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Intelligent CoachingTM: Unleashing Human Potential
Written by: Brett Richards, M.A.
President, Connective Intelligence Inc.
In the December 2003 issue of The Journal for Quality and Participation I explored the need for organizations to Rethink... Or Else! Increasingly, there is a need for people, teams and whole organizations to change the way they think, if they are to adapt successfully to an increasingly complex world. In my experience working with leaders throughout North America, I have found that the biggest hurdle when exploring the topic of coaching is overcoming pre-disposed notions (assumptions) about what coaching is. More than ever before, leaders need to rethink the discipline of coaching because, if it is done well, it has the power to unleash tremendous amounts of human potential, while increasing motivation and sustaining high performance.
There are a number of models and theoretical orientations surrounding the discipline of coaching. Frederic Hudson's, The Handbook of Coaching, provides an outstanding resource that captures the many faces of coaching. Although there are a number of definitions and types of coaching, most practitioners would probably agree that the over-arching objective of coaching is to improve performance by unleashing human potential.
Interestingly, there is a wide gap between what practitioners believe coaching to be and what many managers think about coaching. In my experience, most managers struggle with the critical link between "soft" human growth and development and "hard" bottom line performance improvement. Understandably, from the manager's point of view, the whole notion of coaching seems somewhat paradoxical. For example, how can something that takes longer, speed things up? To unravel the mystery of such a paradox requires a fundamental shift in thinking and a willingness to explore the limitations of our own assumptions, and world-view. First, let's review the context in which the process of coaching must operate. Understanding the context is important because it provides insights about why many managers either fail to use or resist the coach approach.
The Tension Between Speed, Learning and Innovation
What is the cost of speed? We hear over and over again that the lack of speed will undermine organizational competitiveness. In this era of 30-second sound bytes, few would dispute that speed is crucial to organizational survival. Simply stated, organizations need to innovate new ideas, products and services faster than their competitors, or else…! But what underlies successful adaptation and innovation?
The Organizational Response Cycle depicts an abbreviated model outlining the core activities, which underlie the achievement of desired performance results. As most of us have experienced first hand, either directly or indirectly, organizations are being forced to adapt to increasingly more complex and competitive global market pressures. To paraphrase Thomas Friedman in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, globalization continues to exert pressure on organizations to produce faster, cheaper and customized products and services. Such pressures force organizations to decentralize decision-making and de-concentrate power in ways to allow more people to share knowledge, experiment and innovate faster.
To be sure, successful adaptation requires innovation: the ability to turn new ideas into value-added products and services. The concept of "value-added" is important because it means that an innovation must either increase the bottom line, or increase explicit knowledge assets, which help the organization to better respond to current and emergent competitive pressures. Inherent to the whole innovation process, then, is the core activity of learning. Is it possible to innovate without learning?
Coaching operates within the core activity of learning and serves as a fundamental process to speed up and make more effective individual, team and organizational learning. Coaching, in fact, is also integral to innovation as it helps to balance the tension that exists between the organization's need for speed and the way people need to learn and sustain high performance.
Sustaining High Performance
In order to more fully explore the value and the purpose of coaching, it may be helpful to address two common myths (there are more) about coaching that are maintained within the minds of many managers. Suffice to say, myths work within our sub-conscious minds subtly feeding forward predisposed notions, values and beliefs about how the world works, or should be. Myths can be maladaptive if they restrict our ability to learn beyond them.
Myth #1: Coaching is about touchy-feely personal development, not bottom-line performance.
Myth #2: Coaching is too time consuming.
Rethinking Myth #1: Coaching is about touchy-feely personal development, not bottom line performance.
Most managers would agree that one of their key accountabilities is improved performance. Additionally, they would concur that it's becoming harder to surpass, even sustain, yearly performance targets. I frequently ask managers if they are managing for the short-term or the long-term? Continuous time pressures move a manager's thinking and behavior toward the short-term end of the continuum. For example, managers will often express that they spend far too much time "putting out fires" and not enough time developing their people or thinking strategically. Coaching is both a process and a tool, which represents a style of approach and a values set that fundamentally believes in the power of human potential. Coaching is in fact about personal development, and it is undeniably linked to bottom line performance and results.
A significant amount of research shows that managers who use styles that positively affect the climate of an organization consistently achieve better results than those that don't. To cite one example found in the Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000, the late David McClelland, a noted Harvard University psychologist, found that the divisions of a large food and beverage company led by managers who scored high on emotional intelligence, "outperformed yearly revenue targets by 15% to 20%". Conversely, those managers who scored low on emotional intelligence, "rarely rated as outstanding in their annual performance reviews, and their divisions under-performed by an average of almost 20%".
On many occasions, I have heard employees describe their managers as highly intelligent and skillful, however, their people management skills are so poor that they actually undermine the performance of their employees. Emotional intelligence is defined by Dr. Reuven Bar-On, author of the first scientifically validated measurement of emotional intelligence (EQi), as an array of non-cognitive capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence one's ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures. Significantly, research has shown that the organizational climate created by the leader accounts for approximately 34% of bottom line performance results. The coaching style of management requires a robust array of emotional intelligence competencies such as empathy, self-awareness and social responsibility, to name a few. Not surprisingly, managers who embrace the coach approach create a positive impact on the climate and subsequently improve bottom line performance.
