vol. XVII no. 2

				Throughout the years, sports legends from Johnny Unitas and Joe DiMaggio to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan have all relied on one thing to help harness their talent and reach a level of greatness. Increasingly, many of the nation's top executives have also turned to that same thing to help them achieve both their professional and personal best. What's their secret? Coaching. While most athletes are exposed to coaching early on, business executives don't usually seek out a coach until they've attained a certain level of success. Deborah Butler, assistant professor of management at Robinson and an expert in organizational behavior, believes that while business executives can benefit from coaching, it's something that should be introduced at a much earlier stage. "Being coached and learning how to coach others are skills that can not only help those starting to navigate their careers," says Butler, "it can also help them become effective managers and better leaders." For the past three years, Butler has taught "Coaching for Leadership," an MBA-level course focusing on one-on-one interaction where students work in groups of three to learn coaching skills. In the process, they are coached by one another as well as professional coaches who share their expertise with the class. "Coaching is about listening, observing, and providing feedback and direction to help someone improve his or her personal or professional life," explains Butler. "Through their work in class, students see and experience the value of coaching firsthand." "It's a very difficult and intense class," says Sherrie Bachmann, managing partner of Bachmann Global Associates, an organizational development consulting firm, and a Robinson graduate. Bachmann initially took the course to learn how to become a better coach but experienced more dramatic results. "It helped me decide to make a career change, something I was still uncertain about." Bachmann says that she and the others in her group became very close and really got to know one another - so much so that they still talk and Bachmann is convinced that she will always stay in touch. Tim Davern, sales executive for Sun Microsystems and also a former student of Butler's, says that employee development is vital to his company and as a manager he is reviewed on 23 different criteria. At the top - effective leadership. According to Davern, he was able to apply what he learned in class the next day. "At Sun, managers are required to give real-time feedback rather than relying just on annual reviews," notes Davern. "At the time I was taking Dr. Butler's class, I was having an issue with one of my employees. Through the role-playing and videotaping that we did in class, I was able to see that while I may have been saying the right things, my body language was actually derailing my message." Top | Next Page

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