If you would like to do some personal growth work and are thinking about having a personal coach should you have your company pay for it?

Although the idea of having your company pay for coaching services may initially appeal to you I ask you to consider your personal goals vis--vis the coaching experience first..

For instance are your personal goals in alignment with what you wish to achieve in this company?

Are they in alignment with what your company expects from you?

To what degree will you want to use the coaching experience as a way of expanding your career horizon in such a way that it would cause you to move beyond this company?

To what extent would this place you or your company in a conflict of interest situation?

To what extent would this cause unnecessary conflict for you?

To what extent would this undermine your reputation and/or your personal integrity?

To what extent would this undermine and subvert the coaching process?

If you reflect on all of these I think you may find that unless you plan to use the coaching process in such a way that it will be exclusively beneficial to BOTH you AND your company you will begin to feel uneasy about structuring it under the company's payroll.

This is why, as a coach, I am wary of taking on clients who have not thought all of this through. It has been my experience that working with such clients not only undermines the coaching process it also is an exploitation of it.

Unfortunately companies also fall into the unconscious and sometimes not so unconscious trap, of suggesting coaching to their employees as a way of "shaping" them to fit in with the corporate strategy. This approach is not always conducive to the coachee's personal growth.

Coaches who allow themselves to be exploited in this way, in my view are not only undermining their own integrity but that of the coaching process itself.

For that reason I ask that everyone considering coaching as a vehicle for personal growth leave the financial arrangements between the coach and the coachee.