Models and Coaching for Leadership

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

COACHING THE COACHES

Dave Ulrich

T he word “coach” is both a noun and a verb. As a noun it stipulates a person who instructs or informs others; as a verb it means the act of teaching or training someone to do something. Coaches (the people) in sports, drama, and music coach (the action) participants to greater performance by defining what should be done, observing what is done, and offering feedback on what will be done. In business settings, coaches play similar roles. They help aspiring managers learn what should be done by offering pointers, learn what is done by observation, and improve what will be done by providing feedback. Management coaching may occur at many levels of a company, from CEO to line supervisor. Each coach has a unique style and approach, but coaches may learn and adapt techniques that help them be better at what they do. This chapter presents elements of a coaching philosophy and steps in a coaching process that have been used in mul- tiple settings to help aspiring managers manage better.

Philosophy

Coaching does not mean doing for others, but means helping others to get things done. Coaches help athletes play the game better, even if they do not personally play the game. Player coaches generally do not perform as well as sideline coaches. Management coaches may not be the best managers, but they must be observers of good management and motivators for good communication. In an early coaching assignment, I observed a leader in team meetings. I paid attention to a few things,

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such as how did he interact with people before the meeting? Was his style formal or informal? Did people approach him or not? How did he manage the meeting? Did he follow an agenda? How did he make decisions? How did he treat others during the meeting? How did he follow up after the meeting? Did he follow up on actions taken with regard to decisions made during the meeting? The ability to make these subtle observations comes from having “your head on a swivel” and examining the nuances of behaviors and their consequences. With this data, I then engaged him in a conversation on what he did and what he could do to reach his goals.

Coaches earn their credibility by having a history of success. Coaching is both a learned art from experience and a disciplined science from education. Becoming a legitimate coach is a Catch-22: those you coach must have confidence in you, yet you don’t earn confidence until you have coached others. Early coaching experi- ences may begin with friends and allies who trust you and whom you can help and counsel. Like sports coaches who learn from being assistant coaches at high school or college levels before becoming head coaches in the pros, management coaches master their craft from working in the managerial trenches. My early coaching was often with those whom I had known in other settings. For instance, I might have met and developed a relationship with an executive in a development course. Over time, as I matured as a coach from successes and failures, I was more likely to be invited to coach those whom I did not know beforehand.

Coaching is ultimately a relationship. Sometimes the smartest and most technically proficient people are not the best coaches. Coaching requires sharing information and ideas in ways that change the behavior of others. Coaches are not measured by what they know, but how what they know changes what others know and do. Transfer of knowledge flows from relationships of trust. Coaches must be credible and trusted by those whom they coach. In most of my coaching relationships, we start by getting to know each other. This requires listening and learning to like the person I am coaching and sharing with him or her some of who I am. Building a personal bond and professional affection founds the coach- ing process. Many of my coaching assignments begin with a conversation about personal issues, such as hobbies, families, and personal goals. Once the manager knows I care about him or her personally, we can commence the more rigorous process of managerial coaching. Until a relationship of trust is forged, coaching is more rhetoric than results.

Coaches may be from inside or outside the company, each with pros and cons. Those from inside know the subtleties of the company, the network of relationships within the company, and the likely impact of their counsel. Those

Coaching the Coaches 3

from outside the company often have credibility based on external validity, bring innovative ideas to the coaching experience, and may be candid when insid- ers might temper their remarks. For internal coaches to be credible, they must develop an independent streak; for external coaches to succeed, they must discern organizational nuances. Most of my coaching has been from the outside as an external consultant. However, in many cases, I have partnered with an internal coach, such as an HR professional. The HR person’s role is to help the business leader in more day-to-day routine transactions, whereas I do episodic coaching around events or in predictable time frames, typically every six to twelve weeks.

Giving honest feedback, both positive and negative, can be personally risky at times. As the givers of feedback, coaches may not always be popular with their coachees, who have often deluded themselves into thinking that there are no behaviors they need to change.

