Becoming an Executive Coachee:
Creating Learning Partnerships

ISBN: 978-0-9551139-1-8

There is a deluge of books on executive coaching and many of them, most of them indeed, are written for executive coaches. There is almost nothing for the executive coachee (the person receiving coaching). Coaching from the perspective of the coachee is, by and large, left to chance. This point has been made recently, “Looking at the literature and research on coaching, it is noticeable that while there is a considerable amount of emphasis placed on the skills of the coach, there seems to be less focus on the skills that a client needs for the coaching to be effective” (Stokes, 2007). This manual hopes to change that and offer coachees a systematic and organized approach to becoming an effective coachee – ie. becoming a partner in a learning journey and not simply the passive recipient of coaching services. We do not particularly like the word “coachee” but other terms such as “client” or even worse “patient” detract from the role of being the partner in a formal executive coaching relationship. So we are left with “executive coachee” until a better term comes along.

We have chosen to write this manual specifically for executive coachees. We are very aware of other forms of coaching particularly life coaching. We know also of team coaching, peer coaching and of course, the manager as coach. While many aspects of this manual will pertain to coachees in those various relationships and settings, we thought it would overcomplicate our task (and the focus of executive coachees) to try to be all inclusive and see coachees as similar across all aspects of coaching. This is not the case and the tasks, roles, relationships and focus points of different types of coaching differ. Life coaching rarely has an organization that pays the coach and which has an agenda for the executive coachee. Managerial coaching clearly has responsibilities that go well beyond the responsibilities of external coaches. For these reasons, we narrow our attention to executive coachees.

The focus of executive coaching is learning. Later in this manual we will look at the various kinds of learning which are the field of executive coaching. Within the coaching arrangements and relationship, coachees learn in order to give better quality service to their organization (company, organization, firm, and institute). Effective executive coaches are facilitators or providers of learning. They aim to create the kind of collaborative relationship and the sort of learning environment that sustains learning for coachees. Coaching is for coachees, not for coaches. Too often we have had to put up with coach-based executive coaching where coaches take most of the initiatives, are motivated by their own current hobby horses, dazzle with their wisdom and insights and take the spotlight off coachees. This manual aims to empower coachees to take responsibility for their coaching and for their learning and to persuade coaches and organizations that pay for coaching to allow them to do so.

The Authors

Maria Gilbert, M.A. is a chartered clinical psychologist, a UKCP registered Integrative Psychotherapist and a BACP accredited supervisor. She works as a trainer, supervisor, psychotherapist and organizational consultant. She is currently the Head of the Integrative Department at Metanoia Institute in West London which she was actively involved in setting up over ten years ago. This training is for integrative psychotherapists and has more recently extended to training integrative counselling psychologists who are also psychotherapists. Maria is also Head of the Supervision Training at Metanoia and has taught nationally and internationally in both supervision and integrative psychotherapy.

Michael Carroll, Ph.D. is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and a BACP Senior Registered Practitioner. He works as a counsellor, supervisor, trainer and consultant to organizations in both public and private sectors, specialising in the area of employee well being. He has lectured and trained both nationally and internationally. Michael is Visiting Industrial Professor in the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol and the winner of the 2001 British Psychological Society Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology.

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