More transactional, task-focused styles of management can certainly drive, if not coerce, people to produce results, but for how long and at what cost? Managers need to shift their thinking away from achieving short-term goals to creating the conditions for sustained organizational performance.
David Whitaker, a colleague of mine, and an outstanding coach in the U.K., introduced me to a very simple, yet powerful model to help capture the essential drivers of sustained performance. As we've already shown, learning is fundamental to innovation and successful adaptation. If managers create a climate that is primarily performance or "achievement" driven, without "learning" or a sense of "enjoyment", then performance will decline over the long-term because people's sense of personal satisfaction and motivation will decline. On the flip side, learning without results, or too much enjoyment without the accountability to achieve real results will also undermine long-term performance.
Rethinking Myth #2: Coaching is too time consuming
In reality, effective coaching can occur any time, anywhere and some of the best coaching interactions are quite brief. To magnify this point in workshops, I conduct an exercise called "silent coaching". I ask workshop participants ranging in size from 8 to 130 participants, to reflect on a current business challenge in which they could use some coaching. Within a ten minute timeframe, I ask them approximately ten questions which help to develop focus, clarity, exploration and commitment. Interestingly, I have no idea what their coaching challenges are, and yet within just ten minutes an average of 95% of the participants feel re-energized and ready to address the challenge with new tangible, options they had never thought of before. Two points to consider: 1) I did not have to be an "expert" in their line of work, nor did I have to know any of the specific details surrounding their workplace challenge, and 2) I created a positive climate that encouraged them to think for themselves. Clearly, they will be more committed and accountable to addressing their challenges because they came up with the solutions themselves, I did not tell them what to do. Effective coaching is a powerful tool to inspire personal learning, increase energy and motivation and increase ownership and accountability. And it does not have to take too long!
The Tell/Do Trap
Traditional thinking would have us believe that to improve performance or to make someone better we must tell them, or show them what it is they are doing incorrectly so that they will not repeat the same mistake. Within a short-term context and frame of mind, this approach can certainly be effective; however, again, if we look at the sustainability of performance model, over-use of this style of approach will undermine efforts to achieve long-term performance.
No doubt, there is a pervasive climate in many organizations of time urgency. Rushing to and through meetings, rushing through halls, rushing through lunch, rushing to meet deadlines of all kinds. Under such conditions, the lure for managers to just tell their people what to do can be very strong: "Don't ask questions, just trust me on this", or "Don't think about it, just do it now and ask questions later"!
Ironically, the intention for most managers is to help their people get better because in many respects it's in their interest to do so. More effective people means higher performance, and presumably, less hand holding, freeing the manager up to do more strategic things. The intention to "help" is sound, but the process to carry out the intention is flawed. What in fact happens to many managers, who fall into the Tell/Do trap, is that they inadvertently create an over-reliance on their own skills and abilities, which precisely undermines their intention to off-load more work.
In effect, managers create an easy way out for their employees, who are also a part of the same climate of time urgency. It becomes easier and faster for the employee to simply ask the manager for advice. Also, they learn to wait for the Tell/Do manager to provide instruction because that is the usual dynamic experienced with their manager. What emerges is a vicious cycle of telling and doing, where the employees over-rely on their manager's know-how and are not compelled to think for themselves. The vicious cycle undermines the employee's ability to solve future problems because real learning has not taken place, and so the cycle continues. To conclude, managers who believe coaching is too time consuming may need to rethink their concept of time because a) an effective coaching interaction need not take more than a few minutes and b) time is not saved by quickly telling, if is at the expense of true learning.
Intelligent Coaching: Aligning Brains and Emotions
The process of unleashing human potential involves an understanding of how people learn and think, as well as an understanding of what motivates them to achieve sustained high performance. Managing and leading involve both conceptual and emotional activities. Effective managers must have the capacity to conceptualize and think well, in order to navigate successfully through ever increasing rates of change and complexity.
However, the landscape of organizational life is also emotionally charged. Continuous change and transition produces a whole array of personal feelings from excitement through to insecurity. Therefore, effective managers must also have strong emotional competencies to navigate their own feelings as they personally struggle with change, and, perhaps more importantly, to effectively address the emotional energy of those they lead.
An "intelligent coach" understands and develops the necessary conceptual and emotional competencies needed to engage people in such a way as to unleash their full potential. At the root of intelligent coaching lies a passionate focus on performance improvement. Sustained, long-term performance can only be achieved when there is an intention to think long term. Intelligent coaching develops an organizational climate that is rich in learning, enjoyment and achievement through the fundamental belief in the unlimited potential that lies waiting within the hearts and minds of people.
About Brett Richards:
Brett is the President of Connective Intelligence. He is a performance coach and a certified North American Effective Intelligence® Master Trainer. He is dedicated to helping people, teams and organizations realize their full potential, by helping them to transform their brainpower and intelligence into more effective action.
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