By A.J. Carter, Business Reporter

July 10, 2006 - In the latest manifestation of life imitating sport, everybody, it seems these days, needs a coach, which means there are a lot of people rushing in to fill the breach, which means there are a lot of bad coaches out there, which is where Susan Battley comes in.

Battley, the Stony Brook-based "leadership psychologist" who has appeared on these pages with her annual lists critiquing the performance of top corporate executives, has just written a book, "Coached to Lead," (Josey-Bass, $24.95), aimed at helping people navigate the clutter surrounding the increasingly confusing and competitive world of executive coaching.

<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->"In my interactions with executives, with leaders, with business owners, with the nonprofit world, with school administrators," Battley said, ticking off the client base of Battley Performance Consulting, "they have two worries: Is this the latest management fad, is this what everybody's buying into now, and will it be gone in two years? [And] the other concern is that just like management consultants, there's no uniform or standard credentialing process."

She said her book tries to "separate the myths and the misconceptions about coaching on the one hand, and really point out what the return on investment can be if you work with a quality, well-trained coach."

Battley cited some significant changes in the workplace as justifying the need for executive coaches, including demands that new hires produce instant results and the disappearance, either because of retirement or increasing workloads, of mentors. And she drew a clear distinction between what an executive coach does as opposed to, say, a therapist, or a current fad, life coaches.

"Life coaching can be a very open-ended phenomenon and service," Battley said. "Executive and business coaching is very targeted, very focused on workplace performance and effectiveness. The goals and the focus are around those core issues ... Even though there are psychologists who provide coaching and other people from a counseling background, it's not about looking at your childhood or at your past."

Which brings us to a common misconception. "The expectation that a coach can perform a personality transplant is just fallacy - it's myth," Battley said. "If the expectation is that coaching is going to change a person's basic style, that's erroneous."

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