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.

Request Free
“Internal or External Provider?”
Resource

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.

Request Free Worksheet

“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

View Team Offerings

Behavioural Shifts – resulting from individual coaching initiatives

View Individual Offerings

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.    

View our Coaching Skills for Leaders Program

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?

View Our Coaching Offerings

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

What is coaching and why does it matter?

Almost everyone has had experience with something called coaching. While this is great, it can also cause confusion as coaching has many different faces.

Coaching, in the corporate world is not the same as the coaching you experienced on your school sports team. Yet, as you’ll see lower down in this article, the corporate or executive/leadership coaching we know today grew out of sports coaching.

Let’s simply our discussion of what coaching is and isn’t.

The coaching we’re talking about and the coaching we offer is leadership or executive coaching. It is not directive coaching (also known as consulting), it does not give advice, or problem-solve for you, but rather facilitates personal curiosity and learning that leaves you with a higher EQ, more adaptable, and with improved decision making and relational skills. It builds inner confidence and agility that produce life-long benefits.

It has significant overlap with mentoring [a good mentor will usually be very coach-like] however, unlike mentoring, a leadership/executive coach does not need to have “been there – done that”. Their value is not in having walked the path before you, but in listening intently and asking the questions that unlock your learning and success.

It is also different from business coaching. We love this simple, clear distinction from Sherpa Coaching:

Business coaching is an alternative term for consulting, as research shows: “Many business coaches refer to themselves as consultants, a broader business relationship than one which exclusively involves coaching.”

Lorber, Laura (10 April 2008). “Executive Coaching – Worth the Money?“
The Wall Street Journal

For the purposes of this article, unless otherwise indicated, coaching refers to executive/leadership coaching.

What are the origins of coaching?

Coaching is a relatively new profession with very old roots.  

At the heart of coaching is the Socratic art of asking questions to facilitate learning.  Socrates lived 470-399BC and is the father of using disciplined questioning to explore complex ideas and get to the truth of things. 

Fast forward to the 17th century where Blaise Pascale, an influential philosopher and mathematician, noted that “We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.” 

Current day coaching combines these age-old truths in a modern context.

Coaching - the inner game - Timothy Gallwey
Timothy Gallwey – The Inner Game of Tennis

Timothy Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis, caught the eyes of the corporate world when they realised that its principles were transferable to business leadership. The thesis of his book is that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. … In short, the inner game is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.” 

And so, the profession of corporate coaching, as we know it, was born.

If working on your “Inner Game” is something you’ve been meaning to invest in, take the first step and click on one of the buttons below to explore what it could mean for you.

Leadership Coaching
Executive Coaching
As with any profession, remember to check a coach’s professional credentials.

Where is Coaching Now?

When I received my coaching certification in 2002 coaching, in Canada was still far from being a core practice and many leaders were still unfamiliar with what coaching (outside of ‘little league’) was and many who knew of coaching still saw it as primarily  ‘problem solving’, ‘fixing people’.  It has taken almost 2 decades for that way of thinking to be entirely replaced with an understanding that, while it may help when dealing with “problem people”, the real value of coaching is investing in high potential people – those you hope will have a long career with your company.

The last decade has seen leadership and executive coaching firmly established as a core tool in securing senior leaders’ success.  It is no longer considered with suspicion by those offered coaching but is now a reward and a validation of the leader by their superiors.

I first entered the business world 30 years ago.  In that time there has been a significant shift in what people expect from leadership.  Organizations are much flatter than their hierarchical forefathers and leading people as if they are ‘cogs in a wheel’ is no longer effective.  We have fully left the Industrial era behind and the Information era is fast being replaced by the Knowledge era.

“The Knowledge Age is a new, advanced form of capitalism in which knowledge and ideas are the main source of economic growth (more important than land, labour, money, or other ‘tangible resources). New patterns of work and new business practices have developed, and, as a result, new kinds of workers, with new and different skills, are required.

In this new era, knowledge is defined—and valued—not for what it is, but for what it can do. It is produced, not by individual experts, but by ‘collectivising intelligence’– that is, groups of people with complementary expertise who collaborate for specific purposes.”

