Coaching: business leaders, you are not as good as you think
That’s a fairly blunt title isn’t it? Especially for someone whose mission is to inspire belief and enable progress.
This is an area however where research shows leaders are not as good as they think they are. And in today’s world, where rapid, constant and disruptive change is the norm, this is a skill which has become even more important. Especially where you want to develop your people for the long term.
How many coaching opportunities do you think you have during each working day? And how many of those do you take? And where you don’t take them, what do you think prevents you from doing so?
Let’s take a look under the bonnet.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE COMMON PROBLEMS?
The Leader as Coach is an HBR article full of insight in this area written by Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular. The first problem they highlight is that many leaders see a coaching approach to performance as too soft. Added to this, it can be perceived as too time-consuming, with the benefits taking too long to be reflected in performance.
A coaching approach can make leaders feel a bit uncomfortable and undermined: ‘shouldn’t we be the one with all the answers, and therefore able to just tell people what to do?’
Then there’s the issue of passing up a coaching opportunity in case we hurt the other person’s feelings.
Even for those who see the value in a coaching approach, the evidence shows that whilst most people think they are pretty good at it, a lot of them are not. In one study, 3,761 executives assessed their own coaching skills, and then their assessments were compared with those of people who worked with them. The results didn’t align well. Twenty-four percent of the executives significantly overestimated their abilities, rating themselves as above average while their colleagues ranked them in the bottom third of the group. That’s a telling mismatch. “If you think you’re a good coach but you actually aren’t,” the authors of the study wrote, “this data suggests you may be a good deal worse than you imagined.”
A final problem with coaching in the workplace is the fact that within so many organisations, the systems and processes just don’t lend themselves to regular and consistent coaching moments.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘COACHING’?
Before we look at how to improve performance in this area, let’s clarify what we mean by the term coaching. It is after all a term that even in the world of sport provokes debate and dissent.
What we’re talking about here is the process by which you develop your people on a daily basis. In order to maximise their potential, and their ability to work towards their, and the organisation’s, goals. As Sir John Whitmore, a leading figure in the field, has defined it, skilled coaching involves “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.”
It is not about ‘telling’ or just giving people the answers. Equally it’s not about asking questions and providing no support at all. Instead, it is a process where you adapt to the person and situation in front of you, in a way which develops them in the best way at that particular time. Sometimes this might mean being fairly directive, and sharing insight and knowledge which is relevant to the task or challenge in front of them. Other times this might be asking relevant and well-targeted questions, and letting them reflect and work things out for themselves. All aimed at helping them learn and develop, on a continual basis, in order to maximise their performance.
SO HOW CAN WE GET THIS RIGHT?
For you as an individual:
Shift your mindset: remember that the feedback and support that you give someone in a coaching moment is given for their benefit; you are helping and supporting the recipient to continually develop and improve.
Take advantage of each and every coaching moment: it might only take two minutes, but if you get it right the positive impact will be felt over the long term. It is highly unlikely that you will not come across at least one coaching moment in every single work day.
Learn to pause: where your natural inclination is to jump in and ‘tell’, practise building in a pause, giving yourself time to think how else you could approach the situation, and try and start off with a question rather than a direction or an answer.
Use the HEADS framework: this is invaluable to keep in mind in any coaching conversation, and is based on research and insight from American authors and academics Dan and Chip Heath. Reassure the coachee that you have high expectations of them. And assure them that you know they can reach them. Then provide them with the support they need, along with the appropriate direction. For example: Emily, at this organisation we have high expectations. We expect people to have high standards, and to appreciate the importance of continuous learning. We know you can live up to the expectations we have of you. At the moment, I think you could do with some support in this particular area. And in order to help your development, I’m going to suggest that you go and speak to ‘x’, and alongside this read some of the insight and research I’m going to share with you. Doing just the first half of this (the HE + A - high expectations plus assurance) is not coaching. It’s just setting Emily up to fail. Make sure you add in the D and the S - the direction and the support.
For your organisation:
To build a coaching culture within your organisation, be clear on why: link coaching to the organisation’s goals. In their article Ibarra and Scoular share an example from international law firm Allen & Overy. When David Morley, the then senior partner, decided to make coaching a key part of the firm’s leadership culture, he began talking with his colleagues about the importance of high-value conversations. “My pitch,” he told the authors, “was this: ‘As a senior leader, you have roughly 100 conversations a year that are of particularly high value—in the sense that they will change your life or the life of the person you’re talking to. We want to help you acquire the skills to maximize value in those 100 conversations, to unlock previously hidden issues, to uncover new options, and to reveal fresh insights.’ That resonated. Almost everybody in a key leadership position at the firm recognized that they struggled with how to make the most of those conversations, and they could readily see that they lacked skills.”
Upskill all your managers and leaders on how to spot coaching moments, and how to have coaching conversations: make this a priority. Take this seriously. Develop an internal programme that they can go through (with external support for this if necessary) to equip them with the right skillset.
Ensure your systems and processes support this: do your reward and recognition frameworks reflect coaching performance? Does your performance review approach encourage the utilisation of regular coaching moments or are you still stuck in the dark ages of annual performance reviews?
Coaching matters. The effective use of coaching throughout your organisation can help you survive and thrive in today’s world. Identifying and using coaching opportunities is arguably even more important in the hybrid working world. Don’t assume it’s easy. Don’t take the skillset for granted. You need to work at it, both for yourself, and for your organisation.
For more on this or any aspect of leadership, with a healthy dose of mindset, sport, and I hope usefulness thrown in, do feel free to browse through all the articles in the Huddle, or get in touch with me directly on catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk. And for those of you who want to read the HBR article referred to, here is the link https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-leader-as-coach