BEYOND COACHING

For some time now, I’ve been on the receiving end of coaching courses, at undergraduate and post graduate level, and then at doctoral level.

During my tenure as student, and later an assessor, I received some rather sturdy feedback often relating to what my peers considered to be ‘not coaching’. I also subjected myself to mentorship (paid for) and coaching (paid for) and left myself out of pocket of some ￡10 000’s having to work through various coaching frameworks, and rather strange advice from a mentor.

I just did not get it!

What is the most powerful way to develop the capabilities of people at work? Executive coaching, high-potential programs, mentoring, corporate universities, off-sites, retreats, and leadership development programs may sound like widely varying approaches, but they actually share enough common (and problematic) features to be seen as a single, twentieth-century answer to the way we might best develop human capabilities. What are the features common to these approaches? First, they give people punctuated inputs, delivered from time to time rather than continuously. By themselves they may not occur often or intensely enough. Kegan

My frustration was extreme, and the mind chatter terrible, as was my emotional stress, which was impairing my judgment. From seeing a Jungian psychologist, being married to a PhD psychologist, to seeing a psychotherapist.

And of course, the stigma of needing to getting help, and my own struggles with making and sustaining ongoing change.

There was a huge gap in my coping abilities and something missing, which only exacerbated my frustration.

I decided to engage with my experience of good, bad, and ugly of what worked and did not work in my World, as a follower, leader, parent, sibling, son, and partner.

The biggest question was the underlying stress that I as a practitioner was experiencing myself that seemed to evoke a need for a fix, not only for myself and the other. There was very definitely something missing until I became familiar with the word apperception introduced by my supervising professor, understanding the art of conversation, and the world of reflective practice, the power of paradox, and the real power of experience as the most powerful way of learning through inquiry.

As an inherent dominant force that governs the behaviour of entrepreneurial managers, subjective knowledge or experience constitute the main determinant of knowledge and, therefore the most important element in the knowledge generation process of the firm. Doyle

Neuroscience gave me a real insight into how the social brain works, and when the other is listening, and open to their own inquiry, and wanting to discuss, debate, and dialogue before generating an outcome.

Quite curiously I recently attended a seminar run by a former colleague who asked whether this was all there is to coaching, one of my critics at the time. I’ve been asking this question from those early days going back some 18 years

7 years of circling back on these issues with clients, and Scholars like Kegan, Edmondson, Brown, and Scharmer began to evoke a very different approach in my own development and the work I do with others.

Most of my clients do not consider me as a coach-rather a confidant, sound board, and seriously experienced businessman, with who they can joust, question, engage with, and gain insights into their own leadership as entrepreneurs. Common amongst these interactions was naming the mistakes I’d made, and patterns in my own behaviour where I simply did not know, because of my own conditioning, that created a bizarre belief system of feeling under pressure to know.

The pressure to perform and conform to the frameworks put to them by coaches did not answer the questions for them. Nor add value.

They wanted more, and often offer robust criticism on my performance, and the value I bring.

And this is the nub of it. Rather than attack and defend my work, I moved into the space of not knowing with them, and through inquiry, conversation and action research we are able to unlearn, by circling back, relearn, and set course again, and again, with a tacit commitment to hard wiring leaders, their teams and employees to the bottom-line.

Key to this approach is the ongoing and iterative world of inquiry, blended with research and experience, rather than the pedestal of being a coach, and I’ll save you. And recent feedback from a trusted colleague about his experience in a coaching session, as an echo chamber.

There are a plethora of coaches out there, each arguing that their accreditations, frameworks, methods are better than the next, some making wild claims about doing it their way will guarantee success and earn you 6 figure and 7 figure incomes. That may be so!

So what? When I became the ‘student amongst the students’ life changed, and when the relational and interpersonal aspects of great conversations started evolving, it seemed I was ready, and so too my partners and clients.

My successes were built on ‘not coaching’ and engaging as a whole person, warts and all, with clients by engaging with them as an equal in making meaning, and reflecting through inquiry around the life challenges by sharing stories and narratives as meaning makers. Which also meant sharing my latest research findings from top thought leaders.

All in the conversational space, as individuals and in groups. No psychometrics, just downloading, debate, dialogue, and questions about subtle change and consistency, and taking the next step, cycling back, unlearning and relearning, about myself and the other.

How I’ve changed to ‘not coaching’ is:

·???????? Having brilliant conversations, without having to fix, rather sharing and feeling part of an initiative to change not only myself but encourage the other to consider what they might need to change, and explore this as an ongoing, and iterative dynamic inquiry.

·???????? Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable which eased the fear around having the difficult conversations, now handled with lightness and ease.

·???????? Being less fixated on imposing my framework on another, and more supportive of how they will want to evolve their own working documents to update themselves. Individually and collectively

·???????? Voiding the space

·???????? Making sure that the individual is point of entry, and that conversations are not just one-off events, yet ongoing.

·???????? Committing to filling the gaps in knowledge and experience as part of the routine, through Workshops, Thought leadership, and peer-to-peer space.

·???????? Becoming a student amongst the students.

……and above all, notice that the twentieth-century answer to developing potential, in all cases, makes the individual and not the organization the point of dynamic entry Kegan

Over the past 45 years the greatest wins for me were and still are the lifelong learning aspects of sharing, making sense, common sensing, and cocreating a will to achieve a longer-term outcome, by working with, and being part of this in my life and the life of others.

My greatest achievements came from 2 fundamental aspects of being.

·???????? Conversations

·???????? And being a Student amongst the Students

All learned in the field with students, and co-workers, Unions leaders, Chairmen, CEO's and open-minded curious people who often want to know and do better.

I join with the professional in making sense of my case, and in doing this I gain a sense of increased involvement and action. I can exercise some control over the situation. I am not wholly dependent on him; he is also dependent on information and actions that only I can undertake. I am pleased to be able to test my judgements about his competence. I enjoy the excitement of discovery about his knowledge, about the phenomena of his practice, and about myself Sch?n

Most valuable feedback I got from one of my most successful clients

we don’t know what he does, but it works Anonymous

Our next article will examine the tangible effects of 'not coaching' on the bottom line and dispel the myths of Traditional Leadership and its effectiveness.