Constructive feedback concentrates on the behaviors, not the person; it focuses on the future more than on the past; and it helps the person self-discover. I recall having collected 360-degree feedback results from a leader whose data indicated significant concerns. I set the stage for sharing this data by reminding him that without struggles, we do not make progress and that honest looks in the mirror lead to improvements. Then we examined the data together and nondefensively worked to figure out why it was given as it was, what it meant in terms of his behaviors, and how he could productively respond. In reviewing feedback, the saying, “We judge ourselves by our intent and others judge us by our behavior” has come in useful. The philosophy of this quotation has helped me coach a manager to see that her intent may be to clarify and focus attention, but her abrupt and direct questioning of employees may communicate a lack of sensitivity and concern. Coaches must bring unfavorable views to the surface and deal with negative data in helpful ways.

Coaches ask questions that require self-reflection, because learning is more powerful when the learner learns by choice rather than by edict. Coaches who pose insightful and timely questions help managers see the impact of their behav- ior on others and help managers improve their behavior. Some of my favor- ite questions are: “What do you want?” which helps clients focus on goals and purposes; “What are the options?” which generates out-of-the-box alternatives; “What are the first steps?” which turns ideas into practices; “How would you know?” which defi nes measurable outcomes; and “What decision can you make now to move forward?” which focuses attention. These questions help the coach engage the client in reflection, so that the client owns the result and the process of achieving the result, and these maxims form a coaching philosophy that enables

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a coach to be the person who helps a manager make positive changes in both attitudes and behavior.

Coaching Process

A process for coaching may take many forms, which define the actions of being a coach. In my coaching, I have adapted the following steps, depending on the situation, but these steps offer a template for thinking about how to engage the client in changing behavior. I also like pictures or images that capture the message I am trying to communicate. Figure 37.1 is the summary of this coaching process.

FIGURE 37.1. A COACHING PLAYBOOK

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

STRATEGY STYLE

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

Stakeholder Goal Time

Measure

Coaching the Coaches 5

At first blush, this is a complex figure, but each step enables me to draw and build this figure and coach a client through a self-improvement process.

Step 1: Clarify Your Business or Organization Strategy

Every manager works for an organization. Organizations exist to accomplish goals through strategies they craft and deploy. Coaching in the context of strategy ensures that the manager has a clear sense of what he or she is trying to accom- plish and sets the criteria for being a successful manager. A strategy is a succinct statement of what the manager hopes to accomplish and how resources will be applied to that purpose. Questions to clarify strategy include the following:

• What is your business trying to accomplish? • Who are your primary customers? Why do they buy from you versus a

competitor? • What are your top two or three priorities right now?

Step 2: Describe Your Personal Style

Every manager has a style or way of getting things done. This style is based on dozens of choices about how the manager makes decisions, processes informa- tion, treats people, and prefers working. The combination of these decisions forms an identity for the manager that can often be captured in the image others have of the manager. Sometimes these images are crafted and positive; at other times, they are created by a sequence of actions. Sometimes these images help accom- plish business goals; sometimes they do not. Each style has its positives and its negatives and may be modified by identifying and changing behaviors that led to the style. Questions to address managerial style include the following:

• What is your managerial identity? How are you known by others? How would you like to be known by others?

• What are you managerial strengths and weaknesses? • How do you generally treat others, make decisions, handle confl ict, manage

information?

In the middle circle of Figure 37.1, you can write the strategy and style for the manager. This is at the heart of the coaching process.

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Step 3: Define Stakeholders

Every manager gets work done through, with, and by others. These others may be considered stakeholders for the manager. The stakeholders often include those who might be above the manager (such as the boss, the boss’s boss, and the board of directors), those peers of the manager (such as managers in other units who participate in the manager’s success), subordinates of the manager (including employees or those who report directly or indirectly to the manager), and those outside the boundaries of the company (for instance, customers, suppliers, and investors). These stakeholders may be identified by asking the manager with whom he or she must interact to accomplish the work. The list may be stable over time or vary depending on assignment. Questions to help define stakeholders include the following:

• Whom must you interact with to reach your strategy? • Who is affected by the work that you do? • Whom would you turn to in order to define your managerial style?

