Executive Coaching - It may not be what you think (but how)

When I first heard the term “executive coach,” I was pretty sure I knew what it meant. An executive coach coached executives. The term defined the target audience. This service was for people at the top levels of an organization: the “C-Suite.” At its best, executive coaching builds competency and capacity and boosts performance to the highest levels. Too often, it sinks to the level of last resort before an executive is “exited” from an organization. My understanding of executive coaching changed when I realized the term better identifies a function of the brain than a position in an organization. Executive coaching isn’t about the audience but how to get to our best thinking.

As a supervisor, manager, and director, I’d been coaching my people for 15 years and serving as a coaching resource for others for 8 when I learned there is another way to think about executive coaching. Two specific sources pushed me toward this new understanding; Fred Harburg’s FACT-Based Coaching[1] model and new developments in brain science.

In 2009 I began working with Fred Harburg to build a coaching culture in a large corporate organization. A big part of this project was for me to gain a deep and practical understanding of his FACT-Based model. I’d been coaching and teaching people to coach for several years. Fred took my understanding to a new level as he emphasized building rapport and thought partnership. Fred used a phrase that has stuck with me, “great executive = great judgment.” Coaching isn’t about the coach. It’s not about dispensing wisdom, experience, and advice. Good coaching involves tapping into and developing the performer’s best thinking. It’s not fixing them. Advice might boost short-term performance but improving the quality and capacity of a performer’s thinking creates long-term, sustainable performance improvements. This approach works for front-line, individual contributors, and CEOs. It works to address performance issues, planning, problem-solving, and career planning. I learned good coaching doesn’t focus on a role of position but on getting the performer to move their thinking into their prefrontal cortex, the seat of “executive function.” The term “executive coaching” is better defined as developing the thinking, judgment, and wisdom of a performer. Brain science can explain the power of this approach.

What started, for me, as a request to develop two different leadership programs for a large corporation moved into a deep dive into recent developments in brain physiology. Through surveys and assessments, the need to increase the emotional intelligence of the leaders in this organization became urgent. The CEO and several Senior Vice Presidents also expressed an urgent need to improve the critical thinking skills across the entire organization. As I worked on these programs separately I frequently found the same research in brain science and neuroscience-physiology cited.[2] Emotional Intelligence and Quality Thinking both heavily depend on pushing the thought/action/response process to the correct part of the brain. Most research in Emotional Intelligence eventually talks about the Limbic System and the Amygdala. The is the home territory for reaction, stimulus-response, and fight, flight, freeze, or faint. When time, energy or effort are in short supply, this system offers a shortcut to behavior.[3] When you are in danger, your brain works directly through the amygdala and provides an immediate reaction to the situation to improve your chances of survival. When there are too many sources of input or stimulation for analysis, your brain selects one thing for primary focus and allows others to move to the background to be regulated by past experience, “rules of thumb,” and heuristics

The prefrontal cortex has a starting role when deep, critical thinking is required. This is the most recently developed part of our brain and is where analysis, judgment, reason, and wisdom reside.[4] These are grouped and called “executive functions.” When a thoughtful response is required, the executive functions of the pre-frontal cortex are employed.

Executive coaching improves a performers ability to employ their pre-frontal cortex at the right time and in the right way. A football coach works on developing the athletic talent and capability of an athlete to perform at their highest level on the football field. An acting coach offers exercises and feedback on drama and acting to bring out the actor’s top performance on stage. In the same way, an executive coach focuses on developing and refining a person's executive functions. (In professional and/or personal contexts)

Executive coaching builds capacity and competency by tapping into the best thinking of the performer. This creates new ways of looking at issues and improves the quality of questions asked by the person being coached. Through new perspectives and better questions, the performer creates and executes a plan that effectively addresses the issue involved. The coach creates an environment where the performer must exercise their prefrontal cortex and expand their capacity for executive functioning. Applying this type of thinking and acting in the coaching context encourages using of quality thinking when facing the next challenge.

Everyone, regardless of salary grade, position, or profession, benefits from this approach to coaching. You don’t need to be in the C-Suite or even in business. Executive coaching is about how you think, not status of position.

[1] Learn more about Fred Harburg and the FACT-Based model at factleadership.com

[2] A few books that influenced me - Primal Leadership (2004) Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee; Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) Kahneman; Your Brain at Work (2009) Rock; Brain Rule (2014) Medina

[3] Deep focused thinking requires immense amounts of energy and it is impossible to focus on everything. In order to survive we adapted to make choices to focus on what is most useful for survival and use heuristics (rules of thumb or mental shortcuts) to address other decisions. See - Brain Rule (2014) Medina – Survival and Attention for a simple explanation

[4] Executive functioning specifically involves planning or decision-making, error-correction or trouble shooting, novel sequences of action, dangerous or technically difficult situation and situations that involve strong habitual, heuristics or resisting temptation.