Our previous blog was on what it means to be a Coach-Like Leader, and why so many get it wrong.  

This month we look at ways in which organizations can leverage and reap the benefits of their investment into developing Coach-Like Leaders.

There are a number of steps companies can take when thinking of introducing Coaching Skills (or any behavioural shift initiative) that directly impact the success of the initiative and the ‘stickiness’ of behavioural learning.  

In this blog we highlight 7 areas to pay attention to when developing and implementing any behavioural shift initiative.

1. Assessing Organizational Readiness

Behavioural change, at minimum, requires effort and often involves discomfort, even pain.  The greater the shift, the greater the discomfort. 


 Human beings naturally move away from effort (or discomfort/pain) towards ease.  


Adults, in particular, have spent a long time developing behaviours to maximise efficiency – maximising the benefit to effort ratio and, as people, this means that without a compelling reason to shift that behaviour, our default is to ‘protect’ ourselves from any need to change our behaviour.  

This natural tendency is one of the significant blocks to ‘sticky change’ that organizations run into when trying to bring in a new culture or establish new leadership behaviours.  


The result is that we take new learning and look for ways we’re ‘already doing that’, subconsciously proving to ourselves that very little, if any, change in behaviour is needed.


Ask

“How big is the gap between current behaviour/thinking and what we want to create?”

  “What can we do to ease the discomfort and/or increase the appetite for the change, so that it is easier for people to truly engage with the shift?” 

2. Key stakeholders

When planning an initiative for an organizational shift, it is imperative to identify and bring on board the key stakeholders.  

Having a senior level sponsor who not only understands the initiative but believes in its importance plays a huge role in ensuring the success of the initiative.  

This is true because of obvious reasons like budget support. It is also true because key stakeholders are people with influence.

If they don’t see the value in the initiative, they may speak out against it. However, even their silence undermines the ‘compelling reason’ needed to create readiness for change.


It is vital that you get your key stakeholders on board
and excited for this shift.


Ask

“Which key stakeholders does success depends on?”

“What is their understanding of and belief in this value of the shift?”

“What role can they play and how to best engage them?”

3. Budget

Organizational shift requires two types of budgets – Dollars and Time.

Some key stakeholders play an important role in planning for and/or freeing up dollars for the initiative.  

Others may play the equally important role of ensuring that the time participants need for the training is factored into their key priorities and not simply added to the edge of their desk.  

Whether action learning, reading, coaching or classroom time, when training is simply dumped on top of an already heavy workload a mixed message is sent about its value and it is a real barrier for participants to fully engage.

Ask

“What dollar and time budgets do we need to have commitment on before we launch the initiative?”

4. Communication Strategy

Often those planning an initiative have spent so long thinking about the Why, What, When and How of a training (or any other) initiative that it is easy to forget that others haven’t had the same time to process why this is even happening.  

It is not uncommon for participants to hear nothing more than some vague rumours of an initiative/training until they get an email informing them of the date and time they need to be at the training.  


The result can be a (virtual or actual) room full of participants who have little to no idea of why they’re being asked to neglect their (typically already overwhelming) workload to attend the training.  


When this happens, we’re setting the scene for disengagement and frustration – making it hard for participants to be excited about the learning and the behavioural shifts that have the potential to move them to a new level of maximising the benefit:effort ratio.

A communication strategy thinks through what needs to be communicated to whom so that key stakeholders are on board, budgets are appropriately allocated and participants are excited (or at least not sceptical) about how this initiative is going to improve their effectiveness and their lives.

It also includes thinking through which decisions will benefit from broader input and who needs to be heard and/or give input into the design at each stage from inception to implementation and beyond. A good communication strategy maximises the ROI of any initiative.

Ask

“How do we need to communicate this initiative and to whom?”

5. Sourcing Providers

The size of your organization as well as the extent of internal expertise will be determining factors as to whether you look within the walls or beyond them for your training providers.  Other factors include the political sensitivity of the initiative and the capacity of the people with the right expertise to take on the initiative (ie do they have the time?).  

