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To
Coach Or Not To Coach
That Is The Question
By Kevin J. Fleming, Ph.D.
In my practice, I have realized over time
that not everyone wants to change, but everyone wants to think
either they can or don’t have to. Instead of answering
the question of whether John Doe the VP is “coaching
material or not,” I guide an organizational leadership
team into understanding natural laws of humanity (i.e., people
will do what they want to do and not what they don’t
want to do) and take them through a lesson where they come
face to face with accountability…where one realizes
one can’t be made to commit and instead one can only
evaluate the ramifications of one’s decisions. In this
messiness of organizational life, it gets you wondering what
do I, as an expert executive coach, see as the best of the
best situations for the richness of executive coaching? Read
on for my top five.
1. Your team is not underperforming, just
getting comfortable with what it is performing. Many coaches
go after the dysfunctional team as their prime
candidate to coach, as if not being aligned actually hurts
or has some overt pathology. However, I prefer the team that
has come to the conclusion that they are doing just fine.
What illusion are they colluding on? Where has the fear been
displaced to?
2. Sudden unexplained positive shift in
a business outcome critical to your company’s success.
To quote the well-known executive coach Marshall
Goldsmith, there are factors of success that are best explained
under the willful heading of “because” factors
and those that are coined as the elusive “in spite”
factors. When a success happens that is of a large scale nature
some leader is ready to step up and take credit. But what
if the success happened in spite of someone’s portfolio
of “skills?”
3. Oversimplification of strategy. Beware
of the leader who begins his sentences “all we have
to do is just...” Typically some nuance is missed. No
area is more susceptible to this then in the alignment area
of business. “We just have to know who is on the bus
and who isn’t”. Wish human nature was that binary.
It just isn’t. You don’t seek complexity in your
decision making, it won’t seek you.
4. Failing to see value trade offs. Next
time you see an employee doing something you don’t get,
before you tell them what they did wrong, inquire about what
value was underneath the decision that they made. In every
moment we make a decision, we are operating from some value
center. You will likely uncover a bind that is common in your
organization. . . one that you
unconsciously did not want to uncover through inquiry as it
would put some self-interest component at jeopardy.
5. Fallibility of perception. Most of the
work I do can be linked to being asking to join two perceptions
into, hopefully, a more realistic indicator of human nature,
and therefore organizational performance. When I meet a leader
that has an illusion of invincibility, find a “maybe”
or a “perhaps”—don’t prove them wrong.
In essence, these top five areas have a “do not coach”
side to them that is very tempting as a fault that is either
imperceptible or a right that is so darn true filling that
person up to the brim. Don’t lose faith. Coaching is
not about motivationally enhancing the motivationally inclined
people…it is about seeing the stage of change that people
are in and inviting them to question from their value center—not
yours.
Dr.
Fleming is a regular columnist on Transformation Insights
for the high end executive magazine, Executive Decision.
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