What Happens in A Coaching Process – Part II

November 8, 2012 By

As I wrote in my last Blog – What Happens in a Coaching Process – Part I

When I am asked what I do for a living I often answer, “I’m an executive coach.”  I do other things as you can see on my website but coaching seems like the simplest answer and if the person is interested, I can add the other roles later in the conversation.  I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in people’s responses, that go immediately to the assumption that executive coaches work with someone who is screwing up or not doing their job well.  I have worked with people who need to improve but I also work with people who are extremely successful (top talent even) to fine tune their leadership capability.  I happened to be writing my first BLOG entry about coaching with the US Open Tennis Tournament playing in the background.  Novak Djokovic was humiliating his opponent- no one who watches tennis would say that Djokovic is screwing up yet there in the stands sat his coach. His coach watches him and gives feedback on what he can do to be even better. I don’t always get the luxury of seeing my clients “in action” but the process is very much the same as a tennis coach.  Like a tennis coach I’m not a champion business person but I have studied champion business people, I’ve studied the art and science of leadership and I have held several successful leadership positions – I can help!

I thought it might be helpful to describe my coaching process step-by-step so potential clients could understand what they would be getting into should they hire me.  I believe understanding the process could also be helpful to some people without involving me or hiring me.  To keep the description in BLOG sized chunks will require several entries.  My overall model is shown elsewhere on the Noetics Website and reproduced below.

In the last BLOG I discussed the need to understand a desired future toward which I  focus all my efforts.   Understanding the company’s expectations and the leader’s desired legacy, I am in a position to collect data about how the person is perceived.  The box representing this data collection phase appears in the two o’clock position on the model below.

Data Collection with a 360 Inventory

Some companies define the competencies required of all their leaders and already have an instrument that can be used to measure against the competencies.  Competency refers to three things:

1. Knowledge – does the person know what they need to know  to successfully accomplish the job as envisioned?

2. Skills – is the person able to do the things the job requires them to  do to be successful in accomplishing the job?

3. Attributes – is the person able to apply the knowledge and skills in a successful manner to accomplish the job?

360 Feedback is sometimes called Multi-Rater Feedback, I still prefer 360 to describe a process that collects data from all sides of a person – his/her manager, direct reports, peers.  Imagine the person who will receive coaching standing in the center of a circle with all these other people around the circumference looking at him/her.  The process allows “looks” from the whole 360 degrees.  In today’s organizations I often coach people who do not have direct reports in which case I use the term “Multi-Rater.”

720 Feedback starts with 360 (or multi-rater) and then adds an element of validation with extra-organizational participants.  I analyze the feedback from the 360/multi-rater to determine themes, then seek data from parents, spouse, children, other professionals who see the coachee regularly (golf pro, personal trainer, hair stylist, auto mechanic, etc. etc.)  So for example, if a theme is that the person does not listen well I will inquire with these other participants directly about that – “on a scale of 1 to 10 where would you rate his/her ability to listen with empathy and understand what you are saying?” (I describe what a “10″ looks like and what a “1″ looks like but will not BLOG that here for proprietary reasons.)  This 720 round allows me to know if the person lacks the competency or has the competency but just doesn’t practice it at work.  With that knowledge, my coaching can go directly to the problem – will we do knowledge and skill building or will we look at the barriers to practicing the competency at work?
But before we talk specifically about that knowledge, skill building and/or barrier elimination, it’s important to talk about analyzing the data and putting it in a format that enables the rest of the process.