Regardless of whether you look internally or externally, there are a number of things you should expect:

i. They should be paying attention to and asking questions about the Organizational Readiness for the type and scope of behavioural shift you’re looking to create.

ii. Their solutions should be tailored to your needs/vision. It can be problematic if they are a one-size-fits-all solution.

iii. They should be able to clearly articulate back to you your core drivers for the initiative in a way that resonates and makes you even more excited about it.

iv. They should be working with you to determine the Key Stakeholders and the Communication Strategy.

v. They should be willing to work with your budget where possible and give you realistic adjusted outcomes if your budget isn’t going to allow you to get the outcome you’re aiming for.  They should clearly articulate what they are committing to as well as what will be required of the organization and/or Key Stakeholders for success to occur.

vi. They should refuse to do the work if it is evident that the budget and organizational readiness isn’t what is needed to get the outcomes you need.

vii. Their expertise and understanding of how to create behavioural shift should be modelled through their interactions with you during the selection process.


While everyone has different price sensitivity,

remember to make VALUE, and not PRICE, your primary determinant.


Ask

Download our free form to determine if you should be looking internally or externally for the providers of any initiative you’re considering.

6. Implementation Strategy

Once you’ve determined what is needed and have selected your providers (internal or external) it is time to think about how you will implement the training/initiative.  Thinking about implementation overlaps with and includes the Communication Strategy, Key Stakeholder involvement, Budget implications/restrictions and Organizational Readiness.  

It also factors in busy and quiet times, other training loads and any extraneous factors that will affect the readiness and ability of either the whole organization or the particular participants to fully engage.  

It includes balancing expediency and effectiveness (eg. what can we do virtually without compromising effectiveness and where do we need to budget for bringing all the participants together in-person).  

An Implementation Strategy thinks through 3 separate and equally important stages; Before, During and After.  Each stage should be designed into the plan.

Ask

Download our free worksheet to think through the 7 Steps for Introducing Coaching Skills to Your Organization.

“What needs to happen before the official start date?” (What will create readiness?)

“How the initiative will be rolled out?” (format, time-frame, etc?)”What structures/processes need to be in place to anchor, sustain and grow the positive shift after the intervention?” (Things that support ‘sticky change’)

7. ROI – what and how to measure 

ROI, or Return on Investment, is something that is usually measured with facts and figures.  The question usually asked is; “How do we prove a direct correlation between the intervention and either increased profits, decreased costs, improved safety record, etc?”

The thing about measuring the benefit of shifts in human behaviour is that even clearly evident benefit is almost never linear and often very hard to measure directly.  This often results in no measure at all.  We have a few principles on how to measure ROI on behavioural shifts. Behaviour shift initiatives are always launched with an outcome in mind and that outcome can be measured – anecdotally (qualitative data), and with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.  

The ROI of any behavioural training/initiative is most valid when it takes a long-term view.


Measuring outcomes needs to be over the short, medium and long term  

with expectations that, sustained behaviour shift will continue to have

positive qualitative and quantitative benefits in the long-term.


Examples of Real ROI with Clients

Behavioural Shifts – resulting from team initiatives

Behavioural Shifts – resulting from individual coaching initiatives

Much of the ROI from a coaching culture is non-linear, making it difficult to pinpoint or quantify while still revolutionizing the workplace. Having an emphasis on openness, learning and mutual trust allows people to step into freely into increased:

The honing of these skills is difficult to quantify but it leads to better quick decisions, more collaboration and innovation because there is less fear. More comfort navigating unchartered territories, which as we all know from these past few years is an invaluable skill and the confidence in yourself and your team to take the risks which are necessary to be at the cutting edge of your field.

Some things to keep in mind when trying to assess the ROI of establishing a coaching culture are:

1. The timeline of change

Lasting behavioural time takes practice, ongoing effort and time to establish. One cannot expect an individual to change overnight, let alone a whole company of individuals. It is important to exemplify the patience necessary for a coaching culture to truly take place.

