The Sacramento Bee
WINNING COACHES NEW INDUSTRY HELPING PEOPLE REACH PROFESSIONAL - AND PERSONAL - GOALS
November 1, 1998Section: BUSINESS
Page: D1
By Loretta Kalb Bee Staff Writer
--Four years ago, financial planner Keith Garrick decided to leave his business partnership and establish a sole proprietorship. But in the midst of his planning for what would be a major strategic shift in business, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Suddenly, he was forced to identify what he wanted out of life and to evaluate which of its elements were most meaningful.
"When you're in crisis, it's hard to focus your energy, to sit down and analyze things because it's an emotional time," said Garrick. "But somebody helping to guide you through it, adding their energy to the process, makes an incredible difference."
In this case, that somebody was Carmichael-based business coach Marlys Thompson.
In making that choice, Garrick joined the thousands of executives and entrepreneurs nationally each year who use coaching to be more effective in business while bringing harmony and rewards to their personal lives.
A survey commissioned earlier this year by the human resources consulting firm, Personnel Decisions International, found that 93 percent of the Global 1000 organizations in the United States use coaching. Internationally, 65 percent of the 1,000 largest companies in the world do so.
In Sacramento, coaching relationships are thought to number in the hundreds.
Bill Blazek, editor of a quarterly newsletter devoted to coaching, believes the demand for coaching is on the rise.
Blazek, who counsels couples in Sacramento, devotes about half his practice to business coaching, helping executives "understand where they want to go in their careers and how they want to get there - what it's going to take.
"In a nutshell, I help them with perspective. All of us have a blind spot. What a good coach does is help a client see his or her blind spot."
Thompson, founder of Marlys Thompson Associates, complements her coaching with expertise in team-building and quality management. She typically starts the coaching process by learning what an executive or entrepreneur wants to achieve in business and, consequently, in life.
It may be ascending to the presidency of an organization. Or it may be buying a house on the river. Ultimately, however, the coaching process affects both quality-of-life issues and personal relationships with clients, colleagues, family members and friends.
"You need to make a conscious effort," Thompson said of the need for an individual to define personal and professional paths. "You need to be awake. Part of the thrill is being awake to your life and realizing that you're the source for everything that occurs."
Working with Thompson, Garrick, president of The Garrick Financial Alliance, pursued his idea of a firm that would provide ongoing rewards for superior staff performance. He also wanted to cultivate teamwork and decision-making based on shared values.
Thompson began by team-coaching the members of the new business in 1995 - defining individual strengths and showing how these characteristics could lead to successful working relationships.
"The coaching actually brings in a personal element," said Garrick. "How can the executive or whoever is being coached live an effective life?
That worked for the team, said Garrick. And it worked for him, too.
"I thought if I could get the best of the best as far as coaching and consulting, then I would get to live this life the way I want.
"We only have one life, and we might as well make the best of it."
The long-term results?
Since the firm opened the door in spring 1995, revenues have doubled.
Staff members meet every other week to develop strategies for improving what they do. At least 20 percent of profits are paid to the staff, an agreement Garrick calls "key to having people be true partners."
Another 10 percent to 25 percent in profits go each year to charity as an expression of the firm's values.
"It's through the process of coaching where you can ask, What are my values? How am I living my values?" said Garrick. "It's not just about business."
Another Thompson client, Cecilia Macdonald of Macdonald Communications in Sacramento, said she saw results almost immediately from coaching.
She began working with Thompson last July when her new campaign, "The Presentation Pro," was still in the idea stage.
"I had the concept," said Macdonald. "The goal was to position myself in Northern California as the presentation coach to call when you need presentation skills. She (Thompson) helped me look at the outcome I wanted and then realize how to get there.
"Marlys had a wonderful phrase: "It's your parade and you're leading it. What you need is a parade route.' She has provided me with that."
Some coaching insights are simple, yet effective.
Individuals often sit through interminable meetings with no agenda and no purpose. When the meetings end, there is no sense of accomplishment.
But anyone going to a meeting, explained Thompson, should ask several key questions: What is my purpose? What are my intended results? And are there any points I want to cover?
This approach, she said, falls under the heading of "being on purpose with your relationships, professionally and personally."
Some gains go beyond improved relationships and better revenues.
In Toronto, The Strategic Coach Inc. focuses on entrepreneurs seeking to improve the quality of their businesses and personal lives. The company, which has more than 2,000 active clients, induces executives to think about how they can be more effective rather than how they can work harder.
That was encouraging to Sacramento investment management consultant Carol Van Bruggen, who soon realized that her coaching gains could affect her life as well as her business.
Van Bruggen said when she turned to Strategic Coach, she began thinking she could make more money for her firm.
"But that's just a fraction of what I've gotten out of it," she said. "One of my goals was to sing publicly more often. Now I also get to spend more time with my husband.
"What I've really achieved is a balanced life."
While no one knows the precise number of coaching relationships nationally, the practice is widespread.
"Five years ago, there were no professional organizations for coaching," said Personnel Decisions' Senior Vice President David Peterson, who has written two books on executive coaching. Now there are several such groups.
Personnel Decisions, based in Minneapolis, launched its executive coaching program in 1981. Among its 20 locations around the world is a San Francisco office. And Peterson coaches a client in Sacramento.
At the Professional School of Psychology in Sacramento, president Ken Merritt calls coaching "the new helping relationship for the next millennium."
The school recently founded the Center for Executive Coaching, which trains coaches. Coach Blazek is editor of the center's quarterly newsletter, "Executive Coach."
There probably are hundreds of coaching relationships in the Sacramento metropolitan region, said Merritt, co-author of a book on coaching.
But he noted that the industry is relatively young, and standards of performance are still being developed.
"My concern, of course, is that this is a fad," he said. "My hope is that it is not and that it won't be abused - that we'll collectively develop standards of training, ethics, and that it will emerge as a well-thought-out discipline that will help people."
Garrick believes it's already doing that.
"You wonder how can people earn 10 times more than somebody else? It can't be because they work ten times harder," said Garrick. "It must be because they work out of a different paradigm. They have different ways of looking at things.
"They've escaped the limitations of gravity. That's what coaching does. It breaks you away from your old ways of thinking and gears you up to be more productive in work and happier in life.
"You don't live just to work."
Where to get more information Resources
Marlys Thompson Associates, Carmichael (916) 489-3964.
The Professional School of Psychology, Center for Executive Coaching, part of the school's William James Institute, Sacramento (916) 923-5537.
Personnel Decisions International, Minneapolis (800) 633-4410.
The Strategic Coach, Toronto (800) 387-3206.
Coaches Training Institute (800) 691-6008, www.thecoaches.com
International Coach Federation (888) 423-3131, www.coachfederation.org
Books
"Executive Coaching/An Appreciative Approach," by Bill Bergquist, Ken Merritt and Steve Phillips, published by Pacific Soundings Press in Sacramento.
"Development FIRST/Strategies for Self Development," by David Peterson and Mary Dee Hicks, published by Personnel Decisions International.
"Leader as Coach/Strategies for Coaching and Developing Others," by David Peterson and Mary Dee Hicks, published by Personnel Decisions International.
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