If you are interested in hiring a coach or would just like to discuss the coaching process further, please contact me with an email to bill@noeticoutcomes.com

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What Happens in Executive Coaching Sessions? Part 1

September 22, 2012 By

When I am asked what I do for a living I often answer, “I’m an executive coach.”  I do other things as you can see on my website but coaching seems like the simplest answer and if the person is interested, I can add the other roles later in the conversation.  I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in people’s responses, that go immediately to the assumption that executive coaches work with someone who is screwing up or not doing their job well.  I have worked with people who need to improve but I also work with people who are extremely successful (top talent even) to fine tune their leadership capability.  I happen to be writing this BLOG entry while the US Open Tennis Tournament is playing in the background and Novak Djokovic is humiliating his opponent- no one who watches tennis would say that Djokovic is screwing up yet there in the stands is his coach. His coach watches him and gives feedback on what he can do to be even better. I don’t always get the luxury of seeing my clients “in action” but the process is very much the same as a tennis coach.  Like a tennis coach I’m not a champion business person but I have studied champion business people, I’ve studied the art and science of leadership and I have held several successful leadership positions – I can help!

I thought it might be helpful to describe my coaching process step-by-step so potential clients could understand what they would be getting into should they hire me.  I believe understanding the process could also be helpful to some people without involving me or hiring me.  To keep the description in BLOG sized chunks will require several entries.  My overall model is shown elsewhere on the Noetics Website and reproduced below.

As a coach I need to understand a desired future toward which I will focus all my efforts. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”  I must understand from the company that hires me what the expectations are for a person’s current and possible future roles.  In my first conversation with the person to be coached I find out what he/she believes the expectations are but I also spend a great deal of time on the person’s desired Legacy (see previous BLOG “Your Leadership Legacy.”)

The person I will be coaching must be able to see how striving to fit the company expectations will simultaneously move toward his/her desired Legacy.  At a minimum, a person must not see the company expectations as a hindrance or block to reaching her/his legacy.  If the company expectations and desired legacy are not congruent or complementary or cannot be made so through negotiation, then I coach the individual to seek other employment.  The long term best interests of the individual and organization are better served by this departure than trying to force a fit.

Once I have a clear understanding of stakeholder expectations and desired leader legacy I am ready to collect data about strengths and areas for improvement which is covered in the next BLOG in this series.

If you are interested in hiring a coach or would just like to discuss the coaching process further, please contact me with an email to bill@noeticoutcomes.com

 

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Your Leadership Legacy

September 7, 2012 By

When all is said and done, how do you want to be remembered?  Imagine that it is your retirement party and people are making speeches about you and how you will be remembered.  Imagine what they will say.  Will they talk about your great leadership?  Will they focus more on your technical prowess?  Will they talk about how effectively you ran meetings?  Or will they talk about how you always seemed to be rushed and they hated to bother you?  Will they say that they didn’t really know you?  Forget the speeches, what will they say in private conversations about you and about your leadership?

Like it or not, everyday and in every interaction you are building your legacy – you are building the stories that people will tell about you long after you are gone.  Actually today you are providing the material for the stories they are telling about you – is your story the one you want to be told or is it one you’d like to change?

I remember vividly hearing a story about a VP when I started with a new company back in 1992.  He would call his staff in very early on Saturday mornings (they worked Monday through Friday typically) and scream at them about some problem in their manufacturing operation.  He called them names and stormed out leaving them to “stay until the problem is solved.”  I heard stories about his profanity laced voice messages delivered in such a loud voice that the recipient would have to hold the phone away from his/her ear to even understand.  I told one of my colleagues that I wanted to meet this character and was told that he left the company six years earlier!  The memory of him still drove fear in the culture.  That is an extreme but trust me even if you don’t scream and curse your  interactions still build a legacy that will live on long after you are gone.

When I start a coaching engagement with a leader I begin by understanding their desired legacy.  Whether I am coaching for correction of a leader’s behavior or coaching as a perquisite for an executive, I always start here.  In corrective coaching I’ve been given a behavior or a description of a person that must change for him/her to be successful – sometimes for the person to stay in their role.  It might be more efficient to start with that behavior but my experience is that adults don’t change behavior because someone else wants them to change.  Adults will change behavior when they see that the change will get them closer to their desired legacy or that failure to change will block their achieving that legacy.