2. Identify incremental changes in behaviour


There is no such thing as a perfect company culture – yes, even one’s with an established coaching culture have their faults.


It is important to identify and celebrate the incremental changes individually and company-wide, you are striving for growth, not perfection.

3. Place emphasis on evaluation from the beginning.

All this being said, ROI is a foundational motivator for establishing a coaching culture. It is important to have clarity on what you are hoping to get out of this process and clear measures by which you will evaluate the success of your training/initiative. This can be co-designed with whichever trained facilitator you have selected, but it must be informed by the company’s specific goals.

Ask

“What is the outcome we’re aiming for?”

“What indicators can we measure in the short term?”

“What are the longer-term periods over which we need to measure the indicators to get a true ROI of the initiative?”

Interested in learning more?


Here are two useful articles that lay out more detail of how to measure behavioural shift:

https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2015/03/designing-evaluating-behaviour-change-interventions/documents/00472843-pdf/00472843-pdf/govscot%3Adocument/00472843.pdf

https://finalmile.medium.com/how-to-measure-behaviour-change-f0a23897ca63

And Why so Many Get it Wrong…

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that good leadership requires us to employ coaching skills. In fact, many have been told that coaching is now required of them as a key responsibility. This is a wonderful thing in theory, however in practice, there are many misconceptions and gaps in the understanding of what this means and how to do it.


Countless times I have had a client express frustration about how their “coaching” is not giving the promised results, only to have them describe methods that are not coaching at all.  

Gil Davidson

Now, don’t get me wrong, it is usually not their fault, most of these leaders are genuinely trying to employ coaching skills, but they really have no idea what it is they’re meant to be doing so, instead they default to being more intentional with the leadership skills they already have rather than truly shifting gears into a coach mindset. The result is that leaders often attempt to coach by telling, problem solving or giving advice, all of which have their place but none of which is coaching.

Coaching is more than a new set of skills, technique, or strategy, it’s a way of being.   To coach others, we must start with ourselves…

Coaching requires us to shift the way we bring value to those we lead and how we perceive the value that they bring.

In order to assess if you are ready to begin coaching you need to do these 3 things:

  1. Believe in your people
  2. Trust your people
  3. See their value and how it relates to the task you need done

Until you can honestly do these 3 things, you are not ready to add coaching skills to your toolbelt.

Leaders serious about developing strong coaching skill first need to shift perspective from traditional leadership views where it is our responsibility to solve problems and have the answers to where your role is to trust those you lead to figure out their own solutions, where your role is more Socratic* than explicit, where you add value by asking the right questions rather than giving advice.

The tools of a Coach-like leader include:

Coaching is a behavioural skill and therefore it cannot be learned solely in a classroom – it needs to be learned through doing.    

Is Coaching a Fad?  

This is a fair question.  Leadership Development is guilty of jumping onto every new fad that comes along.  However, coaching is definitively not one of those cases. It is definitely NOT just a fad. How can I be so sure?

The concept behind coaching has been around since at least 400 years BC. Our earliest sense of it starts with Socrates who figured out that our actions, conviction, and commitment are driven more by what we believe to be true rather than by what we are told is true. 

Practically this means that when, as a leader, you’re allocating tasks to your team, your role includes being a catalyst for them to uncover how they connect with and believe in the value of the task as well as their understanding of how it contributes to a bigger outcome/purpose.  Doing so ensures that they are committed and can be held accountable.  

Let’s apply the principle to your own dilemma with coaching skills…

Imagine the difference it would make to your commitment to developing and applying coaching skills if you had undergone a process that encouraged you to question the concepts that are hard to trust. To test out the concepts and to draw your own conclusions?  Would do so have increased your commitment to applying them?  If they made sense, would it be easier to be accountable and committed?   

The secret Socrates discovered is that questioning to facilitate a person’s sense-making leads to clarity, and it is also one of the secret pillars of coaching.  

