Coaching

One of the questions I often get is, “Is working from home bad? Why insist coming to work?” I knew people who worked from home even in the early 2000’s but they were always available for collaboration when needed in person. Personally, I knew someone who travelled from home in Sweden to US every 2 weeks to work with the larger team in the US. So, I am not against working from home but the one thing I have always wondered though is, if you stay at home -?where do you get your experiences from?

In his book The Case of the Bonsai Manager, R. Gopalakrishnan devotes a chapter to 'Learning through coaching' with various examples. One of them is about how the Arabs train the Falcon bird and another on JRD Tata and John Peterson.

The Falcon is a ferocious bird that Arabs train for hunting. The instructional training involves getting the bird to return to its perch on the Falconer’s fist after the hunt. In Arabia, looks like it takes them only 3 weeks to train the bird, which is half the time compared to other countries in the Middle East. Gopal says, “that’s because the Falcon never parts company with its master. The trainer carries the bird wherever he goes, communicating with it all the time in one way or the other –?feeding it, stroking it, even holding conversations with it.”?He says, “The emotional bond between the two, called coaching or mentoring, accelerates training greatly”.?He goes to add that management literature is full of this theme.

In another section on the same topic of “coaching,” Gopal gives examples of Krishna-Arjuna from mythology, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, Michael Klein and his grandfather Max, J.R.D. Tata and John Peterson. When 21-year-old J.R.D.Tata arrived in India in 1925; his father took him to Peterson’s room. “John”, he said, “you know my son Jehangir. I would like you to look after my little boy.” J.R.D recalled that a small desk was ordered by Peterson to be placed in a corner of his room. Peterson never had a moment of privacy after that because every single paper going to his desk was routed through young J.R.D?(recall the Falcon which was always next to the Arab!).

I believe 'Coaching' cannot happen in the 'work from home' world. We need to learn from experiences, and they are available only from mentors we identify and associate ourselves with. One of my favorite movies on this topic is?'Good Will Hunting'. In 1997, Robin Williams starred in the critically acclaimed Good Will Hunting. He played a psychologist with a troubled past who helps a young Matt Damon. The famous 'Park Bench' scene in the film, sums up the role of a coach.