Information on its own is no longer power, anyone can ‘ask Google’.  Instead, it is your ability to apply information that is the new form of Capital.  This brings with it a new requirement for how we motivate and get results.Daniel Pink’s research on what motivates us to be more productive concludes that ‘carrot and stick’ only motivates in repetitive, ‘mind-numbing’ situations (i.e. the Industrial era), “When the task called for ‘even rudimentary cognitive skills’, a larger reward ‘led to poorer performance’.  Clearly not a solution for the Knowledge Era, where our primary asset is exactly our ability to navigate data, collectively.  Pink says “This era doesn’t call for better management.  It calls for a renaissance of self-direction”.  In his book, DRiVE he outlines 3 factors that motivate increased productivity and effectiveness in our current era: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Where is Coaching Headed?

Understanding the Knowledge era and the shift in what is needed to motivate in this era explains why coaching is here to stay.  In my 30+ working years, I’ve seen coaching have a much more profound and lasting impact on our ability to connect autonomy, mastery, and purpose to our every day than any other form of learning/training.  I believe this is at the heart of why it has become an indispensable leadership development tool.  Not only in the development of leaders, but also as a skill which leaders require to motivate those that report to them.  (This doesn’t mean all leaders need to go out and get a coaching certification, however, companies who delay investing in understanding and integrating coaching skills into their leadership approach risk losing their top talent).

Leadership coaching has become a core leadership development tool and an important pillar of talent retention and development programs.  The more AI shapes our future, the more routine work will be managed by AI and the critical coaching is going to become a tool to engage and motivate – the carrot and stick will be completely ineffective to motivate the complex, creative tasks requiring human execution, and coaching will become an indispensable tool to motivate mastery, maintain and enhance productivity.  Already we’re seeing talent no longer asking if coaching could be available to them, but rather seeing the availability of coaching as an indicator of the value organizations place on their development, with a direct link to retention.

Leadership/executive coaching has proven its value and is now something most forward-thinking organizations have embraced in some manner.  Unlike in 2002, when Advantage Management Consulting opened its doors, it is now rare to meet someone who doesn’t have at least some idea of what coaching is, and very common to meet leaders who have worked with a coach or have it on their bucket list to do so.

One-on-one coaching is well established as a core practice in talent development.  Rather than the ‘passing fad’ some predicted in the early 2000s, we’re seeing coaching broadening in its form and reach. Two new coaching trends are emerging, which organizations would do well to plan for in futureproofing their people and performance strategy.The first I’ve already hinted at – Coaching skills as a core leadership competence.  Not simply a shift in the language used, but rather a fundamental shift that understands and embraces what it means to coach rather than give advice.  Leaders learn a whole new way of delegation and accountability using a Socratic questioning style to deepening learning and to engage the motivational principles from Daniel Pink’s Drive.

If equipping your leaders with coaching skills isn’t already in your budget, look for a way to get it to the top of the priority list and make sure you engage with a learning process that incorporates 6 to 9 months of practical application support, otherwise, you will not get the ROI you’re looking for.

The last decade has seen a further shift in Leadership – a shift from Individual Leadership to Collective Leadership. 

As organizations notice this shift, they’re also seeing the value of investing in team coaches to work with the team leader and the team as a whole, moving them from a collection of high achieving (often competing) individuals to an added-value team, where they understand the exponential difference in outcome that is achievable when they spend the time identifying, designing and working out the structure, values, and accountabilities that exceptional results require.  Like individual coaching, team coaching significantly leverages raw potential into a lasting, impactful benefit to leaders and the company they work for.

Click here to find out more about how Team Coaching.

Team Coaching

Names like Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence & Primal Leadership) , Brené Brown (The Power of Vulnerability), Simon Sinek (Start with WHY), Marshall Goldsmith (FeedForward), and David Rock (NeuroLeadership Institute), among others, provide us with ample research to support why it is a logical conclusion to invest in coaching.  The growing trend of organizations (including Fortune 500) incorporating coaching as a core component of their talent retention and development programs affirms the ROI.

During our 18plus years in business, we’ve seen organizations move from being skeptical about the value of coaching, to where coaching is now a core developmental pillar for their leaders where many also have an established focus on coaching skills training for leaders. This 2-prong approach is a strategic focus on establishing a coaching culture that infuses vitality, joy, and productivity into their business.

Team coaching is a newer trend that we’re seeing a gradual increase in and one we believe will soon become a 3rd prong in leadership development strategies.