Fast forward to the 17th century and we find another classic example in Blaise Pascal. You may have heard of him as a mathematician. He was also a philosopher and theologian.  He lived in the early to mid 17th century and, like Socrates, he understood that “We are more convinced by that which we discover for ourselves than by that which we are told”.  The impact of this on our ownership and accountability is another secret behind the power of coaching.  

So, is coaching a fad?  I am convinced that coaching is here to stay, both because it has been around for thousands of years, and because the principles underlying it are timeless tools that tap into our human nature, unlocking commitment like nothing else I’ve encountered in my 30+ years in business!

So, if it has been around for centuries, and is such an impactful tool, why is it only being recognised as a core leadership skill now?

My personal experience taken with anecdotal experience of my colleagues as well as industry literature and research makes a compelling case for why coaching has emerged as a core skill in ‘future-proofing’ your leadership team bench strength.

Here are a few reasons:

Corporate Shifts
Requiring a new leadership skill set

Coaching Skills
Answering the new need

  • Our societies are become increasingly egalitarian and our teams expect more than “because I’m the   boss” as a reason to do something.
  • Routine work is mostly automated and, as described in Daniel Pink’s work, ‘carrot and stick’ forms of motivation only work in routine work environments. Productivity in creative (Knowledge) work environments requires a new form of motivation – one that is intrinsic, not external.  Leaders still need to motivate employees, but they need a new tool kit
  • Clear, hierarchical structures are less common, with flatter or matrix type organizational structures becoming more common. Practically, this means that leaders often don’t have direct authority over those they lead or may have too many direct reports to oversee their work directly, meaning that leading well requires a different delegation and accountability structure
  • Leaders need to equip their teams to navigate VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous – work environments. I know we’re almost as sick of hearing about VUCA, as we are of Covid, but it best describes our new reality – and is one of the reasons Coaching Skills are now emerging as a critical core Leadership competency.
  • Coaching facilitates direct reports identifying and connecting personalised purpose and motivation with assigned goals/responsibilities, resulting in increased commitment and accountability
  • Coaching skills are that tool kit.  Coaching wasn’t as important when external forms of motivation still worked in most situations. Coaching provides a motivational alternative to the “carrot and stick”
  • Coaching skills establish personal  accountability to self and the project/end goal without the need to rely on positional authority
  • Coaching skills enable leaders to delegate with confidence that direct reports understand and are committed to the end goal, that they are equipped to resolve issues that come their way and have the safety and trust in the relationship to ask for help early on should they need it. This frees up the leader’s mental energy and time, as they do not need to follow-up as often to ensure things are moving forward.
  • Leaders skilled at coaching equip their teams to be agile and respond to shifts as they happen, both because they’re clear on the connection between what they’re doing and why/how it adds value and because their leaders’ trust in them increases their self-trust in their ability to deal with VUCA situations.

What makes coaching so elusive?

Too often we try and teach a new skill simply by adding the new knowledge onto what we already know.  That works, only when the new knowledge builds on the existing framework.  Some new skills first require a dismantling of old learnings and entrenched beliefs before we can build a new scaffolding on which to hang our new learning.  Coaching is one of those skills.

Part of what makes it elusive is that we must experience it before we can trust it.   

We must first discover it for ourselves.  

Read our previous blog post on The Evolution of Coaching

So where do we start?

We must start by looking at our beliefs. Our beliefs about ourselves about others and about leadership. As long as we don’t believe that others are as capable as ourselves, we cannot coach.

Coaching is so counter to our conditioning. Why? Because what we have been taught is that only a few will excel and only if you have the answers, and so we don’t see the capacity of those around us.  We see ourselves as the exception. As the leader who has the answers.  

Human nature is that we only see what we’re looking for and we only trust what we see. Ironically, we only look for what we believe.  So what we believe, limits what we see.  

When doesn’t coaching work?