When I coach an executive who is doing well and I’m hired to “fine-tune” or because “people at this level always get a coach as part of their rewards package” I also start with legacy clarification.  I’m amazed at how many people have not thought about their legacy; at how many people get caught up in short term goals and deliverables without thinking about how they are accomplishing them or what they are doing to their reputation and legacy.  The fact is that unexamined success will lead eventually to failure.  To avoid this failure, successful outcomes must be  judged on sustainability, repeat-ability, and learning.   When a leader reflects on these outcomes and not just the financial or short term outcomes, he/she is more likely to end their career with a legacy of which they are proud.

If you want to know more about coaching and how understanding your legacy can contribute to your current leadership success, contact the author Bill Gardner bill@noeticoutcomes.com

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Been a Great Leader? You Better Change!

August 19, 2012 By

Heard this before?

Just when you think you’ve conquered the whole “leadership thing” someone (usually an academician) comes along and offers the “new leadership” model against which you now must compare yourself and start trying to develop new knowledge, skills and attributes so you can be the new leader.

This trend has been part of leadership theory and leadership studies since people first started pondering, “what does it take to make a great leader?” Early theories described “Task Focused Leaders vs Relationship Focused Leaders” first as a continuum then in a two by two matrix that enabled the description of four types of leaders depending on the blend of task and relationship. Those theories evolved to say that leadership is “situational” and is based on what followers need.

The last few years have seen the emergence of more psychological based theories and the rise of the “from – to” model for describing why wherever you are (the “From” side of the chart) is no longer relevant requiring that effective leaders move toward the “To” side of the chart.

The very nature of models and theories is that while they attempt to capture a complex concept, reducing something very complex into a simple chart they lose the essence of something as complex, situational, psychological, and inspirational as leadership.

As business consultants, we wish to be able to describe the new leadership model and in reality we cannot. What we propose as the critical leadership capability is “thinking.” Only you can understand the intense complexity involved in your specific situation.

People who have studied thinking have long advocated moving away from “either-or” framing to help solve problems (a person must be EITHER Task oriented OR Relationship oriented for example). Collins and Porras , Charles H. Turner and Barry Johnson have all offered ways to think outside of the either-or box.

We have chosen Turner’s Embedded Dilemma model as a way to think through and determine effective leadership behavior. Turner posits that a dilemma results when two values seem to be in conflict with each other and are being discussed as either-or. “Values are not things” which are concrete and cannot be joined. Values grow and become more valuable when they are joined, especially when they at first appear in conflict.

In general, we live in organizations that are hierarchical in structure where communication flows from top to bottom in a slow, inefficient manner while social networking is much faster and more efficient. The context of communication has changed but any advocacy to throw out the control, legal and HR issues that necessitate the hierarchical communication flow today will fall on deaf ears, intense resistance, and ultimately failure. The more effective leader thinks through the dilemma in the following way:

  1. Take both concepts and think about what would happen if one took each to its extreme. So hierarchical messaging taken to its extreme will lead to the results you see on the y-axis below. Similarly, taking Networked Communications to its extreme and eliminating hierarchical would result in the description shown at the end of the x-axis.
  2. Realizing that neither concept works when taken to the extreme, the leader thinks through a term that captures the essence of both. Sometimes this combination term will sound paradoxical or oxymoronic. The term also will not have meaning immediately.
  3. As an individual, not a part of an organization, one could now think of what this new term means, what would it look like, what are the elements or component parts, how would one describe it? As a leader, one would socially construct the meaning of this new term.

 

 

It easy to see why we at Noetic Outcomes Consulting won’t prescribe what you as a Leader need to do but can help you to think through your embedded dilemmas and also support you to release your organization’s or group’s collective creativity to socially construct solutions.

 

This blog originally appeared on the Clear Light Consultancy website on May 9, 2012.   Mr. Gardner is one of the Principals in that consultancy as well as Managing Partner for Noetic Outcomes Consulting.

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