The following article is
based on the book Your Executive Coaching Solution:
Getting Maximum Benefit from the Coaching Experience, by
Joan Kofodimos, Davies-Black Publishing,
2007.
Too many executives receive poor or no
coaching.
They miss opportunities to become more effective in their
positions of influence and are often denied promotions they
deserve. Hiring an executive coach can help them enormously.
It's the right tool to alleviate common leadership
problems.
Self-coachinghelps you develop
your leadership
skills,
clarify your values and guidingprinciples and build
your reputation. Self-knowledgeprovides the
personal integrity to engage in productive and authentic
relationships.
Risky
Business
Despite the
explosion in coaching services, working with coaches can
be risky. There are no generally accepted standards for
membership in the profession. A few organizations purport
to screen and train coaches, but their authority is not
universally accepted.
Many of the great executive coaches lack official
credentials or membership in a trade organization. Many
come from related fields like psychology, human resources
or management. And there are experienced coaches, with
good track records, who come from sports, real estate and
unorthodox backgrounds.
The more you know about what goes on in the coaching
process, the better you'll be able to make a good choice
of coach.
As an active participant in the coaching process, you are
required to:
· Understand
executive coaching, what it can accomplish and its
limitations
· Realize why specific strategies are necessary
to overcome special barriers to executive
development
·
Decide whether and how coaching is likely to help you
become more effective
·
Discover how to assess potential coaches and choose the
best fit for your particular needs
·
Recognize the critical steps in the coaching process and
learn how to manage them with the aid of your
coach
·
Learn not only how coaching can help you change your own
behavior, but also how it can help you influence
colleagues to perceive you in the way you want to be
perceived
The
Road to Enlightenment
Executive coaching
is designed to effect sustained behavioral changes to
improve performance. To achieve this goal, the coaching
program must deliver on these prerequisites:
Provide insight into
your leadership behavior and style: Executives often
assume their current approach is the right one and are
blind to its downside. You aren't likely to change if you
embrace this idea. You must request feedback on the
effects of your style and actions. While this may be
difficult to hear, your coach can facilitate the feedback
process.
Clarify your purpose and interests: The way you lead
is intimately connected to who you are as a person. To
improve your skills, you must strengthen the connections
between your inner self and external actions.
Improve interpersonal relationships: People's
previous experiences with you and their preexisting
judgments should be addressed. Involving colleagues in
your development process can help change their
perceptions of you. This will make it easier for you to
alter patterns of interaction with them.
Broaden your perspective: Executives succeed because
of their strong abilities to conceptualize and think
strategically, but they can sometimes become too attached
to being right. In most real-life situations, there are
multiple correct answers. The ability to see and
understand increasing complexity is essential. Coaching
helps develop this perspective.
Develop new leadership skills: What are the key
activities in a new role? Where should a newly appointed
leader focus attention and energy? A skilled coach can
help with role expectations and skills-building.
Identify and overcome barriers to change: Change
should occur over time, with assistance from your coach.
A coach helps you practice new behaviors in ways that
gradually build skills.
Improve your ability to learn: One of coaching's most
important goals is to teach you to internalize the
ability to question, learn and continually grow. You must
be able to modify your style and behavior as situations
demand.
Boulders
Along the Road
Here are five
potential hurdles to developing executives and convincing
them to change their behaviors:
1. Lack of authentic
feedback: The more authority you have, the less likely
you are to seek and receive authentic feedback. You may
present an air of confidence and dominance that
discourages meaningful interactions.
2. Lack of time or value placed on reflection: Most
executives face enormous, continuous and widely varying
demands on their time. The likelihood of having time to
reflect on behavior is minimal. Furthermore, it's not in
the nature of most hard-driving, results-oriented
personalities to be introspective.
3. Reluctance to reveal weaknesses to others: Leaders
strive to continually project an aura of confidence and
competence. Complicating matters, the organization and
your peers may discourage you from appearing vulnerable.
4. Reluctance to acknowledge weaknesses to oneself:
Executives often steer clear of acknowledging their
personal weaknesses. When your behaviors lead to positive
business results, you may rationalize weaknesses in
interpersonal style. But denial works for only so long
before complexity, stress and challenges take their
toll.
5. Fear of letting go of a previously successful
style: If your leadership style has been working just
fine for a few years, you may fear that modifying it puts
your effectiveness at risk.
No coach, no matter how talented, can effect change
and development in a leader who fails to understand how
barriers can sabotage one's efforts. When executives
agree to change and improve, coaching works. When they
see themselves as responsible for making change, coaching
once again works. The
return on investment for organizations is
exponential.
"I'm most effective with one-on-one coaching. I would
guess I coach 100 to 200 employees in a given month. I
don't really think you can do the kind of leadership I do
on a formal basis. It has to be genuine. I don't think
you can force a human connection." Brad Anderson, CEO
of Best Buy
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Although
the executive education debate still rages on whether
leadership is
learned or innate,
there is no doubt that the subject is being taught.
In October 2003,
BusinessWeek reported that 134 companies from
20 nations spent $210 million to enroll 21,000
employees in executive leadership programs. Since
leadership
development is
not an event, that's a significant investment in
classroom activities that may or may not produce
company leaders or even better managers.
Beginning in October
2005, the University of Michigan Executive Education
Program (rated third in open enrollment behind Harvard
and Pennsylvania's Wharton programs) is offering a
3-day "Becoming an Exceptional Coach" for $4,350.
Compare that classroom training with six-months
of weekly personal executive
coaching for
only $7,200 to create a positive leadership mindset
and a positive work environment.
A survey of 3,000
leaders and associates in 117 organizations reports
that 63% plan to increase spending on leadership
development programs that 75% of HR executives
surveyed don't give a high quality rating
to.
The paradox of
spending more on what's not working is due to
leadership development being seen as a classroom
event. Yet, you don't fix people by sending them off
to training. Managers need ongoing coaching to get in
the habit of being good leaders.
The survey reported
that two-thirds of the respondents said leaders at
their company exhibited at least one potentially fatal
flaw or "derailer"--a personality attribute that
interferes with leadership effectiveness. Derailers
are more personality-oriented than skill-based and are
more difficult to change than teaching someone a new
skill.
For all the money
spent on them, we still don't know if leadership
programs work.
Bottom
Line:
Leadership development is self-development. Learning
how to not micromanage, not be overly concrete, not
fail to explicitly state expectations and other
unproductive inter-personal behavior only happens
through the increased self-awareness gained in a
personal coaching or mentoring
relationship.
“The crux of
leadership development that works is self-directed
learning:
intentionally developing or strengthening an aspect of
who you are or who you want to be, or
both.”
Primal
Leadership by Daniel
Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard
Business School Press)
Sources:Leadership Paradox by Warren Bennis in October 1,
2004, CIO/Insight and Assessment of the state of
corporate leadership by Bridgeville, PA-based
Development Dimensions
International