We are passionate about coaching’s ability to transform leaders and cultures. If you’re curious about how to integrate the 3 coaching forms part into your organization’s strategy and/or how to increase the ROI you’re seeing, reach out and set up a free consultation by clicking the button below:

Contact Us

A book I often recommend to clients is Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box.
The Preface to the book gives a great metaphor for how we can be our own worst enemy when we insist on pushing harder instead of ‘pausing to reflect and try something new’:

“Self-deception actually determines one’s experience in every aspect of life…it is the central issue in leadership…To give you an idea of what’s at stake, consider the following analogy.  An infant is learning to crawl.  She begins by pushing herself backward around the house.  Backing herself around, she gets lodged beneath the furniture.  There she trashes about – crying and banging her little head against the sides and undersides of the pieces.  She is stuck and hates it.  So she does the only thing she can think of to get herself out – she pushes even harder, which only worsens her problem.  She is more stuck than ever.

If this infant could talk, she would blame the furniture for her troubles.  She, after all, is doing everything she can think of.  The problem couldn’t be hers.  But of course, the problem is hers, even though she can’t see it.  While it’s true she’s doing everything she can think of, the problem is precisely that she can’t see how she’s the problem.  Having the problem she has, nothing she can think of will be a solution.

Self-deception is like this.  It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all the “solutions” we can think of will actually make matters worse.”

Leaders are intelligent, action-oriented people who have learned to trust their decision-making and problem-solving ability.  It is therefore natural that when they bump into barriers they believe the problem will be solved by changing something external to themselves.

The flaw in that thinking is that they too are part of the system that needs a solution.  Like little Sam, stuck under the couch, they too are part of the problem.

In some way, to some extent, you and I are all part of the issue that needs to be solved.  It is true that if the furniture wasn’t there, Sam wouldn’t have got stuck.  It is equally true that a broader skill set – the ability to crawl forwards as well as backwards – would’ve enabled him to get unstuck.  As leaders, we need to be asking where our thought patterns and/or skill sets are part of what is keeping us stuck.  Where do we need to change or grow?
Without asking in what ways our presence and approach impact the situation, we deceive ourselves and miss an opportunity to influence.  We remain part of the problem.

What questions could the following people ask that will help them understand their part in the problems they’re encountering?


Joe:
I have an open-door policy but no one lets me know things until it’s too late.
Cindy:
Nothing gets done around here unless I do it.
Indrajit:
I can’t seem to get my team to take the initiative, I have to tell them exactly what to do.  They don’t seem capable of thinking for themselves.
Thom:
The competitiveness amongst our people stops them from collaborating and means that vital information isn’t shared.  It is costing us millions each year.

Breaking out of our ‘tried and tested’ ways of thinking and acting is not easy on our own and it is a key leadership skill for those who want to lead well outside a limited set of circumstances.  This is one of the reasons coaching has become a pillar of many organizations’ leadership development – executive coaching provides the right balance of challenge and support for leaders to break free from their ‘tried and tested’ ways when circumstances require it.

View our Executive Coaching Offering

All the attention of the current US presidential electioneering has me reflecting on what is good leadership and is leadership aptitude enough or are there other factors?

I got to thinking about leaders I admire.  Obviously I do not know these leaders personally, however, they are all whom I’ve taken a keen interest in and followed their lives to varying degrees over the years.  In this short, mini-series, I reflect on what appear to be factors that moulded them as good, even great leaders.  Leaders who the world is better for them having led.  Leaders who finished (or are finishing) well.  I may follow it with reflections on a few leaders the world may have been better without.

I invite you to join by sharing your own stories of leaders you admire and also by adding your reflections to my thoughts.

Desmond Tutu (aka The Arch)

– Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town

Desmond Tutu was born in South Africa in a time when it wasn’t easy to be black.  He chose a life as an Anglican minister and became the first black Archbishop of Cape Town.  This was at a time when even the church was segregated.  It would’ve been easy to become either bitter with anger or arrogant at his success, but he did neither.  It would also have been easy protect the privilege of his position by avoiding controversial issues.
Desmond has a wife and four children and he chose to be true to his calling as a prophet – as one who speaks truth and holds those in leadership to account. 

