We all see the world in our own way. How often do we use the phrase ‘the reality is’ when we are really talking about our view of reality. We can then be shocked, dismayed, confused or angry when others don’t act in accord with our expectations. Despite life experience demonstrating to us that our own thinking can be as faulty as the next person’s we sometimes act as if our perspective is the only true one.
How to challenge thinking
Self-evidently, clients may experience a challenge to their thinking as criti- cism or an attack, particularly if it is delivered ineptly. Challenging someone on their thinking needs to be done thoughtfully and skilfully if it is to have the desired effect and not simply push that individual into defensiveness. This is where it is important to gauge your client’s desire and tolerance for 80 PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF EXECUTIVE COACHING
challenge. Some clients expect it, even demand it. Others may see it as impertinent, even outrageous.
A good starting point is to act from a stance of interested curiosity. In other words you adopt a slightly detached, non-judgemental position of wanting to understand more about how the client comes to see the world in their own unique way. This is not with the intent of trying to change the client, which will most certainly produce resistance or shallow compliance, but more from the spirit of genuine enquiry.
If, as a coach, you have too much investment in achieving a particular outcome or result then you may be in danger of leading too strongly and this will surely be picked up by your client. Your job is to get your clients more interested and curious about their own inner process through raising self- awareness. The objective is to encourage them to see and hear themselves better by acting as a sounding board for them.
Returning to the question of resistance, it will generally be more productive to acknowledge the positive as well as negative aspects of any so- called faulty thinking. Busy managers who soak up their staff’s problems may feel overloaded but there will usually be a positive side. Their staff will probably feel well looked after, cared for and genuinely helped. This will probably result in the manager being seen very positively and in turn will have implications for attempts to change behaviour as there is a payoff from staying in the same pattern.
Building psychological muscle
One of the great contributions to working at the cognitive level has been made by Kegan (1994) in his book In Over Our Heads – The Mental Demands of Modern Life. The particular relevance of his theory for coaches is that trans- formation takes place when we develop the ability to step back and reflect on something that used to be taken for granted yet now enters our consciousness in a way that allows us to make new decisions about it. This requires in Kegan’s view a movement from what he calls ‘Subject’ to ‘Object’. ‘Subject’ is the state where things are experienced as unquestioned simply because they are the very lenses through which we see life. They are taken for granted as true – they are our reality.
‘Object’, on the other hand, refers to things that are now in fuller awareness and can be seen, thought about, questioned and acted upon in a new way. This enables individuals to appreciate their beliefs, assumptions, relationship issues, and aspects of their personality in a more objective light. An example of the Subject/Object change would be Jane, a woman brought up in a family where her brother was expected and actively encouraged to go to university and follow a career path and she was con- stantly told ‘just do your best – you can always get a job as a secretary.’
This message left a deep and lasting impact on Jane to the point where she simply didn’t ever really consider herself as capable of achieving a manage- ment position. It just became her unquestioned reality. Later when she was given the opportunity to go on a personal development course she discovered that she had never even realised that she had been seeing her life in this way. She was shocked at how she had taken on a set of expectations and lived them out. She then had to decide whether to remain as a secretary or to go for promotion and start to build a long-term career. What mattered to her was that she finally felt that she was deciding the course of her life.
Personal growth and development is about moving more and more from ‘Subject’ to ‘Object’ and, as we increasingly do this, our capacity for dealing with complexity and change grows. We can see, reflect on, be responsible for, and act on more things. Kegan refers to this as building greater ‘psychological muscle’. In a rapidly changing and ever more complex world this can be seen as a critical goal for executive coaching.
Relevance to the coach
It is common for executives and senior managers to assume unquestioningly that their worldview is accurate and largely shared by others. This is often revealed in failed change management initiatives, which fall on the rocks of resistance to change. From the so-called resistors’ viewpoint they simply do not share the same view of reality.
At the individual level this can happen in developmental processes such as 360-degree feedback when managers’ own views of themselves contrast sharply with those working around them. In this case, recipients of the feedback may be unprepared or unable to take on board the messages coming from colleagues as they do not conform to their own self-assessment.
Conversely, these sorts of processes can help someone to get a new per- spective though it may not endure unless sufficient effective support and challenge continues into the future. Initially, individuals may open up to what is being said and grapple with a perspective which is not their own. Out of this they may gain new insights and make decisions and commitments to address developmental issues. However, if they don’t build that ‘psycholo- gical muscle’ then there can be a tendency to stray back to previously held beliefs and assumptions and, in so doing, continue to evoke and elicit the same responses in others.
For the coach there are some clear messages here. Firstly, people do not change something until they first become aware of it – i.e. they move from being in it to being able to see and understand it. This is the movement from ‘Subject’ to ‘Object’. So one of the key aspects of your role as coach is to facilitate heightened awareness in clients of the lenses through which they see the world and themselves.
Beyond this lies the somewhat daunting task of confronting those fixed views and assumptions to build greater flexibility and creativity into how the individual thinks. This requires courage as well as skill and understanding on your part and is something many executives want and expect from their coach. Taking the decision to grasp more strongly this aspect of the role can mean two things. Firstly, you may need to learn more about what is really involved in helping others to let go of assumptions and beliefs that may have contributed to why they have been successful.
Secondly, you may need to go back to yourself and ask some important questions about how comfortable you are with raising the level of challenge with your clients. Some coaches are wary of this, fearing their clients might reject their challenge and get defensive. They also worry that this may weaken trust and rapport. The danger is that if you stay too safe, adopt an overly supportive role and avoid taking risks then opportunities for new insight and growth may be lost.
Sometimes the most significant learning from the entire coaching process arises from that moment when you as the coach take the risk of really chal- lenging your client on something that matters. When you reflect later, per- haps at the end of the process on your work together, it can be just these moments of truth that stand out as the transformative and pivotal experiences.