning was top down. Upper management made the decisions; middle managers saw to it that decisions were carried out.

1970s-80s - organizations needed more flexibility to thrive, hierarchical control of employees gave way to trust and collaborative work relationships. (3)

late 1980s - the professional field of coaching was born - a field promoting continuous resilience and performance in persons and organizations--focused on formulating scenarios for the future, given the complexities and speed of change in today's world. Coaches were often ask about:
personal evolving
succession planning
career shifting
work performance
high performance teams
outplacement
burn-out
scenario building
leadership training
work-home balance
individual and organizational renewal.

The Handbook of Coaching by F. Hudson

This book is a "comprehensive" resource guide to coaching -- and as I looked through the table of contents it does seem to be comprehensive, offering a lot of excellent information to help someone get up to speed in this area. Every chapter has an extensive, often annotated bibliography.

"The term coach is used, in the book and in the profession, like it is used on athletics. A coach both guides and mentors., helps the client see options for becoming more effective as a whole person. Good coaches taken great satisfaction is seeing their clients discard the old, fixed, constricting rules and begin to follow new rules that give them the strength to thrive in whatever situation they find themselves. (xi)

Coaching at SJSU

At the ARC conference, Monica, Gloria and I talked about what we would love to see happening at SJSU and developing a formalized coaching/mentoring struck a deep chord for all of us. We had lunch with Ruth Johnstone from the UW and came back to campus with the determination to see if we could begin a program at SJSU like that as UW.

Monica and Gloria and I met at the King Cafe to determine steps forward. Monica talked with Charlie and he's supportive of the plan. (I know that it would be great to have such a program for faculty and MPPs as well.) The folks at the UW have been great about sending us their information. We're talking with friends in the colleges who have expertise in this area and finding out more about the City's mentoring program. And over Christmas break we're reading some books/articles to get a better foundational understanding of the field of Coaching/Mentoring.

I thought I'd use this blog for the next few weeks to capture what I'm reading about and thinking about as we plan to begin a coaching program at SJSU in the fall.