Using my personal experience as a coachee and coach, I explore how companies use coaching and explain how ‘pre-training’ the first-time coachee on their approach to the coaching relationship could significantly improve performance for all parties.
Written for Coaching Today - http://bacpcoaching.co.uk/coaching-today
2. I
magine you are an experienced coach in a large
corporation. It is your first meeting with your
coachee. You have prepared yourself to listen
constructively and, with your coaching toolkit
and years of experience behind you, you are
ready. The coachee arrives, not with their
coaching goals but, instead, has diligently
prepared a personal portfolio. They are here to
convince you, with evidence, of why they really
should have made it on the talent list and been
promoted over their peers.
You ask about their experience of being
coached. They talk about how their manager
coaches them well. As they talk, it becomes
clear to you that this isn’t coaching but a typical
directive ‘tell and do’ approach within their
paternalistic culture. It is clear that the ability
to role model their manager in this company
earns them the ‘tap on the shoulder’ for new
opportunities. It has worked so well before, so
the frustration for the coachee is ‘why isn’t this
working now’? This frustration is creating
tension in the workplace and their once-trusted
manager has become, in the coachee’s mind at
least, a hindrance to them developing further.
The coachee is finding it difficult to overcome
the hurt they feel, and their performance is
suffering as a result. They are somehow seeing
the coaching intervention as a performance
managementtechnique.Theycannotunderstand
As a coach within a large company and
with personal experience as a coachee,
Jason Rawlings explores how companies
use coaching and explains how ‘pre-training’
the first-time coachee on their approach to
the coaching relationship could significantly
improve performance for all parties.
12 Coaching Today – October 2015
3. Coachees need to
understand what they
want to achieve, be
open to support and
challenge …prepared
to build on their own
skillset, using their
own solutions and not
waiting for these to be
given to them
that coaching is an investment for their
development. They have prepared no insight,
no questions, and this pattern of behaviour
continues for the first sessions and hinders
the coaching experience.
Where do we go from here?
As any experienced coach will know, coaching
can be life-changing. We believe in human
potential and everyone achieving their best. For
the coachee, it can be an immensely rewarding
experience, where the support, challenge,
expertise and counsel unlock barriers and allow
the coachee to devise their own solutions to
break through to new performance levels.
Throughout my coaching relationships,
I have seen this many times, and both the
coachee and their managers or directors are
surprised about how this is done. When I explain
that I just listen and ask questions, this is met
with some incredulity. The managers and
directors believe that I must have instructed
them in some way. After all, this is the way that
the company works: you are told what to do
and are expected to just get on with it.
Some of the large companies I have worked
with have a culture of tell and do and they are
desperate to change. They introduce coaching
as a means to do this, but the unfamiliar
techniques can leave some coachees feeling
lost.Insteadofthisbeingarewardingexperience,
their frustration increases, and breakthroughs
take longer to achieve.
Let me take one example; let’s call him Simon.
Simon was a successful manager and he was
always being overlooked when it came to
promotion.Hewasclearlyupsetbythisbecause
hisperformancewasalwaysratedsatisfactory.
He had had plenty of training and development,
and had attended numerous leadership courses.
Yet, he had seen his peers springboard over him,
and his sense of frustration and his attitude was
becoming destructive to his prospects. He felt
bereft and made his views known. Nothing
seemed to work for Simon, and his performance
was starting to suffer.
I had had some previous success with a
manager in the same organisation. Similar
to Simon, she was successful up to a deputy
manager level in the company, but could not
achieve the breakthrough to the next grade.
It was not because she did not have the skills,
but her level of broader contribution was
lower than that of her peers, who were being
promoted above her. I was appointed as her
coach. There was a great degree of scepticism
from her. What could I do that her managers had
failed to do, especially as I was not in a position
to promote her? Over a number of weeks, using
our supportive and challenging relationship,
she achieved her own breakthrough and was
promoted shortly afterwards.
Given this achievement, I was appointed
to Simon as a coach to achieve the same.
Simon came to our first session armed with
a file of items to prove to me how good he
was. His misconception was that I was somehow
on the approval panel for promotion. He was
looking to me to support him to a more senior
position. He was clearly aware that his
performance was being questioned. Rather
than the coaching relationship beginning from
a position of strength, it started from a position
of remedial support.
Simon had not been coached before and,
in the absence of any knowledge of how to
approach the session, he had prepared a
portfolio of successes, memos and outcomes
to show me how much he had achieved over the
years. Much of this first session turned into a
discussion of the difference between coaching,
management and mentoring. Simon did not feel
he had achieved the breakthrough he needed.
True to his form, he started his second session
in much the same way. We needed to start over.
I had a great deal of empathy with Simon.
My first-ever experience of being a coachee
was similar. Twelve years ago, I was highly
frustrated with my company’s management and
wanted to leave. As part of the desire to retain
me, I was assigned a highly experienced coach.
I had no idea why, no idea what I would get out
of the relationship and no real idea of how to
prepare for the session. I am far more of a ‘doing’
person, so I simply turned up. The first thing my
coach asked was, ‘what would you like to talk
about today?’.
I filled the gap, but we had nothing of
substance on which to build. The feeling of
inadequacy, knowing that the company had
invested a lot of money into the coaching
relationship, left me lost and questioning
my ability to grow.
Three years later, I started to develop my
own coaching skills, and build my own toolkit of
coaching techniques. It was only then I realised
how I shouldhave approached the sessions with
my coach and how much we could have achieved,
had the relationship been different.
