Coaching for Organizational Transition – Structured Re-Assessment

How we manage the change process and how we lead our teams will determine our organizational success.  This article is the last in a three-part series examining transition coaching at the organizational level.  It provides some thoughts from my experience in the military as well as coaching fundamentals from the Columbia Executive Coaching program that have proven useful as an Executive Performance and Transition Coach with the Leadership Research Institute.  

In his amazing book Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal talks about the need to understand and appreciate the external rate of change of our environment as well as the internal alignment and communication cycle necessary to be responsive to those changes.  The external rate of change for many industries has been extremely intense these past few months.  So, how can we make sense of that and equip our teams with the tools they need to succeed?   More specifically, what conversations have to occur about our purpose, our people, our perspective, our plans, our priorities, and our perspective and how often do they need to happen so our teams can focus their energy, effort, and attention on what matters?  The answer is a structured reassessment process which we referred to as after-action reports and debriefing during the military chapter of my life.  

Unpredictable and changing environments require organizational alignment, engagement, and effective communication to ensure team success.  Feedback, and our ability to objectively examine our purpose, our people, our perspective, and our plans to then take informed and deliberate action in accordance with organizational priorities, is a key contributor, if not the most important factor, to organizational effectiveness.

As a Columbia Certified Executive Coach, my coaching methodology is guided by three overarching questions which are grounded in the Science of Human Performance:   

- What’s up?  (Context)

- What matters? (Content)

- What’s next? (Conduct)[1]

When thinking about coaching for organizational change and ‘structured re-assessment”, I am reminded of the non-linear linkage between “the conduct” (what’s next) and “the content” (what matters) phases of Columbia Coaching framework.  It’s the learning that occurs from assessing our actions and inactions to take informed follow-on actions that allows us to make positive organizational change.    

Some coaching questions to consider:  

·      How do we need to assess our purpose, our people, our perspective, our plans, our priorities, and our processes to be as responsive as we can be to our changing environment?   

·      How often do we need to assess those areas to ensure our internal decision-making cycle is faster and more adaptable than the changes in our external environment? 

·      What are the risks to our objectives and our team members if we fail to properly assess those areas in the appropriate manner and within the appropriate timelines?  

·      What do we need to do differently to minimize or eliminate the risks to our objective(s) and our team members?  

Dennis Volpe is a Principal Leadership Consultant and Executive Performance Coach with the Leadership Research Institute.  He specializes in Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Team Effectiveness, and Decision-Making.  He focuses his efforts on Performance and Transition Coaching for Emerging Leaders, proven mid-level Executives, and Military Veterans.

[1] https://www.tc.columbia.edu/coachingcertification/about-us/coach-foundations/coaching-process/