@article{Kilburg,2017This,
abstract = {This article represents Karol Wasylyshyn’s (see also Wasylyshyn, 2015) second installment in what I sincerely hope will be an ongoing effort to illuminate the theory and practice of executive coaching with the most senior leaders in organizations. In both of these articles, she has chosen to differentiate this work, carried out by what she terms a trusted leadership advisor (TLA), from what could be called commodity-variety executive coaching. This has been a matter of public debate for years within the Society of Consulting Psychology as individual interventions in organizational-consulting psychology have made progressive gains in importance and prominence (Kilburg, 2002). These arguments have had at least three significant components: the need to differentiate individual development efforts with senior leaders from those with other levels of management, the importance of identifying specific competencies associated with such types of work with executives as opposed to managers, and, finally, the desire to differentiate the work of consulting psychologists with extensive experience in such engagements from the efforts of the now tens of thousands of more generic types of coaches who are currently competing in this global marketplace. Wasylyshyn’s efforts have made a clear and substantive set of arguments about the types of competencies involved and the need to differentiate this level of coaching from other more conventional approaches. The article makes no sustained effort to delineate how consulting psychologists are more prepared than others to provide these services. This effort repeats her 2015 frameworks for an integrated practice model for the TLA: three states of presence, four basic conceptual models, and four role dimensions. It reemphasizes the use of what she calls visual leadership metaphors as a means to connect the specific efforts of the coach and client to an emerging, longitudinal narrative of the progress being made. It specifically advocates that the roles of executive coach and TLA can be differentiated on a variety of factors, including who usually initiates the engagement, the focus of the work, the stance taken by the consultant, duration of the engagement, frequency and types of meetings, permeability of boundaries, and depth and extent of the working relationship between coach and client. The difference in this article is that these concepts are woven into a brilliantly presented case study that focuses on her work over close to a decade with a client who moved from being a senior executive to a CEO. The detail and richness of the case material cannot be overemphasized; it is one of the few such extensive reports in the entire coaching literature. Over time, I believe her two articles will become must-reads for any coach who is invited to work at the top of organizations. Along with her book Destined to Lead (Wasylyshyn, 2014), she has single-handedly introduced the entire field to many more tools, ideas, and examples of what successful coaching and consulting with very senior leaders involves. In the remainder of this commentary I want to focus on two related and complex issues that confront consulting psychologists who coach these senior executives: the expertise required and the ethical conundrums that are inescapable. Both of these issues are touched upon briefly in the article but deserve somewhat more emphasis.},
author = {Kilburg, R.},
title = {Trusted Leadership Advisor: A Commentary On Expertise And Ethical Conundrums},
number = {1},
journal = {Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research},
pages = {41-46},
year = {2017},
language = {English},
url = {psycnet.apa.org/journals/cpb/69/1/},
volume = {69}
}