19 posts tagged “coaching”

As we approach the end of 2009 I have been reflecting on my coaching experiences throughout this past year. I have been busier than ever with my coaching work with Developing People this year, coaching 45 different people for an average of about 5 sessions each – a total of more than 200 individual sessions. Given this amount of focused coaching effort, there are some important themes and lessons that can be learned from this work.

Many of these coachees have come from the same organisations where I have been engaged to coach a number of managers from the same team – and quite often also their boss.

There has been a significant benefit to the coachees themselves, meaning it is not only organisations and individual managers who benefit from what individual coaching can offer.  I have not lost any of these coachees during the middle of a series of coaching sessions and all of them have gone on to complete the committed number of sessions and nearly half of them have carried on beyond their original coaching plan.

I have also been regularly recommended and asked to coach 4 other people who are colleagues of some of the original coachees.

Here are some themes that this year’s coaching sessions have reinforced in my mind:

• Confidentiality is absolutely crucial – especially when coaching people from the same team or in the same management reporting line.  When professional links, relationships and other complexities are involved, it would be very easy to ‘put your foot in it’.
• The relationship between coach and coachee is fundamental and it needs to be a supportive, non-judgemental, trusting one.
• Using my intuition as the coach and knowing when to be truly authentic and honest with my feelings and thoughts about their situation is more likely to produce breakthrough thinking and actions that will really make a difference.
• It is important to support each person that I am coaching- even if they get into difficulties with their sponsoring organisation. This has happened with two managers that I was asked to coach who were employed in an F.E. College but who were then asked to leave their employment under “compromise agreements”. Whilst it is not my role to give them advice about the merits or demerits of their situation or advice on how to negotiate the best deal with their organisation it was gratifying to know that they both wanted me to continue to coach them and to support them with their new career search outside their original organisation.
• When we have surveyed our coachees and asked them what they would like me to do more of or do differently for them in their coaching sessions, the main thing that they ask me to do is to challenge them more. I am conscious of this and also aware of the need to strike the right balance of challenge and support for them, in order to maintain an appropriate level of openness and disclosure from them. My sense is that it will not be conducive to our coaching relationship if they feel that I am being too critical of them and constantly judging them. This is one of the criticisms some of them often level at their line managers!    

We all have our egos and they can and do have a big impact on how we conduct ourselves, our communications and our relationships. They also influence our attitudes and how we relate to both the outer world and to our inner world of thoughts and feelings.

As a consequence we also take our egos into any coaching relationships – both as the coach and as coachee.

The coaching subjects all have their own egos to work with and most of them, in my experience, fit in towards the middle of a normal distribution curve of attitudes and behaviours – neither with over inflated egos nor with over whelming anxiety and uncertainty. If there is any tendency towards the extremes then I sometimes encounter people who are some what uncertain and lacking in confidence.

In these situations part of my coaching work is about helping them to build their confidence to an appropriate level and to help them to deal with more assertive people and those who are difficult to work with. Sometimes difficulties exist for coachees with their line managers who may not understand them or who may even have their own swollen egos to deal with.

I have occasionally been asked to coach a person with a big ego and this has provided its own unique challenge and my response must vary from person to person. The positive aspect of a big ego is that the person is usually very interested in themselves and in their own success. The potential downside however is that sometimes this type of person wants a lot of ego stroking from their coach and they may not be very realistic or self-aware. Giving these people objectives and useful feedback is part of the challenge and so is the role of challenger.

Quite often they don’t like the idea of them having weaknesses or development areas to reflect and act upon. One way that I have found to get this aspect across to strong people is to talk about “over played” strengths becoming weaknesses and inhibiting performance. This approach can help them to accept the message and for the feedback to become acceptable and useful in practice.