The stakeholders may be identified in each of the satellite circles in Figure 37.1.

Step 4: Specify Goals for Each Stakeholder

Stakeholders have an interest in and impact on a manager’s success. To reach a business strategy, each stakeholder must provide something. For example, direct reports must become a cohesive team and employees overall must demonstrate commitment. For managers to deliver on their strategies, they should discuss and clarify with each stakeholder his or her goals. Questions to specify stakeholder goals include the following:

• In the next period of time (three, six, twelve, or twenty-four months), what do you want to accomplish with each stakeholder?

• What does each stakeholder contribute to your reaching your strategy?

These goals for the stakeholders may be included in the satellite circles in Figure 37.1.

Coaching the Coaches 7

Step 5: Prioritize Each Stakeholder and Goal

Not all things worth doing are worth doing well. Some things are more important than others, and some stakeholders and their goals are more central to manage- rial success than others. Managers who try to relate equally all the time to all stakeholders end up serving none. Managers must prioritize stakeholders based on how central they are to achieving the business strategy. Strategies are time- bound, and the key stakeholders for the next three months may be different than the stakeholders for the succeeding three months. For example, in an organiza- tional transformation, it might be critical in the next three months to get your direct reports on board with your agenda before going to the broader employee population in the subsequent three months. Questions to prioritize stakeholders and goals include the following:

• How important is each stakeholder for reaching your goal? • Rate each stakeholder from 0 to 10 for the next period of time. • Divide 100 points across the stakeholders to prioritize their impact on your

strategies. • Rank the stakeholders (from high to low) in terms of impact on your strategies.

These ratings may be placed on each satellite circle in Figure 37.1.

Step 6: Allocate Time

Managers’ most valuable asset is their time. Where managers spend time commu- nicates what matters most and sends signals to others about what they should do. Coaches can help leaders focus their managers on what they can and should do with each stakeholder. When leaders are aware of how they have spent their time and thoughtful about where they should spend time, they make informed deci- sions. Involving other organization leaders in this coaching process can be helpful. In one case, a leader prioritized engaging employees in his vision for the next six months (about one hundred work days). He concluded that he should spend about fifteen days on this agenda. We invited the head of human resources into the meeting and told him that the leader could invest fifteen days on communicating his vision in the next six months. We invited the human resources professional to conceive how to spend this resource in the most effective way. I have done similar work with heads of marketing and sales when the leader wanted to spend

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time with customer; with heads of finance when the leader wanted to connect better with the investment community; and so forth. Spending time thought- fully turns ideas into actions. Questions to help leaders allocate time include the following:

• How much time in days do you think you should spend with each stakeholder, given the priorities you have set?

• What specifi c behaviors and actions can you take with each stakeholder to accomplish your goals?

• How would these actions show up in your calendar? Remember that your calendar should probably be 30 to 40 percent unscheduled, as events arise that merit attention, but the other 60 to 70 percent can be structured to ensure that you accomplish what matters most.

• How will you track your return on time invested?

In Figure 37.1, you can begin to put time in days for each satellite circle.

Step 7: Determine Success

Strategies and goals turn into success when they are measured. These measures may be outcomes (what results) or behaviors (how things happen), but what they are should be specified. Coaches help determine measures of success that man- agers can track on their own. Questions to help determine successful measures include the following:

• How will you know you have succeeded in your overall strategy and in your goals with each stakeholder?

• How will you monitor your progress?

Conclusion

To coach means to have a philosophy that is based on the maxims and beliefs of being a coach. It means to help managers turn their aspirations into action by engaging them in a disciplined process of change. Being a master coach

Coaching the Coaches 9

means developing both a philosophy and a process that is uniquely tailored to you as a coach and to the person you are coaching. This is the coach to coachee relationship.

◆ ◆ ◆

Dave Ulrich is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting fi rm focused on help- ing organizations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organizations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. He has helped generate award-winning databases that assess alignment between strategies, organization capabilities, HR practices, HR competencies, and customer and investor results.

