Each of us has a way of approaching an invitation to help another based on what our lives have taught us. Because they are based on messages that we have acted on and that have worked for us, we trust them. The extension of this is that we assume they will work for others. This may not be true.
When we offer to coach another person it is important to ask ourselves what we are bringing to the process. Of course, you are explicitly bringing a range of work experience that is greater than the person who has sought you out. However, what you and they may fail to recognize is the implicit model that will shape how you react to them.
To understand your model ask yourself these questions:
g Based on your experience of being brought up in your family, what were the messages that have stuck with you from childhood?
These may be direct messages from your parents, e.g. ‘Only hard work gets rewarded’, ‘It’s the winning that counts’. ‘It is important to put others before yourself ’. Or they may be messages that you gave yourself as a result of being part of your family, e.g. ‘It is important to succeed in order that I don’t have the sort of life that my parents have had’,
‘Being successful is not worth having if it means you don’t have time for living’.
g What have been your most difficult life experiences, and what have you taken from them? For example, ‘You can’t trust other people, when the chips are down’, ‘When the going gets tough it is having a helping hand that gets you through’, ‘Never give up – something good always comes out of something bad’, ‘Just do something, anything which stops you focusing on the bad stuff’, ‘There’s no point just taking action, you have to live with the difficult for as long as it takes.’
g Who are the people who have most influenced you at work and what did they teach you? For example, ‘Always focus on the task and don’t allow anyone or anything to deflect you’, ‘It is important to push people beyond their comfort level’, ‘Focus on understanding the other person and you will get the result you want’, ‘Make sure you only do the things which will get the attention of your bosses’.
The answers to these questions will influence where you sit most comfortably on those two axes of Support and Challenge.
C
ASES
TUDYGraham was a board member of a medium-sized private company. He had poor relations with his board colleagues because they saw him as a
‘know it all’ who leapt in to provide answers to their problems within seconds of them opening their mouths. In his mind he was saving them time, because his thought processes were rapid and often his answers were right – even if it took them a while to get round to recognizing it. He could not understand why they got upset when he was offering a time-efficient solution. When pushed, he recognized that his solutions usually evoked visual signs of resistance in his colleagues, but he chose to block those out. He was a man who valued himself for his ability to Challenge for Thought and to Challenge for Action.
Graham’s model, which ignored the need to offer space for other people to think things through or to let them scope their own solution, were based on a powerful personal model:
g Growing up in a highly intellectual family where you gained attention for the power of your thinking, and where meal times were a competitive battlefield.
g Working for bosses who were highly authoritarian, demanding and critical.
g The early death of a parent that was dealt with through not talking about the event or the emotional impact on him as young child, but by taking control of the practical aspects.
All of these messages were brought into the workplace and applied rigorously. A direct report who came asking for help with a piece of work would be subjected to an interrogation in order to sharpen up their analytical skills. Staff bruised by encounters when they had asked for feedback face to face quickly learnt to deal with him by email. Fellow directors would keep him in the dark about issues in order to minimize his input.
What is lost in this account is that Graham was not a terrible human being. In person he was fun and charming, and he was absolutely committed to the organization. His limitations were a life model that only allowed for Challenge as the basis for helping others to deliver more.
When he recognized that what he would have welcomed in his early years, i.e. Support, was exactly what his colleagues and direct reports
wanted from him, he began to approach his encounters with them differently.
Each of us is skewed in a different way in how we approach the invitation to help another person. Some of us are skewed towards Support for Thought in ways that make people feel comfortable, but that can also allow them to avoid taking responsibility for action. Others are skewed towards offering Support for Action when we could make a real difference through challenging the other person to aim higher. We may enjoy the dance of challenging thought without considering how to move it into action.
The challenge for any manager who is asked to coach is to recognize their own preference and then to challenge themselves to develop to more fully occupy the four positions of coaching influence.
Summary
In this chapter we have focused on:
g The importance of creating cupboard space for your direct reports to bring their performance issues.
g The value of timeliness as a powerful agent in change.
g The need in every coaching conversation for the elements of Support and Challenge balanced with Thought and Action.
g The preferences that each of us bring to our coaching conversations, based on the learning from which we have taken our key life experiences.
g The importance of widening our range if we are to help others.
Reference
1. Hirsh, W., Jackson, C. and Kidd, J. (2001) Straight Talking. NICEC.