In a small number of coaching assignments that I have taken on, it has become apparent to me and to the coachee that the realisations and changes required by this type of coaching is not consistent with their view of themselves and of their world. In such cases we have agreed to discontinue the work. The requirements of openness, looking inwards at oneself, admitting to vulnerabilities and taking the responsibility for producing and implementing an action plan that may include behaviour change, is sometimes a step too far for these people.

We must also consider our own egos as coaches. We cannot deny that we have them but we need to be able to put them to one side if we are to truly focus on the needs of our coachees. We are there to listen to, support and challenge them to work on their real issues and objectives – not to massage our own egos or self-importance. All too often in the arena of sport we can see the ego of the team's coach or “manager” being placed ahead of the needs and achievements of the team – particularly when success arrives!

One aspect of this coaching role, that I find particularly challenging is the use of experiences or any anecdotes from my past which I think might stimulate new thoughts for the coachee through my example. In sharing my experiences and vulnerabilities with them I need to check with myself that I am doing this for their benefit and not for my own. It may give them the confidence to deal with an important issue for them but that assessment should be made on a case by case basis.
 
Keeping in my mind that the success of anyone that I coach is their success rather than mine, is an important aspect to bear in mind.

A recent survey has indicated that directors in more than 75% of the FTSE 100 companies are involved in some form of 1 to 1 coaching programme. Most of these programmes use coaches from outside the organisation because of their objectivity, ability to be both supportive and challenging and their focused coaching ability.

The amount of external coaching activity available has been increasingly rapidly, but how can we know that these coaches provide a value added service to help their coaching subjects, to perform more effectively in the jobs?

One worry is that this expansion of activity could debase coaching standards. Anyone can set themselves up as coach in the UK and charge hefty fees in a “profession” that has no formal regulatory body with one professional accreditation instituition. There is also the complication of the various different types of coaches who offer themselves for hire.

Some are closer to being mentors or expert business advisers or consultants. Others provide a more personal “life coaching” service which concentrates more on the non-work aspects of the coaches life and pressures and less on the subjects business issues.

There are also a number of coaches whose experience base comes from a competitive sports background and who focus very strongly on performance technique, achievement, data measurements and making quantifiable progress in specific business performance objectives. Some provide face to face coaching sessions – others do so over the telephone.

So how is a director, leader, manager or professional in an organisation able to find their way through this complex and dispersed coaching marketplace in order to find the right coach for them? What key questions should they ask themselves or any prospective coaches in order to establish who might be the right sort of coach for them?
The things that the subject should consider for themselves are these:-

• Are their needs primarily in the business area, or in their non-work life or a balance of both?
• Are they looking for solutions to specific business issues and do they do they need an industry or functional specialist – in which case you may need more of a business mentor or consultant.
• Are you looking to be told the answers to your problems or are you seeking to find solutions to your own issues with some one else’s help. In the former case you may respond better to a directive coach/consultant but in the latter case you would be better off with a non-directive coach.
• If you wish to be pushed and motivated to work harder to achieve your performance goals then you may enjoy working with a sports experienced coach.

Having answered these questions for yourself then you should look for 2 or 3 coaches with the sort of profile, experience and approach that suits your needs and ask them for their answers to these questions. You should ask for personal references to talk to who have been coached by these coaches and make your own assessment of the personalities, integrity, confidentiality and support and challenge approach that they have to offer you.

We at Developing People would also recommend that ask about their fees and for an estimate of how many coaching sessions you may need to undertake. If they say that you can achieve significant change and improvement in 1 or 2 sessions then this is not realistic and you should reject them. Alternatively if they expect you to sign up to more than 6 or 7 sessions right from the start before you have even got into a deep and meaningful discussion with them about your needs then this is excessive.
 
Remember that the choice of coach is yours – you must feel that you can be open and honest with them and be able to trust them. This relationship is all important to help ensure that coaching can be successful for you.   

By Claire Loving

There has been a significant increase in the number of people who are offering themselves as coaches to people in both the business world and in life in general. Over time, the public has become aware of coaching as a means of support in jobs that come with a great deal of stress. Many more training courses for coaches being advertised for people to train to become coaches and therefore there is much more availability and choice for people who want to ‘be coached’ or as I would say ‘receive coaching’.

