COACHINGLEADERS/BEHAVIORALCOACHING 67
Frances Hesselbein
First Do No Harm
I
listen very carefully when people talk about coaching. It must be said that
not everyone is talking about the same thing. Before we develop a practice
that has the potential to inf luence someone’s life, I think we should clarify
our own aims and beliefs. The ethical and moral responsibilities of the coach
cannot be taken lightly.
First, we need to have a very clear, compelling definition of coaching.
Without that definition, we are like organizations without a mission. We also
need to be sure that we are defining what we are doing in such a way that the
person being coached shares that understanding. The expectations must be
clear. There must be a beginning and an ending. The parameters must be set.
Overarching those criteria should be one unbreakable creed: first, do no
harm. As in the medical profession, everything must be done in service of
the person whose life we are affecting.
Ifwe begin our coaching by saying that we know what is good for a per-
son, then we will fail. We cannot have preconceptions, a Case A and Form B,
which we will use to fit that person into an established solution. We need to
truly know and take into account our clients’ needs. What do they value?
What do they expect? What are they looking for? The depth of understand-
ing that is needed to do this well says something about how many people we
can coach at any given time.
To c oach someone takes everything we have ever done and everything we
have ever been. If we are faithful to our mission, then it will also take a
great deal of our emotional reserve. Our obligation to the person we are
coaching requires us to be at our very best—intellectually, emotionally andFrances Hesselbein is the Chairman of the Board of
Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute, formerly
the Peter Drucker Foundation. She was CEO of the Girl
Scouts ofthe USA from 1976 to 1990. Mrs. Hesselbein
is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal Leader to
Leader,and a coeditor of a book of the same name. She
also is the author of Hesselbein on Leadership,pub-
lished in August of 2002. She is reachable by e-mail at
[email protected] or by visiting her corporate
web site http://www.leadertoleader.org.