Pulling Back the Curtain on Coaching

It’s funny how when you do a thing for a long time, you forget what other people don’t know about that thing. I’m guilty of that myself, and I want to spend this month demystifying coaching. Maybe you’re reading this because you want to be a coach, or maybe it’s because you’re thinking about hiring a coach. Either way, I hope to pull the curtains back a bit and educate folks on all things coaching.?

Let’s start with defining coaching. According to the International Coach Federation (ICF), coaching is “Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership.” The ICF is a certifying body that sets standards for all kinds of coaches around the world—health coaches, life coaches, leadership coaches, career coaches, etc., so that definition is a bit broad and vague. In my coaching practice, I think about coaching in two different ways: leadership development and thought partnership.?

For leadership development, it’s helpful to look at how The Association of Talent Development (ATD) describes coaching: “Coaching is probably one of the most—if not the most—individually tailored practices in talent development. Meeting one-on-one with senior managers...provides a safe, structured, and trustworthy environment. The coach also helps the leader understand their current competencies, see how they’re perceived by others, and focus on identifying and clarifying current goals as well as the appropriate action steps to reach those goals.”

So, in one sense, coaching is a private, tailored approach to professional development as opposed to, say, attending training with other people in similar roles to learn a skill. Training is aimed at imparting knowledge and coaching is aimed at applying that knowledge in the real world. So, a leader who is receiving coaching on delegating more effectively probably knows all of the benefits of delegation, delegation techniques, etc., but she’s not applying that knowledge. She and her coach will work together to find out why and build a plan for her to delegate more effectively.?

Here’s what that process looks like with my clients. We start with a premise: Emma needs to be better at delegating. We talk about what that means; why Emma thinks she needs to improve, what feedback and evidence she has to support this, why improving is important. Then, she may give me the names of people I can talk to for more feedback (we call them stakeholders). I talk to those people about Emma’s delegation issue, uncovering what they think about it, what she needs to improve and why, etc.?

Sometimes, the stakeholders’ feedback will illuminate that Emma’s delegation problem is not actually a delegation problem. Delegation is simply the word Emma uses to label a problem she’s seeing. With some digging, we might find that there are root factors to address. Some common underlying issues related to delegation include not setting clear expectations and accountability processes, not trusting in people’s abilities, holding on to pet projects...the list goes on. If we focus on the wrong thing, we don’t get the impact we’re after.

Once we’ve clarified Emma’s core issues, we identify observable behaviors that she can practice each week: setting clear expectations, identifying milestones in the life of a project, ensuring people have the authority, information, and resources they need to feel ownership over the outcomes. We build a tracking system (a simple spreadsheet will work) where Emma makes notes about her progress on each of these behaviors and scores herself. Emma and I speak each week and talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what she’ll do differently the next week. Very quickly, new behaviors begin to replace old behaviors. Over a few months, those new behaviors become habits. After several months, those habits become second nature. ?

As you can see, this process is long and intense; it’s only a reasonable approach when the behaviors being addressed and people being coached have a high impact. That’s why we focus on truly understanding the behavior early in the process—and why companies typically reserve coaching for people in critical positions. If a company invests an hour a week for a year in a VP, it will impact hundreds of employees.?

Coaching focused on thought partnership is more common among CEOs and other very senior leaders. There are some decisions and problems that top-level leaders simply cannot take to the rest of the C-suite or their board. They may have mentors they can go to for advice, but the coach’s role is not to advise. The coach’s role is to act as a sounding board as the leader makes her own decisions. The coach guides the leader in her decision-making or problem-solving process but isn’t advocating for a specific outcome. It may sound like this:?

• What would a good outcome look like in this situation?
• Who have you talked to about this? What advice did they offer? What do you think about that advice?
• What core values are impacted by this situation?
• What could go wrong if you chose option A? What’s the likelihood of that happening?

Notice there are no, “You should…” or “I would…” statements—just questions meant to guide the leader to her own clarity. Here’s what’s crazy: in decades of coaching, I’ve never seen it not work. It may take more than one call, but the leader is always more confident with the final decision after a process like this. That’s not to say it’s always the right decision—that truly would be magic. Most leaders can be okay with being wrong, but the self-doubt and lack of confidence in the direction they are choosing for themselves and their company can be crippling. This type of coaching relationship can be intense, but the payout can be huge if it results in the most pivotal people in the company making better decisions.?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll dig into other coaching topics, like examining different styles of coaching and different reasons people engage with a coach. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or send me a private message—I’ll be happy to explain in as much detail as you’d like.?