Tag Archives: management coaching
Neo-psycho Babble, Mick Dundee and the Benefits of Management Coaching
There’s an amusing scene in Crocodile Dundee[1] where Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) quizzes Sue Charlton(Linda Kozlowski) about why it is that all Americans need to go to see their shrink from time to time. She quizzes that surely Dundee has a shrink too. In his Aussie drawl, he replies that he has Wally (John Meillon). And what makes Wally a shrink, she asks – you tell him your problems and he tells the whole settlement, he retorts. After that all your problems are solved!
Has coaching gone the same way? Does every SME principal need a coach? Certainly observing the supply side, it seems everyone wants to be a coach. Everyone wants to coach managers to achieve what is otherwise apparently impossible without engaging ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘In the Zone’ and ‘cognitive behavioural’ techniques. Is it what the Sunday Times describes as ‘neo-psycho babble’[2] or is there actually some foundation somewhere in the science of psychology for coaching?
