Berkeley’s Mark Fearn discusses the value of coaching

Harvard Business Review: Berkeley’s Mark Fearn discusses the value of coaching

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review features an in-depth look at the growing emergence of coaching.

In ‘The Leader as Coach’, Herminia Ibarra, Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School, and Anne Scoular, cofounder of the Meyler Campbell coaching programme, explore the “dramatic and fundamental shift” whereby “companies are moving away from traditional ‘command-and-control’ practices and toward something very different: a model in which managers give support and guidance rather than instructions, and employees learn how to adapt to constantly changing environments in ways that unleash fresh energy, innovation, and commitment.”

As an organisation that has long espoused this very model, The Berkeley Partnership was asked to provide insight into the valuable role that coaching can play. All the firm’s Partners and many of its consultants complete the Meyler Campbell coaching programme and Mark Fearn, one of Berkeley’s founders, was interviewed on the impact this has had:

‘...Berkeley partners are now better equipped to respond when clients ask for assistance with big, messy, sometimes ill-defined problems that often extend far beyond the firm’s initial brief. Having developed their coaching skills, partners have become better at recognizing situations in which they don’t have to provide answers; they understand that in such cases, they may be able to offer more value by listening attentively, asking the right questions, and supporting clients as they work out the best solution. “Now that we’ve added coaching expertise,” Fearn told us, “our task can sometimes be just digging the answer out of them, creating a space to think.”’

Read the full article at hbr.org