The result was a Nobel prize, but the cost of that prize were years of being misquoted and maligned in the press.  Death threats – even people phoning his home and letting his young daughter know that they are going to kill her father.  He remained strong and true, eventually leading South Africa through the Truth and Reconciliation process.  A process globally recognised as revolutionary in its power to heal.

Many sat back and watched as the Apartheid government was replaced by a fully democratically elected black government and wondered if he would have the same courage to speak truth and hold this government accountable.  He didn’t even miss a beat, but continues to play a pivotal truth speaking role in South Africa and globally.

As I reflect on “The Arch” (as he is affectionately known) I see a man having to choosing again and again to do the hard thing because it is what he is called to do.  A man with a deep faith and a deep dependence on God that is his strength.  A man who refused to be chained by bigots or by anger but who channelled his anger (with forgiveness) to stand for truth, justice and reconciliation.

The last 15 years have seen a steady increase in companies embracing executive coaching as a core piece in their leadership development suite of tools. Those who’ve been coached swear by it. Others are still skeptical. A large component of the distrust stems from the lack of compulsory regulation in the industry, leaving consumers vulnerable as they try to discern the value they can expect from their coach.

Choosing a coach may be easier and lower risk than you think.  There are essentially 2 core components to evaluate in your choice of coach:


Are they qualified?

Experience in business or as a leader doesn’t always make for a good mentor and that is even truer when it comes to coaching. Unfortunately, many consultants see themselves as an expert in their field and then add the title of “Coach” to their name. Would you hire someone as an accountant or an architect if they were not certified by their profession? Coaching is also a profession with clear professional requirements in training and in conduct. When hiring a coach 2 questions will quickly tell you if they are a qualified professional; “Where did you get your coaching certification?” and “What International Coach Federation (ICF) credential do you hold?” If they are not credentialed and are not certified by a professional coaching body such as the ICF you are not hiring a professional.


The ICF is the largest international professional coaching body. They issue 3 levels of coaching credentials (ACC, PCC & MCC), they hold coach training schools up to a high standard, and hold their coaches up to a code of ethics and a professional standard for the protection of the public, similar to other professions.


Whether it is individual or team coaching, be sure they have the training and credentialing and are not simply a consultant calling themselves a coach?

Meet Our Coaches

Are they a good fit?

Fit is a key pillar of the success of coaching – both for the individual receiving the coaching and the company who is hiring them. If a coach doesn’t mention the importance of fit but sells him or herself as able to ‘coach anyone’ beware. Everyone has different styles of learning so the same coach may be loved by some and not by others. Even a good wine isn’t everyone’s taste! Fit is as important for the individual receiving the coaching as it is for the company that is hiring them. Once you’ve determined that a coach is qualified (credentialed and certified), you move on to check for fit. This means that coachees (people receiving the coaching) benefit from having a selection of coaches to choose from.

As we began working with executive teams it became necessary to build a diverse team of qualified Professional Coaches in order to give our clients choice – so they would easily find a good fit for their style of learning.

Fit for your organization is as important as fit for the individual coachee.  
Do they understand business?  They do not need to be an expert in your field (in fact that can be a disadvantage) but do need to have enough experience to understand the context in which the coachee exists.

Do they fit with your organizational culture and values? When you meet with them assess if their language, values, and approach will fit with your organization.

To see how easy this is, think about something you’d really love to get coaching on, then go to our “Skills at a Glance” page and choose a few coaches to compare. Once you have your top 2 preferences, look at their full bios and you’ll start to get a good sense of which coach you’d like to interview before you commit to working with them for 6 or 12 months. Even if you’re not thinking of hiring a coach right now, it’s a fun and easy exercise to try.

Other questions to factor into your decision-making process:
How long and at what level have they been coaching?  Do they seem too cheap?

Surveys show that, at CEO and direct report level, Executive Coaches’ monthly fees are:

37% over $1,000 per month

24% at $800 to $1,000 per month

with only 9% charging under $400

With more than 62% of coaches’ charging $800 or more, you should think twice about hiring a coach who thinks they’re only worth half that.  If you’re paying at the low end, are you really getting value for money?

What do their clients say about them?
Do they survey their clients for feedback and ROI and do they have ‘proof of concept’ in the form of reliable testimonials.  A great testimonial is repeat business.  How many of their clients become repeat clients?  Not all clients will need coaching services on an ongoing basis, but a great test is whether clients come back the next time they need a coach, or if they move on to look for a new provider.  Interested in what our clients say about us?