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Y CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

WHY 360S DON’T WORK AND HOW THEY CAN

By Marc Effron and Miriam Ort

The increasing popularity of 360-degree assessments (360s) seems to rely on a rock-solid stream of logic. Leaders’ behaviors are important to the organization because well-behaved leaders balance what gets done with how things get done. This balance increases their own effectiveness and their team’s engagement and performance, which translates into superior fi nancial results. So if we regularly give leaders 360-degree feedback, they will be motivated to improve their behaviors, and the average quality of leaders and results will continually increase. It is a wonderful theory, but it bears little resemblance to reality.

The typical 360-degree process relies on a self-motivated manager who read- ily accepts the 360 feedback, commits to self-improvement, and moves forward with an action plan. Most fi rms do not require any action planning after the assessment, and only 20 percent even require that participants speak to their managers about the results. Also, typical 360-degree reports are diffi cult to under- stand, do not focus managers on the right actions, and do not provide practical advice about what to do next. Why so few leaders improve purely as a result of receiving 360-degree feedback is not hard to understand.

Despite these challenges, we strongly support the 360-degree assessment process because we believe that it is a simple and powerful way to achieve the business objective of aligning people’s behaviors with the organization’s needs.

2 Coaching for Leadership

Step 1. Start with the Science

To understand how 360-degree feedback can improve organizational perfor- mance, let’s start with what the science does and does not say about the process.

Feedback Can Improve Performance

At the heart of any feedback process is the assumption that feedback leads to behavior changes that improve the performance of a task. The problem is that this assumption was built on questionable science—research in the mid-twentieth century that met no modern standards of appropriate research.

Our understanding of the feedback-performance relationship increased thanks to a 1996 meta-analysis of 607 different studies that examined the feed- back-to-performance link.1 That study concluded that feedback generally did improve performance (on average by 0.4 standard deviations), but it also found that performance actually decreased more than one-third of the time that feed- back was given. This research showed that the level of improvement decreased as the feedback became less about a task and more about the individual as a person.2 In short, the study found that if you tell someone how to more effectively produce a widget based on his past performance, he will probably do it better. However, if you tell him that he needs to talk less in team meetings, it is much less likely that feedback alone will change his behavior.

The most conclusive statement we can make is that feedback alone can change behavior, but it is certainly not guaranteed.

Clear Goals for Improvement Help Behavior Change

The research indicates that one of the few things that drives behavior change is having clear goals for improvement. The limited research shows that having goals increases the likelihood, but by no means guarantees, that someone who receives feedback will take action on it.3

Personality Infl uences One’s Response to Feedback

Individuals’ personality traits influence emotions, sense of self-esteem, and thought processes, so they are going to see feedback through those lenses.

Why 360s Don’t Work and How They Can 3

For example, the more easily someone tolerates the typical ups and downs in life (personality theory calls this emotional stability), the more motivated he is to take action on feedback.4 If a person is an extrovert, she is more likely to ask for additional feedback.

Step 2. Eliminate Complexity, Add Value

We start the 360-degree design process guided by the limited science and apply- ing what we call the “watercooler maxim”: everyone at work knows how a person behaves, and the organization is already responding to it; the 360 just captures that knowledge on paper. We mention the watercooler maxim because many leaders imply that the information from 360s is somehow independent of other social systems in the organization. They urge that 360s should be confi dential, are purely for development, and have no consequences for inaction on the results. For these leaders, no one gossips, no one talks about someone’s behaviors around the watercooler, and no one has already judged her because of them. It is almost as if they believe that keeping a 360 confi dential will prevent anyone from knowing how someone behaves.

Our starting proposition is that 360-degree behavioral feedback presents criti- cal information about a manager’s performance—how closely his or her behavior meets the organization’s needs. We are not sure why a company should withhold this information from people who could help improve the behaviors or from those who need it to make decisions on allocating an organization’s resources (for exam- ple, promotions, recognition). After all, as the watercooler maxim says, it is not a secret—the 360 just provides a consistent way to gather and present that data.

