Coaching

The OUBS has been recruiting tutors for its new MBA foundation course, and requires tutors that not only have business knowledge but also recent experience of coaching managers, so the coaching industry is growing, growing so rapidly that Henley now offers an MSc in coaching and behavioural change. It's an MSc course that includes a module on neuro linguistic programming.

Whilst on an NLP course recently, I've met, worked and conversed with people who are following this coaching MSc. They tell me there are all sorts of coaches including life coaches, leadership coaches, executive coaches and even gestalt coaches. Because of the coach's need to know the limits of his/her abilities, the Henley students have to write assignments on differences between coaching, counselling and therapy and I don't know how well they have to assess their alliances with their coachees and how effective the coachee consequently becomes. How do you assess the effectiveness of coaching?

On last week's (8th July) The Bottom Line, discussed working with people you don't like. One of the guests, John Atkin, chief operating officer of Syngenta, denied ever working with people he didn't like, and another suggested using coaches for senior workers to do 360 evaluations - a long process to tell the boss "actually you're not behaving very nicely". But will coaching always produce the outcome you want?

Coachees' self-efficacy is the topic of a paper to be presented at the up-coming Academy of Management conference. The presenters (Baron, Morin & Morin) find that coachees who worked with a coach who overestimated the working alliance, experienced less growth in self-efficacy than coachees who work with a coach who either accurately estimated or underestimated the working alliance. It seems to me that finding suggests

• coaches have moral and ethical responsibility for their behaviour
• organisations that use coaches must be aware of the conditions under which coaching works

Video blog

The other day's drafting problem was because I was writing just a few words, enough to say in one minute, on a topic that would come up in this week's BBC business programme, The Bottom Line. I knew what two topics were required, one of which I know lots about and one I know very little about. Of course, when you know a lot, then you get stuck as to how to cut it down. And I got stuck.

"Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis"

was the brief. The best idea is to write the conclusion, then go back, and the drafts on the floor were variations of thesis and anti-thesis. The second topic was easier (but also my thanks to a PG colleague who's writing her PhD on it), and then I learned them by heart. That's easy enough. The difficult bit is saying them to camera, in Broadcasting House, not here on campus, but in a darkened room, with lights in your eyes, surrounded by real professionals.

The professionals are so professional. For example, Evan Davis also had to speak to camera, but unlike me, he hadn't prepared a script. While I was speaking, he thought about the topics and what his guests had just said, then he said his piece, starting with a great metaphor, the sort where you go, "why didn't I think of that!"

To see, hear or read the blogs, go to the open2.net web site here.

So watch the Bottom Line on World News at the weekend, or listen to it here on BBC Radio 4 on Friday. Great guests, great presenter, great programme.

BBC Broadcasting House

"One, two, three, four .. eleven!"
"Don't count them!"

Eleven people were in a tiny editing room full of screens, editing equipment, script notes and head phones for just one radio programme. But this programme, The Bottom Line, is edited for four news channels, not just for Radio 4. The Bottom Line also goes out to

• World Service radio
• World News TV
• News Channel TV

Although located in a radio studio, it is also broadcast on TV. So the eleven people were involved in editing the programme for four different versions. This meant that for example the editor for the World News had the presenter reword a question about "high-street banks", a commonly understood term in the UK to "physical banks" (as opposed to electronic banking interfaces).

The host and presenter was Stephanie Flanders, standing in for Evan Davis, who is hard to follow because he is so experienced and well known. Not surprisingly, SF looked nervous at the start of the recording, as she introduced her guests, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar names. On the retakes she was word perfect. In tone and body language, she gave the impression of knowing what she wanted to ask her guests. From the editing room, the editors prompted her with supplementary questions that arose from the conversation, not the script. She brought in the extra questions so fluently that no-one watching or listening would know about the prompts in her ear. Yet self critically she murmured afterwards that it would have been better if she'd had more to say.

After the main recording, they recorded one minute video blogs, one from SF and one from the Open University Business School representative, Leslie Budd, who also writes a blog for the programme. This is because the OU works with the BBC on The Bottom Line, as you can see from their shared Open2.net web site. The OU has provided funds for programme equipment, and in the radio studio I could see that equipment allowing the cameras to move smoothly around thus allowing the TV production as well as radio.

This is a great programme with three really interesting guests in a interesting discussion about mining, banking and music, going out on

• BBC Radio 4 tomorrow evening
• World Service radio
  
• World News TV on Saturday and Sunday
  
• News Channel TV on on Saturday and Sunday
  

Why was I there? Because next week, Les is on holiday and I volunteered to write the blog for him, then discovered they do the video blog too, so Les took me to see the layout, what happens, who creates, produces, and edits it. That's a lot of people:

• three guests and their minders
• one presenter
• three or four camera crew
• producer
• OU Broadcast and Learning executive
• and the eleven editors.