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Moscow Mentorship: Coaching Catches On In Russia

by Bennett Voyles

It’s nearly 21 years since the Berlin Wall fell, but Russia’s capitalist revolution continues. Westerners

may still imagine thugs in track suits when they think of Russian business, but the truth is that the

business community is increasingly sophisticated.

One measure of this growing level of maturity is the rise of executive coaching. Once simply

psychotherapy rebranded for a new audience, executive coaching is now beginning to take root in the

Russian business establishment, particularly in Moscow, the business capital of the vast country.

“C-level managers are more and more aware that coaches can really help them develop their

leadership potential,” says Sergey Golubkov. He is a coaching talent manager for Russia and the

Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet republics such as Ukraine) for the global Center

for Creative Leadership.

According to Mikhail Klarin, a Moscow-based organizational consultant and executive coach, attitudes

vary.

One recent survey of 64 major companies (a mix of large domestics and multinationals) found that

one-third now use coaching for personal development. One third might not sound like much, but then

again, executive coaching in Russia is less than a decade old. In fact, the concept is still unfamiliar

enough and foreign enough that Russians use the English word “coach” to describe the profession,

according to Klarin.

For people over 50 who grew up in Soviet times, the idea of a coach can seem threatening. “They are

really suspicious of that because they think this is a procedure which is not a developmental one, but

kind of controlling,” says Golubkov.

Young managers, on the other hand, see coaching “as a way to improve their potential and be more

effective .”

And those in the middle? The most advanced know the word but have only a vague idea of what a

coach actually does, says Klarin.

The first coaches were just psychotherapists who thought they could attract a new market by calling

themselves a different name. Later, coaches were drawn mostly out of human resources. Now,

Gobulkov says, a third wave of coaches is entering the market – people with strong business

experience.

As everywhere, the quality varies.

One breed are mostly entertainers, who make people feel good but don’t actually change anything,

Golubkov says. Others belong to international coaching groups or companies and meet international

standards. Such coaches tend to be less entertaining, but better able to help executives understand

their zones of comfort and discomfort, he says, building the self-awareness that he believes to be an

essential part of leadership development. Big issues in a big country

Of course, every engagement is unique, but some themes recur. Often, Klarin says, a company

outgrows the capacity of its founders to manage it, and the managers ask him to provide some

management training. In other cases, the situation is reversed – a new manager is hired following an

acquisition and needs to handle a team of people who have worked together for a long time and have

not changed.

Golubkov says his clients often start out by looking for advice on how they can manage their working

relationships better, but once he probes a bit, he finds that what they really want is not the kind of

participative leadership that Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) teaches, but tutelage on how to be

a strong, old-fashioned boss. “They want to become stronger in the position of the leader, to keep all

the power in their hands,” he explains.

Another common problem has to do with the leader’s sense of limitation, but in a different way.

Traditionally, Golubkov says, many Russian managers have felt that they should know more than

anybody else before they can become leaders. He often must reassure his clients that in today’s

complex organizations, building relationships can be just as important as technical expertise.

The Future

In the next five years, Golubkov expects coaching will spread throughout the ranks, and become even

more popular in the C-suite.

At the same time, Klarin believes that coaching will spread further and further away from Moscow and

into the heart of the country, as it develops.

“It’s an emerging buzzword,” Klarin says.

For now, however, coaching remains by and large a Moscow business, as is true for many kinds of

high-end business services. “When companies want to be sure that they have a good quality of

service, they look for Moscow ,” Klarin explains.