Mike Jay – Coaching Innovator

Mike Jay’s contribution to coaching is stirring the pot, identifying what is missing, and creating innovation.

Mike Jay was working as an independent consultant in 1988 when an individual wanting coaching approached him and said he heard that Mike was the person who could help him achieve what he wanted to do.

Thus began Mike’s entrance into coaching from the field of consulting.

From attending the Executive Coaching Summits held from 1998 until this year, Mike has always held a broad and visionary view. In fact, he was one of the people instrumental in the birth of the International Consortium of Coaching in Organizations (ICCO).

In his 1999 book, Coach 2 the Bottom Line, he provided a methodology for creating a CoachSystem(trademarked) in an organization – well before the term ‘coaching culture’ had become popular.

In this book, Jay stated that:

A more correct term to describe the current phenomena around coaching would be to state that everyone should be coaching—using the KSAs [knowledge, skills, abilities] to promote personal and organizational effectiveness . . . [and that] any kind of coaching has in common at least one, and more often than not, all four critical outcomes of coaching. . . . an improvement in well-being, purposeful behavior, higher levels of competence, [and] increased awareness. (pp. 20–21)

How has Mike Jay influenced your approach to coaching?

Vikki G. Brock, Team Lead, History and Archive Division