COACHING
LEADERS/BEHAVIORAL COACHING
85
Kim Barnes
Kim Barnes is the President and CEO of Barnes &
Conti Associates, Inc., of Berkeley, California, an inde-
pendent learning and organization development firm.
She holds a Master ’s degree in Human Development
and has over 30 years of experience in the fields of
management, leadership, and organization development.
Kim has been a frequent speaker at national and inter-
national professional conferences and meetings, and has
published many articles in professional journals in the
United States and abroad. Her book,
Exercising Influence: A Guide for Mak-
ing Things Happen at Work, at Home, and in Your Community,
was published
in 2000. She can be reached via the Internet at www.barnesconti.com
or by
phone at (800) 835-0911 or (510) 644-0911.
M
y coaching practice in the past few years has focused on two areas:
Coaching high-potential leaders with a need to develop more effective
interpersonal skills and developing HR managers and key staff as coaches for
their clients. The first usually involves a person who has been very successful
as an individual contributor and is seen as a technical expert, but with some
blind areas in his or her relationships with others. The second kind of coach-
ing may be either formal or informal
and is focused on supporting internal
HR or OD staff who are in a position to coach senior leaders.
I would describe my approach as performance coaching. Literally, this
means that I work with the client toward achieving excellent results in a series
of performance opportunities. This is similar to the way a coach might work
with a top athlete, singer, or actor. I was moved to develop this approach sev-
eral years ago by a colleague, Edd Conboy, and find it particularly useful for
working on interpersonal skills. If you define a performance as something that
happens in public, in real time, with the purpose of achieving a specific result,
then focusing coaching on important performance opportunities is an efficient
and effective method.
Once a coaching contract has been established, I begin my work with in-
dividual leaders by using a 360-degree instrument and interviewing indi-
viduals identified by the leader as critical to his or her success. The results
enable the two of us (or three, if we include the person to whom the leader
reports) to establish clear performance goals for the coaching process. We
also at this time identify or create upcoming performance opportunities
that will require the leader to use the skills he or she has decided to focus
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