Put Me In, Coach: Side Business or Salvation, Coaching is Definitely on the Rise.

by Victoria M. Zunitch

Usually rendered one-to-one, coaching is a hybrid professional and personal service that lies midway on a spectrum that stretches from management consulting to psychotherapy. CPAs who are coaches do everything from assisting other practitioners and entrepreneurs to improve staff productivity to helping them target, acquire and integrate technology acquisitions. But they don't focus only on the client's ambitions, they address how he or she can change as a manager and as a person to become better equipped to perform at a higher level.

CPAs, having intimate knowledge of their clients' businesses, are well placed to help them set goals and solve problems. Some practitioners have segued into offering coaching as a consulting service after using it to strengthen their own careers, and for CPAs comfortable with personal contact coaching has potential as a popular service niche. This article shares details about what some coaches do and how they do it for CPAs who want to help clients improve their game.

A SERVICE THAT ADDS VALUE

Attorneys in Albuquerque, New Mexico, used to love to talk shop with Steve Erickson. As partners in professional-service firms, they had a lot in common. Since Erickson's job was to coach accountants on the problems and challenges of running their firms, it was only natural for lawyers to try to gain insight from him. Although some CPAs might have felt those attorneys were nibbling on free advice-- which he gave generously--Erickson saw an opportunity and, 10 years ago, decided to add coaching lawyers as a formal, revenue-generating niche to his existing business of coaching accountants. Last year, when Erickson was 52 and the CEO of Phoenix CPA firm REDW Business & Financial (with a specialty in professional practice management), he decided to retire and continue on as an independent business coach. Because CPA and law firms face comparable ethical and business problems, his practice is with both groups.

Erickson is just one of an apparently growing number of CPAs who have caught on to coaching. The Coach U for-profit training organization, based in Colorado Springs, cites accounting among the professional fields that spawn new coaches. Its founder, Thomas Leonard, an accountant and certified financial planner, has been an executive coach since 1982, according to the firm's Web site.

Other CPAs are adding coaching as an extra service when they see a need. Some are acknowledging the coaching they already do, learning to point it out to clients and break it out on bills as a service that adds value and deserves recognition. Some now coach exclusively, using communication and relationship skills and drawing on CPA expertise. Erickson, for example, might help CPAs realize they're spending too much time working in their business (on client services that could be delegated to a staff member), and not enough time working on their business (such as engaging in long-term strategy planning, finding ways to boost profit performance or changing policies that might improve employee retention).

THERAPY TAILORED TO BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

The job of an executive coach parallels sports. "Coaching helps someone achieve a goal," says Erickson. "It's about getting clients to act effectively for themselves--and in so doing to acquire self-perpetuating strengths--rather than doing their work for them."

Clients hire CPAs and others as consultants, expecting them to study a problem and provide advice, usually in a written report. People who consult psychotherapists about business issues focus on the interplay between emotional health and business situations, but a business-focused action plan is outside the scope of such help. The theory behind coaching is that the clients themselves have the answers and need to take the time to stop and focus, says one. A CPA who coaches, however, will help the client to figure out

• How to set business goals.
• How to achieve them.
• How to evaluate and adjust his or her progress in relation to them.

Coaches do much of this through modeling--they keep records on the goals and timetables the clients have set and raise a red flag when they see clients veering off their chosen path. Through this process, clients learn to monitor themselves and correct unproductive behavior.

Clients call on coaches for a number of reasons. Some coaches get urgent calls from professionals who are suffering from sudden and massive staff turnover or striving to perform after a big promotion or starting their own business. Other clients have vital short-term goals such as heading off a job loss. One insurance-company client of Esther Ewing--a coach from New York who frequently works with CPAs and leads the three-person organizational capability practice The Change Alliance--had a senior manager who had blown an important deadline as the company was preparing to go public. His employers realized it would be less expensive to secure coaching for him than it would be to fire him and pay severance that covered his 18 years of service.

Ewing says she worked with him to figure out what went wrong. (He had focused on the technical details of the job and hadn't given his colleagues a heads-up when he saw that he was running behind schedule.) She helped him plan how he could avoid similar problems in the future by paying attention not only to his job description but also to his relationships with other departments. Ewing prefers that each coaching project with a client hew to a single, goal-oriented term of three months, with a follow-up extension of three months if necessary. "If you need more than six months, then there's something bigger that needs to be addressed," she says.

Read this full article about Steve's services in the Journal of Accountancy.