Over time, and after coaching many people
in organisations, I have come to realise that
the inexperienced coachee could benefit from
training in the basics of being coached.
Similar to Simon’s case, a coaching experience
is likely to be different from any other business
experience in a tell and do culture. Coachees will
needtobearmedwithanunderstandingofwhat
they want to achieve, be open to the questioning
and open to the support and challenge. They will
need to be prepared to question and build on
their own skillset, using their own solutions
and not waiting for these to be given to them.
So, what is the solution? I use three
approaches to support the coaching novice. Ò
October 2015 – Coaching Today 13
4. Training
I simply do not understand why it is assumed
that a new coachee will instinctively know how
to approach the coaching relationship and a
coaching session. It is highly unlikely that a
company would throw something new at any
colleague without adequate training. It would
be equally unusual that a colleague does not
understand why a new activity is needed.
So, why is coaching any different?
As part of the initial coaching proposition, the
basis of the relationship is critical. Coaching is a
performance improvement tool, rather than
a performance management tool. I always use
the reasoning that all of the top athletes have a
coach. It is interesting that even when a coachee
has experience of a sports coach, they do not
see the parallels to business coaching. Part of
this may be that sports coaches also have
expertise of the sport. The coachee needs to
see the parallel: that business coaches have
expertise of leadership.
To approach the coaching sessions, it is
helpful for the coachee to know what to expect
and how coaching will differ from other previous
performance-related discussions they may
have had. This empowers the coachee to put
themselves into a positive and strong position,
allowing them to prepare for the session. The
weight of the relationship is not vested in the
coach, and the mystique of coaching is lifted.
I find that this is often best conducted by
the ‘introducer’ to the coaching relationship,
(the manager or human resources director, for
example), rather than the coach him/herself.
This allows the discussion to been seen as
general, rather than specific to an individual
coach. It also means that time and cost is not
taken up on something that does not require
the skill and experience of a coach.
Mentoring
In any organisation, patronage is highly
important for skill growth and talent discussions.
Mentoring provides a high complement to a
coaching relationship. It allows the coachee to
discuss how things are changing for them and
also fulfils the need for any justification for
growth and opportunities for promotion in the
company. It is a valuable long-term internal
relationship and vests more loyalty in the
company and in its management.
To complement the coaching relationship
further, and depending on how much coaching
has gone before, I have also recommended to
novice coachees who may be struggling with
the coaching approach that they find a trusted
coaching mentor. This gives them the
opportunity to discuss how to approach the
coaching sessions and how to best use the
coach they have been assigned. When previous
coachees have done this, I find the results
highly surprising. They reach out more readily,
even outside our booked sessions, and their
preparation, content and actions are quicker
to materialise.
If a coaching mentor is chosen, one thing
I counsel is that this should be conducted
under a similar confidential banner as the
coaching. This is unlike other mentoring
relationships, which may be more partisan,
but trust must be built further and could be
destroyed easily should confidences be
broken through mentoring.
Spreading the skills
of coaching not only
supportsaperformance
improvement culture,
but it also allows
leaders and managers
to achieve more than
within a traditional
tell and do culture
1. 2.
14 Coaching Today – October 2015
5. Spreading the skills
I am often questioned by the coachee about
the techniques I have used with them, as they
have achieved results that they simply have not
achieved with other managers. Remembering
my own approach to being coached, it was
through an appreciation of coaching others
that I learned how to approach my own
coaching sessions.
Spreading the skills of coaching not only
supports a performance improvement culture,
it also allows leaders and managers to achieve
more than within a traditional tell and do culture.
Some of the basic coaching tools, such as
the understanding of the difference between
coaching and managing, the GROW model,
questioning and listening skills, and the
necessity for the coachee to find the answers
themselves,bringsaboutamutualimprovement
of performance for both coach and coachee
within organisations.
Outcome
Using this approach, what results can be
expected? Let me go back to Simon. After our
initial sessions, I reflected on the approach that
was needed and, after my own supervision
session, decided that Simon would benefit
from my own story.
It was reassuring to Simon that he was not
alone in feeling all at sea with this new approach
and, after talking him through some of the
options I describe above, he chose to seek out
his own coaching mentor to supplement his
coaching sessions with me.
Simon’s next session was wholly different.
He did not feel the need to show me a portfolio
of ‘proof’ of how good he thought he might be,
but instead came armed with his leadership
feedback and some of the developmental
challenges he faced. Importantly, he also started
to recognise how his feelings and thoughts were
driving his attitude and behaviour. His overall
approach was far more open.
Unsurprisingly, Simon started to achieve
the breakthroughs he craved – he was valued
more positively for his leadership style as well
as his outputs and was ultimately successful
in his quest for promotion. While this was a
tremendous validation of the work he had put
into our coaching relationship, he did not feel it
was the biggest win. More important, he felt,
was that his overall attitude had changed. No
longer was he merely focused on impressing
others, but this newly acquired skill of being
open-minded and finding his own solutions
brought other opportunities. He was becoming
more productive and, he commented, this meant
he was able to get home to see his family far
earlier at the end of the day. This was an
unexpected bonus for Simon… and for his family.
I now begin many of my new coaching
relationships by finding out whether potential
coachees have previously been coached. Where
they have not, I give them this story so that
everyone has the potential to achieve their
breakthroughs and unexpected bonuses as
early as possible. ■
JasonRawlingsis a finance executive within
the commercial sector and an accredited coach
through Middlesex University. He is a master
coach within the commercial sector and also
uses his skills to coach and advise directors
and trustees within the charity sector.
3.
October 2015 – Coaching Today 15