Do they offer other services that may complement the coaching?
For example, we, measure the coaching effectiveness through a survey co-designed with our clients.

Read Part 1 of How to Measure Executive Coaching – Feedback

I hope that you found this 2 part article useful and that it takes some of the risks out of hiring a coach.  We’d love to hear your comments and how you’ve put any of this into practice.

Services are always hard to determine the value of, how do you know if you’re getting good value from your accountant, architect, or lawyer?  Executive coaching is no different.  You can’t ‘kick the tires’ of a service before you buy it, but you probably do have a few indicators that help you determine the value you want from a service.  This ‘buyers’ conundrum’ has surfaced enough lately that we interrupt our Series on Leadership Secrets to bring you a 2 part Blog on “How to Measure Executive Coaching”.

We believe you can only see the value if you’re asking the right questions, so we co-design feedback surveys with our larger clients on their coaching metrics. 


We measure:

We coach leaders, high potential individuals who are used to challenging themselves to more.  47% of the leaders we coach are senior management to CEO level and 39% are emerging leaders or middle management.  Coach fit is critical to success as the power of the coaching is only as good as the combination of safety and challenge.  These leaders have already challenged themselves as far as they can.  The coach must create a safe enough environment for the client to be challenged beyond what they would do otherwise. 

Part of that safety is knowing the coach has an unwavering belief in them as leaders. 94% of our clients surveyed always “sensed my coach’s belief in me personally”, with 6% mostly sensing the coach’s belief.  56% said they always “felt safe”, with 44% most of the time, and 94% experience the “right amount of challenge to go beyond my comfort zone” most or all the time.

Goal Achievement can be a tricky one as maintaining confidentiality on what the client is working on is key to the success of coaching.  Most of the coaching goals are set by the coachee themselves, however, their boss or sponsor is allowed 1 core goal they put forward for the coachee to work on.  That, in turn, is confidential between the coach, coaches, and boss/sponsor.  We measure this by simply asking “Did you accomplish the majority of your goals?” 100% of clients surveyed say yes to both the sponsor and self-identified goals!  They can elaborate in the comment box -and many do.

The observable impact is measured by simply asking “In what ways have others observed the impact of coaching on you?”.  We know that behaviour change has taken place when third-party feedback confirms it. Examples of third-party feedback are ‘greater trust by others’, ‘More aware of my audience / other team members’ needs and differences ‘, ‘My boss originally said I wasn’t strategic enough and he said there was a marked improvement at the end. I’m a broader thinker. I am now able to stay in a strategic frame of mind and not get dragged into the day-to-day often. Today I think more corporately than departmental.’ and ‘better listening and different analysis and approach on the issues’. 

All difficult to put metrics to, but observable and measurable nonetheless.

Coach professionalism is used for us to monitor ourselves and to see where we can improve. We care deeply about the coaching profession and aim to represent it well.  100% of clients surveyed ranked all our coaches as “Professional” or “Highly Professional” on all 5 indicators, from “Initial Contact” or “Addressing any process issues you had” to “Finalising the Contact”.  All would recommend their coach to others!  This high satisfaction level also speaks to the effort we put in around matching clients with one of our 7 coaches as well as the diversity and skill available on our team.

While we do not get clients to give us feedback on their specific goals, we do ask for feedback on core ‘intangible’ leadership competencies developed through their coaching.  We customise the competencies measured to those most important to the company we’re working with.  Typically we end up with around 9.  Some common competencies measured are; “Self-Awareness”, “Relational Ability”,  “Dealing with Conflict”, “Internal Confidence” and “Influence”.  The feedback usually comes back with the coaching having had a significant impact or having exceeded expectations.

If you want to ‘kick the tires’ of a coaching service before you hire them, use these measurements as questions for their references.  If they claim to be a right fit for all your executives, beware.  Rather look for a team of coaches, like ours, or hire a coach who advises you to first interview 2 or 3 coaches before deciding on the best fit.  Lastly, if you’re planning to make coaching a core component of your leadership development, ask the coaching organization if they’re willing to co-design a feedback survey that provides you with valuable metrics while still honouring the confidentiality inherent in the coaching relationship.