It doesn’t work if we haven’t changed our base level beliefs of ourselves and those around us. As a leader, you will only develop your coaching skills once you’ve experienced proof of concept.

What does that mean?  

Because coaching is so completely different from what we typically look for. Your training needs to provide you with opportunity to experience the impact of the coaching way of being.  Our existing beliefs stop us from trusting coaching principles until we’ve experienced the impact they have. And until we trust it, we will not use it.  

After all, you’re a logical, Intelligent leader so why would you do something that you didn’t trust?  

Only once we understand that leadership is not about us holding all the answers, not about us being the problem solvers or the go-to person. But it’s rather about helping others uncover and discover their own problem-solving abilities, helping them discover for themselves the best way to accomplish the desired outcomes.  This is what it means to lead as a coach.

How to select a good coaching program?

So, if equipping leaders to truly trust and adopt coaching skills is so tricky, how do you ensure that you select an effective coaching skills program for your organization?

Here is a list of questions to ask:

How is it structured?

What experience and skill do the facilitators bring?

Is the content designed with managers in mind, or for coaches?

What impact can you expect?  

As per the insight of Socrates and Blaise Pascal, using a coaching approach increases ownership and accountability because we require people to think through their understanding and alignment of responsibilities.  It results in work being connected to overall outcomes and to personal purpose – increasing a sense of personal fulfillment, commitment, and ownership.

It also provides the opportunity for people to realise what they’re unsure of and to ask clarifying questions when needed. Because coaching requires us to believe in those we coach, they know we’re in their corner and it creates safety for better communication, healthy conflict, and invites more ideas – accessing the creativity and insight of the whole team so the burden isn’t all on the leader.

Working with leaders who believe in us and where we have a greater sense of purpose and personal fulfillment naturally translates to increased loyalty and retention, which is a huge gift to any organization. All the above reasons also result in improved delegation – leaving your leaders to focus on their job, instead of fighting as many fires!

*Socratic Method: refers to question driven learning, where rather than having one person impart their knowledge upon the rest, it is more discussion based, collaborative, and question centered learning

Like the skiers in the photograph, leaders are often faced with decisions that are complex and where making the wrong decision could have serious consequences.  In such situations, decision makers can find themselves at either end of the decision making spectrum – analysis paralysis on the one end or falsely simplifying the ‘landscape’  or context to make the decision easier on the other.  In the case of our back-country skier – either method could have life threatening results.  In business it may not be your life that is at stake, but it could cost the ‘life’ of your project, your credibility or even your business as a whole.


Struggling with decisions in complex or ambiguous situations doesn’t mean you’re a poor decision maker, it likely has its root in other factors.  A big contributor is the myth that; “While there may be more than one way to do it, there is only one  BEST way to do it”. If you find yourself in agreement with the ‘only one BEST way’ thinking, you are probably missing many great decision opportunities.


There are very few situations where that thinking is true – even fewer when it involves people.  Any time a decision has impact on people it is more likely to have an optimal range of BEST decisions to choose from.  The ‘only one BEST way’ thinking is borrowed from a mechanical mindset.  A context in which it is often true, but not so in most leadership decisions, as very few leadership decisions are purely mechanical.


Try it out for yourself.  Think of a complex or ambiguous situation where you believed there was only one BEST decision.  Maybe you’re in one right now?  How did that impact your decision making?  Many great leaders find their decision making compromised because they are holding tightly to the belief that there is only one right answer, only one best way to proceed.  It is true that there are right and wrong decisions, good and bad decisions.  Think of your scenario.  Imagine it on a continuum with the analysis-paralysis at the one end and ‘quick-n-dirty’ decision at the other end.  Where on that continuum do you see the optimal decision making range.  Think of 5 to 8 decision options you could make from there.  Assess them at a gut level.  Which are your top 3?  What more information do you need before you act on them (using the same continuum scale)?  Choose and act.

Take the time to try it out and we’d like to hear how it changes things for you and for the outcome as a result.