I have been coaching people working in businesses and other organisations for the past 18 years and I am often asked by people that I meet how I got started as a coach – usually because they are hoping to become a coach themselves and they are interested in any advice that I have to give them. I originally learned about coaching from a person called Ben Cannon who had originally been a tennis player and tennis coach but who took what he had learned in the sports environment on into business and applied many of the same techniques and approaches to help people in business to improve their satisfaction and performance. The style that I learned from him was a ‘non-directive’ approach rather than a ‘tell’ style and it was and still is best explained and understood for me in the excellent book “Coaching for Performance” written by John Whitmore, now Sir John Whitmore a British ex-motor racing driver.

His seminal book and the GROW model coaching technique that he describes in it, is still, in my view, the best text for an aspiring coach to start with. This brings me to another key point about becoming a coach – it is something that you learn – largely by experience – and not something than can solely be taught or acquired through a training course. The other book that I found to be very instructive for me as an aspiring coach was the “Inner Game” series of books written by Timothy Gallwey about sports such as tennis, golf etc. His approach to coaching was also a non-directive one and also had its roots in tennis coaching in the U S.

The key learning for me from this text was about the self-awareness and responsibility of the coaching subject – the coachee – for the doing of their job. It is their job and life – not yours as a coach, that is important and therefore your focus of attention should be on them and what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing rather than on you as the coach.

So when asked about how I would advise a person to find out about coaching I would direct them towards reading some of these basics texts which explain the philosophy, approach and some techniques for non-directive coaching. Clearly there is another much more directive style of coaching around that is best embodied in many professional football coaches (and in some other sports) which relies on the “tell” or “push” approach to coaching. This can and does work effectively in some spheres of human endeavour and with some performers but it relies on the concepts of power, authority, expertise, knowledge of the “right way” to do things and on the coach taking part of the responsibility of how and what to do away from the performer. In my experience this is not the best way to approach coaching in business because invariably the coachees know so much more about their business situation than I do as their coach and they also expect to treated as responsible adults and don’t want to be told by me what to do and how to do it – they see this, quite rightly, as their choice and responsibility.

The underlying purpose of coaching is for the coachee to learn how to think differently so that they can improve their life either personally or professionally. As a coach, you must find a way of raising their self-awareness and help to find ways of taking new actions to improve not only your coachee’s action but also enable them to move towards independence and self-sufficiency.

However, this process can be difficult for a person new to the world of coaching and it may take time for the coachee to recognise all the possibilities available to them. Yet, if a coachee is showing no signs of taking on board the information you wish to impart, it can be very difficult to continue with the coaching. As a coach you should be able to find a way to relate to your clients, no matter how frustrating it may be to meet resistance.

How can you reach out to your coachee?

• It could be that your coachee is still not very aware of their potential. You need to eke out a positive response and you can do this by admitting to your coachee that the sessions are not working as you expected and devise a plan to go forward together. Hand control back over to them.
• Could it be that there are external barriers stopping the coachee from progressing? They may not have originally been forthcoming with personal information that you need to be aware of, such as a sick relative, a complicated divorce or a medical complaint of their own. Coaching requires honesty on both of your parts and you need to adopt a holistic approach to helping a person improve professionally.
• Are your goals the same? As a coach, you may wish to help an individual improve professionally in different ways but your coachee may just want someone to talk to, to get issues off their chest. Some people just want to talk and be listened to. Some people do find a sympathetic ear empowering as it reminds them that they are worth listening to.
• Why has this person sought coaching? Some people truly want to improve their performance whereas other may simply begin coaching to please a superior. In a case like this, you may have to consider bringing the coaching relationship to an honest close as there is nothing you can do for them.

