A Case Study: Setting the Stage

Rachel has been an organizational coach for the past eight years, having served for many years as Vice President of HR for a medium-sized high tech firm in the Twin Cities. She met Sam at a Habitat for Humanities meeting several years ago. They struck up a casual friendship and actually worked together in building a home over several weekends. During a lunch break, Sam informed Rachel that he was serving as Vice President for Operations (COO) at a large hospital in Minneapolis. Rachel let Sam know that she was an organizational coach and often was working with high level leaders like Sam – and had great empathy for the challenges Sam is facing having previously served herself in a C-suite role at an organization that was admitted much smaller than Sam’s hospital and in a different line of work. Rachel noted that Sam’s job must be particularly difficult right now, given the crises in American health care. Sam offered a sigh and a quite turn of his eyes to the heavens above. Then they both went back to work on something they could accomplish that was quite tangible – building a home for a deserving family in St. Paul.

Though Rachel had not given Sam a business care, nor even attempted to solicit his business, she received a phone call several days later from Sam. He sounded very hesitant on the phone, indicating that he didn’t want to intrude on Rachel’s life and noted that he had gotten her business phone number from the Habitat office only after he had lied and told them that he need to call about the coordination of work schedules for the house they were building. After exchanging some pleasantries, Rachel reassured Sam that his phone call was not at all intrusive. With that reassurance, Sam got down to business. He indicated that he wanted to hire Rachel as his coach and wondered if this were possible, given that they were working on Habitat together. Sam indicated that if it were necessary, he would drop off the Habitat project and begin work in several months on another Habitat project.

Before making a commitment to Sam, Rachel began asking some questions regarding why he wanted a coach, what he would hope to accomplish with the coaching session, and how the payment for coaching services was to be structured. Sam indicated that he had been talking with his wife during the past month about work-related stress and, in particular, about the contradictory demands being made on him by the president and other vice presidents of his health care organization. His wife, Marnie, suggested that he consider hiring an organizational coach. Marnie works in an organization that offers coaching services. Sam told Marnie about his chance encounter with Rachel and Marnie immediately encourage Sam to give Rachel a call.