If you found this helpful, you may be interested in Part 2 on Coach Credentials.  Alternatively, you may be reading this as you’re considering hiring a coach.  If you are, we commend your commitment to growing your leadership capacity and encourage you to review our line-up of highly qualified, impactful coaches.

Meet Our Coaches

We’ve shared our thoughts with you.  We’d love to hear how you go about selecting coaches and measuring the impact of your coaching investment.

Christine took a 4year sabbatical from our team during which time she completed her Ph.D. in Leadership. We’re excited to have Christine back on our team and have asked her to highlight some of the insights she gained during the last four years of studying, researching, and writing about leadership as part of her Ph.D.

“It’s a great pleasure to be back working with people who are actively learning, growing, and practising a different way of being as leaders. The leadership conversation is never far from my thinking and I gladly share some of my insights with you.

At the beginning of the study, I was curious about how some leaders were able to hold a high degree of social awareness placing human concerns as primary in their decision-making. I looked at the current state of leader development in relationship to the complex challenges that leaders currently face. I questioned the models that portray leadership as hierarchical, formulaic, and simplistic. I also believed that there exists a great hunger for leadership and a need to radically dissect our traditional perspectives in light of sweeping changes globally in philosophies, values, and narratives.

When I talked with leaders about their exceptional moments in leading, they told me stories of leadership from the standpoint of relationships and interconnections rather than steps or techniques. From this perspective, I began to understand leaders and leadership, not as disembodied traits, characteristics, and steps, but rather as social practices embedded in webs of significance and interdependency, where story-telling is the primary means of relating with others. It became apparent to me that leaders grow through experience rather than by experience and that they create lives of meaning for themselves and others through the sharing and integration of their stories.

How did this experience change me as a leader?

I came to understand leadership, not as something that resides within me as an individual leader but rather as the product of people coming together to share their stories, understandings, and experiences. My research findings underscored the idea of leadership as a possibility that exists between people rather than a set of traits or behaviours belonging to an individual. It arises from our collective thinking when we ask the hard questions about who we are and how we want to be with others. Leadership, as a property of the group, emerges when we respectfully listen to others, when we speculate with others about the kind of world we want to create, and when we see the future as one of infinite possibilities. It is much more about who we are being rather than what we are doing.

Today, messages fly at us fast and furious; underscoring that what is rewarded is the quick completion of tasks from the checklist, not the slow contemplation required for a deep understanding of what we most need. In complex times, merely handing down the tried and true will not help us to be more ethical and moral leaders; for that, we need others, contemplation, practice and epiphany.  Use the comment box below to respond to Christine’s insights.

Meet our other talented Coaches

Meet The Team
Golf clubs as a coaching metaphor
Photo by sydney Rae [Unsplash]

I’m putting away my golf clubs for the season. As I do that, I can’t help but reflect on what a great metaphor golf is for leaders and leadership.

In my role as Executive Coach I have engaged this metaphor with clients who are also golfers with some surprising results.Like the complex and changing corporate environment, there are constant unknowns in the game.

There are hazards everywhere and when we find ourselves in one of them, it requires some thought, a reframe, refocus, a decision and action. And after all of that, and you take the next stroke, there is the knowledge that there is no guarantee that the outcome will be what is intended.

Moving out of a trouble spot requires another look at what club the golfer (and for the Executive, what tools or skills) might be used to move forward…toward the goal that isn’t always visible and is often surrounded by several more hazards!

I also realized halfway through this golf season, that asking for help to enhance my skills (which at times are highly developed already! Well, sometimes!!!). Even the greats have Coaches and must practice to enhance their game.

One of the things that has had a great impact on me this year was to recognize the benefit of quieting, calming and centering. In the Spacious Complexity process we engage quieting and reflective learning as one of the most fundamental, effective development techniques that leaders can use. And in using the golf metaphor, the quieting and reflection is similar to when the ball lands in a water hazard where it stirs up the silt making it impossible to see the lost ball.

When we too quickly attempt to retrieve that ball, we stir up even more murkiness, similar to when we may too quickly react in the organizational environment. Yet if we simply wait, often for only a short moment, the silt settles, the water becomes clearer and we can see so much more clearly…to retrieve or recover. It is the next shot that makes the difference!

What is your next shot?

What tools are in your leadership toolbox?

Who is your silent partner?

What are your resources to bring you to the top of your game?

View Our Leadership Development Programs

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.

Contact Us