Coaching: The Two Reasons Executives Don’t Do It and Why They Should

During a breakfast this week with an industry guru I respect very much, we discussed the critical skills of executives. 

We have both benefited from working in many corporate settings and, as consultants, experienced many different organizations.

We anchored on a required set of skills:

Leadership: the ability and desire to create and translate vision into action

Management: the discipline to measure essential things that lead to a desired outcome

Coaching: the intuitive skill to unlock performance in individuals and teams

In our experience, we decided that management skills were common among executives, leadership skills were prevalent but less common, and coaching skills were rare.

Why is coaching such a rare skill for executives?

More on that below, but first:

A Quote I Love

"Coaching should be a process of inquiry, not a series of questions. You don't empower people by giving them tasks and homework. Personal power comes from within, when people feel seen, cared about, and respected. You don't have to have all the answers." Marcia Reynolds

I think she said it all!

A Coaching Moment:

On a recent coaching call, a young leader was preparing for a potentially challenging customer meeting. 

The customer champion who decided to acquire this company's services was no longer with the organization, and they were meeting with a new executive at a poignant moment in their relationship.

After the young leader gave me the background and her strategy for the meeting, I asked, "What assumptions are you holding that leads you to believe this is the right strategy?"

We uncovered an unsubstantiated fear of losing the business, leading to a defensive posture.

We explored how to reframe the meeting and agreed that curiosity might be better.

So I asked, "How would you change your approach if curiosity was the dominant emotion instead of fear?" They answered that the call would be discovery-focused.

Testing assumptions to broaden the view of events helps create more creative options for handling them. This reflection is challenging to do yourself. We resist self-exploration, especially when emotions are involved. 

That is the value of coaches as thinking partners.

Why do capable executives rarely employ the coaching methodology?

There are two primary reasons: knowing how to coach and when to use coaching. 

Knowing How to Coach:

The most significant reason busy executives don't regularly coach their staff is that it requires a rewiring of the dominant thinking patterns. 

Successful executives have mastered sense-making. 

They use past experiences as filters to determine interpretations of current events. Given their understanding of the situation, they choose the "next best action". For experienced executives, this often happens without conscious thought.

When interacting with direct reports, they listen for queues that remind them of past experiences and how they solved those situations so they can pass that wisdom on. The desire to solve problems quickly and help staff flourish reinforces the behaviour.

Sense-making is a critical skill for business leaders, but it isn't coaching. 

Coaching is a thought partnership exercise. 

What is the difference? 

When utilizing sense-making, executives listen to provide answers. 

When coaching, executives need to listen objectively and offer observations that challenge the employee's logic or beliefs so that the employee can find the answer themselves. 

Executives need to resist the urge to insert their own biases or beliefs.

To be effective, executives must disengage from sense-making and engage in reflective inquiry, replaying what they hear with questions. It requires considerable conscious effort to stay in coach mode and resist the urge to offer solutions.

The payoff can be significant. The primary advantage of coaching is building robust, more independent-thinking employees. 

The employees benefit in two ways: first, they grow in capability, and second, they learn the critical skill of coaching to use with their teams. As coaching skills cascade down the organization, the organization will build increased capacity with the same labour force. 

The challenge is that coaching is time-consuming. Knowing when to coach is critical.

Knowing when to coach:

Executives face multiple pressures from CEOs, boards, shareholders, teams, and clients. 

Also, business complexity continues to increase due to an interconnected global business community, technological advancements, the speed of change, and economic instability. 

Executives are under pressure for results and often feel that more time is needed. So, proposing a shift to a more time-consuming process may seem counterintuitive.

Effective coaching at the right time with the right people is one of the best strategies for relieving pressure.

So when is the right time to coach?

Here are a few critical scenarios when coaching could be effective:

• Conversations to shift culture

• Preparing for difficult conversations with staff or customers

• Strengthening relationships in the workplace

• Manage stress

• Aligning teams

• Facing fears
  

The key to notice in these examples is no right or wrong answer. These topics require exploration, and the opinions about them are impacted by previous experience and bias.

Also, consider the condition of the employee and yourself. For coaching to be effective:

• Your employee must be open to being coached, not just searching for an answer

• You must believe in the person's ability to figure it out

• You must be willing to let go of the outcome in favour of your employee's approach

• 
  

Coaching is not a great strategy when the employee has no previous experience on the topic or the issues require direct intervention with a rapid change to drive a specific outcome in a short timeframe. 

As evident from the conditions above, coaching is a critical skill for executives but is used only in specific situations.

All executives should have coaching skills in their repertoire and learn to use them to benefit their employees and the organization.

If you would like to develop coaching skills, contact me below, and I can share what I have learned and the informative resources I have used.