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Researchers refer to three kinds of self-fulfilling prophecy, one of which creates a negative result. The Galatea effect The Galatea effect refers to self-belief, the idea that if you believe you can succeed you will. High-performers in any field and blessed with strong self-belief. They trust themselves to succeed, take an optimistic view of most situations and see ‘failures’ as learning opportunities. When coaching someone over the long term you’ll almost certainly want to help people access this state of mind, but it may take some time and patience if they’re carrying a lot of negative baggage. In which case

I have written before about Douglas McGregor and his Theory X and Theory Y suppositions about management behaviour. (See My Coaching Philosophy) According to McGregor, Theory X Managers take the view that people: essentially dislike work and will avoid it all together if possible are motivated only by money or fear need discipline and constant supervision can’t be trusted avoid responsibility lack loyalty and commitment lack creativity – accept in finding ways to avoid work! Let’s just stop for a moment and consider how a manager would treat people if she held this view. I think it’s likely she would:

The challenges have never been greater for anyone who must achieve results through people. Ferocious change, flatter structures and new technologies have all conspired to render old style leadership by command totally irrelevant. If we continue to attempt to solve 21st Century problems with 19th century solutions, the chances of failure are high. Organisations are finding that the tired old rhetoric of ‘people are our greatest asset’ really is true. Install a new piece of equipment or IT system and your rivals can have the same in place by the following month. Secure some capital and you’ll likely find that

I was once running some training in Kenya for Kenyans. I became exasperated that getting the delegates to come back to the training room after coffee breaks and lunch was like an exercise in herding cats! Some would wander back into the room and then wander out again to speak to someone else, others would be on their mobiles and seemingly quite reluctant to finish those conversations. When I stopped to think about it I realized that I was experiencing a cultural difference. My Anglo Saxon culture had taught me to operate through time. In other words to be always

I am sad to say that I had no trouble in finding barriers to coaching when I researched this topic. Here’s my top 10: The organisation’s culture is in conflict with coaching principles There are always other priorities Managers are uncomfortable in the coaching role Management resist being coached themselves There are too few role models Increased workloads make finding time for coaching difficult Short term focus Performance related rewards promote performance but not learning or enjoyment People selected as coaches are unsuitable perception that coaching was being used to rectify poor performance (in a punitive way) Rather than tackle these