If you have tried for a significant period of time to engage with your coachee and find yourself getting nowhere, you need to be upfront with them. Realistically, you can only work with people who want your help. If the coachee is not willing to make coaching work for them, you need to assess whether or not they would benefit from you taking the time to persevere with their case.

Businesses often are unaware of the benefits coaching can give to their employees and as a direct result, their profits. It is often suggested that coaching is more effective in improving an individual’s performance than a leadership or management development programme. This is a somewhat subjective statement and as a business, you know you cannot afford to take a chance in these difficult times, on companies offering services that have little apparent and tangible results.

So what are the practical differences between coaching and leadership or management development programmes?

Firstly the coaching process is 1 to 1 and the focus is 100% on the individual, where as leadership and management development programmes are invariably for groups. By focusing on one person at a time, there is an opportunity to address the issues the coachee may not wish to raise in a group setting.  Also, the agenda and objectives for these group programmes are usually set in advance, meaning that it may not relate directly to the individual manager's specific developmental requirements. As the agenda for a coaching session is largely set by the coachee, the process becomes flexible and the results specifically tailored. On a leadership or management course, it is not easy to change the agenda and as the structure is more rigid, participants may leave with more questions than they arrived with.

When involved with coaching, the coachee may feel the call to action is stronger and more detailed than a participant of a leadership or management training course. The sessions where the action plans are often fewer and more general are clearly going to be less beneficial to those involved than action plans that are individually tailored and monitored by a coach.

A feature of coaching sessions is that notes will be taken, goals will be set at the end of every coaching session and managers will be asked by the coach if they have achieved their goals and how. Individuals are nurtured and are assessed to see if they need a different motivation technique. The ability to talk and act honestly, naturally and spontaneously is encouraged for a coachee whereas any displays of frustration, anger and emotion would be regarded as disruptive on a leadership or management training course. Managers should be encouraged to express their feelings in a constructive manner and this is generally more effective in one-on-one sessions.
 

There are of course, advantages for participants taking part in course-based activities, many people respond to group activity and create good networking opportunities, however, this is dependent on what you hope to get out of each method. Overall, I believe that subjects of coaching get more from their sessions purely through the specific advice offered to them. It has a powerful impact on their actions, performance but most of all, confidence in the subject’s own abilities and judgement. 

This would be nice to achieve but is not essential with every coaching relationship and it is unrealistic to expect this in every case. What is essential is a respect for each other and for what you can bring to the executive coaching relationship. What is key is respect for your skills as a coach and for your communication ability. You need to help the coachee to think differently and to look at things with fresh eyes and to provide a new perspective and to be a catalyst for them to ACT on this new thinking.

You may not actually greatly like or warm to the person that you are coaching, nor they you. We are all different individuals and there is ample scope for us to recognise the different perspectives, ideas and beliefs that other people possess. Where this can become difficult is in the area of values, behaviours, management styles and standards. I would find it hard to coach or be coached by a person who lacks fundamental integrity, who was rude to or dismissive of me or his/her people or who wanted to manipulate them or me to do something negative or illegal or completely against their will. If their style is completely autocratic and controlling and if they could not see the possibility of leading and managing in a more positive, democratic way then I would not be able to build and sustain the required rapport and positive relationship with them that I need to establish for me to be an effective support to the people that I coach. I

nterestingly enough, if I look back on the hundreds of people that I have coached over the past 15 years I realise that there have been very few coaching assignments where I have not felt that I could establish the necessary relationship and rapport with my coachee. I suspect that this is largely because the pre-coaching engagement routine that we go through with new people would discourage those with inappropriate values, styles and expectations and that both they and I self-select out of a coaching relationship with someone that we cannot identify with.

Yes they do need to know that they are being coached. How else can they be expected to play their part in this complex process? How will they understand the approach and techniques that the coach is using? How else can they be expected to be willing to take responsibility for their own issues, learning, thinking and actions?

