7: Story Time

A common way of viewing the coaching assessment process is as a type of deductive inquiry, similar to that pursued by a physician who is trying to diagnose an illness. A coach who employs this approach interviews the client, the client’s manager, and selected peers and reports, with the intent of gathering the “true facts” about the client’s leadership behavior and work setting. The coach then consolidates these facts to reveal key “underlying truths” about the leadership challenges the client is facing. The implicit assumption that guides this approach is the belief that the client’s organizational life is something that is objectively real, in the same way that we view the measurement of time and space as existing independent of the observer.