If you don’t tell them upfront that they are being coached then there is little or no chance that they will play their part in addressing their issues and actively and purposefully work at addressing their issues and acting to resolve them. Furthermore when they do eventually find this out might they then feel manipulated into doing what you want them to do rather than what they really want and need to do? Is this necessarily a bad thing anyway? Well not if you are happy to be manipulating them to take action in the short term that will help you to achieve your goals. But in the long term, when you are not around and leading and controlling their behaviour then how will they act and react and what will their motivation be to do the best job that they can?

“If it is that easy to understand and use the C.O.A.C.H. technique and model in a two day coaching course - how come it takes a number of years and a load of coaching experience for me to become an effective coach?”

The answer to this is both simple and also complicated.

Yes you can understand what coaching is and is not about, examine the skills required, learn and practice the C.O.A.C.H. model and be ready to apply it for real within the relatively short time of a focussed training course. However you need to also consider that the example coaching practice experience that you get on the course by coaching a fellow participant and peer is not quite the “real” life coaching experience that you may see it as.
This is for these reasons:-

the peer that course participants are coaching is likely to be in the same mental state of preparedness, openness and motivation to learn about coaching as you are.

They have also been listening to, thinking about and learning about the subtleties of coaching in the same environment, time and space that you have

They are tuned in to coaching just like you – they are also just about to go through a reciprocal coaching session with you but in reversed roles

They are not about to give you a hard time, or not quite understand what you are getting at, or to feel significant mistrust of you (unless they have good reason to do so.)

In short, these coaching practice sessions are slightly unreal, run with a “trustee prisoner” who is trying to help you to learn and experience the COACH technique and questioning sequence as well and as quickly possible. It is in their direct interest to help you through the coaching process and for you to reciprocate.

So in addition to any training course or theoretical reading and preparation about coaching, to become an effective coach you also need the guided experience of coaching a range of different coaching subjects in different organisations. You need to do this in order to get a feel for the range of individual differences that exist and to start to develop your own individual style and approach to coaching - but within an overall proven technique and approach.

The UK Government has recently allocated significant funding and resource to train and develop CBT professionals to help people with low level mental health disorders. It has been the driving force behind the new IAPT initiative (improving access to psychological therapies) being implemented for local communities, to help people suffering from common mental health problems - anxiety and depression being the most prevalent. This form of talking therapy is different from counselling, which goes back to the past and helps a person to uncover the reasons why and any route cause of their difficulties.

Counsellors explore difficulties that the client is having, the distress they may be experiencing or their dissatisfaction with life. By listening attentively and patiently, the counsellor can begin to perceive the difficulties from the client’s point of view with the aim of helping the client to see things more clearly, possibly from a different perspective.

In a counselling session the client can explore various aspects of their life and their feelings, talking about them freely and openly in a way that is rarely possible with friends or family. Their bottled up feelings, such as anger anxiety, grief and embarrassment can become very intense and counselling offers an opportunity to explore them with the possibility of making them easier to understand.

As an alternative approach, CBT attempts to highlight maladaptive thoughts and behaviours and replace them with more effective and adaptive ones. The therapy is very problem focused and looks at the relationships between people’s cognitions, emotions, physiological responses and behaviour. Focusing on one of these areas can have a significant knock on effect on the other areas. CBT aims to make the client their own therapist, assuming that the client is the expert in their own problems and life experiences. CBT is a “here and now” approach which concentrates on helping the subject understand the realities of how they feel right now in various situations and to think about what they can do about this in future to improve their life experiences and mental well being.

It helps them to set and achieve short, medium and long term goals and develop skills and strategies of their own for the future if the problem arises again. To the extent that it focuses the subject on the here and now, on the options for future action and on the personal responsibility to do something different, it is a similar approach to coaching. What is different from coaching is that often the situation and the sort of problems and symptoms that a CBT client is faced with, tend to be more marked and unusual than the situations faced by most coaching subjects wrestling with the day to day, work related pressures encountered by people in reasonably successful employment.