Our second proposition is that we should make it as easy as possible for managers to take action on the survey feedback. To keep the survey report action- able, we set a high standard—that the person receiving a 360 report should know what to do by the time he or she reads the first two pages. Sound impossible? We have built a 360-degree assessment that meets this standard. It relies on the core science and is guided by the principles of feedforward—that people are most receptive to advice for change when it is focused on future (not past) behaviors and provides specifi c examples of how to change.5

If you plan on building your own 360, the following advice will guide you through the design process. If you plan on purchasing an assessment process from a vendor, fi nd one that fi ts as closely as possible the design that we describe.

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Eliminating Complexity

Use a practical scale. A good 360-degree scale should preserve the partici- pant’s ego and make it easy for him or her to understand the results and take action. Most scales fail on both counts.

• Preserve egos. An intuitive fi nding from the research is that feedback that hurts self-esteem is going to be less motivational. Most 360s start with a strong disadvantage, because the scale is almost guaranteed to hit the self-esteem of at least half the people who use it.

If a person’s positive view of himself is validated by the results, he is likely to be happy and unmotivated to change. If he feels that the results portray him in a way that is inconsistent with his self-image, he is likely to resist the feedback by denying its validity.

• Make action easy. The complexity and detail in a typical 360 report make it diffi cult for any manager to understand what conclusions to draw and how to develop an action plan. The typical 360 requires the average manager to sit with an HR leader to interpret the report and then wander through a thick book of suggestions or a website to create an action plan. Wouldn’t this process be easier if survey raters were just asked to articulate what the indi- vidual should do differently and how, and then share that information with the participant?

If the goal of 360 feedback is to change a manager’s behavior, a much better approach is to tell her what behaviors she needs to do more and which to do less. This allows a participant to understand what should change, in which direction, and to what extreme. The scale we recommend provides exactly that information. The components of our OPTM (One Page Talent Management) 360-degree scale are “do much more, do more, don’t change, do less, do much less.” When a person gets feedback on this scale, taking action instantly becomes easier.

Ask the fewest possible questions. Long questionnaires make the process diffi cult for raters and may reduce their willingness to participate in the future. Long questionnaires also mean long reports, with more information that the manager needs to sort through and interpret. Providing managers with clear infor- mation about how to change their behaviors using fewer questions is quite possible.

Why 360s Don’t Work and How They Can 5

• Identify the few, most critical behaviors to change. Most 360-degree items are derived from either a company’s leadership competency model or an external “ideal leader” model. Two things typically go wrong in this process. First, the survey items tend to include every behavior in the competency model, rather than a narrower set of the most important behaviors. While many of the behaviors may be part of what makes a leader successful, some are more important than others. To ensure success, ask only the fi fteen or twenty-fi ve most important items. Second, your company might use certain idioms or colloquial phrases (for example, “walk the talk” or “bureaucracy buster”) that would mean more to the participants than an item found in a generic 360.

Present results with simple, clean graphics. There is a lot going through a manager’s head when she gets her 360 report returned to her. If you overwhelm her with the amount of data or confuse her with the way it’s pre- sented, the report becomes an impediment to action. You should seek the simplest possible way to present this information. In most cases, that is going to be a basic bar chart or marks on a continuum.

Report only value-adding data. A few features typically used in 360 reports do little to enhance understanding and can be misleading. Eliminating those results in both a cleaner, more effective report.

• Do not include normative data (“norms”). Research suggests that feedback comparing people to an external standard is less motivational than providing specifi c advice for change.

• Do not report on strengths. You may have noticed that we have not dis- cussed strengths anywhere. Reinforcing a leader’s strengths in a 360 is not wrong, but since the purpose of the 360 is to guide behavior change, the focus should remain on key behavioral action items.

• Do not report high scores and low scores. In many 360 reports, these scores are both meaningless and misleading. Are they the most important? Should someone change those behaviors a little or a lot? As you don’t know, leave them out.

Keep responses anonymous. One of the few commonly accepted prac- tices that we agree with, giving feedback anonymously ensures accuracy and encourages participation.

Avoid self-assessments. Not including a self-assessment in a 360 may seem odd since nearly all popular 360 tools do. Knowing the gaps between how a

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person is seen (and likely acts) and how others see him seems like essential infor- mation to help him understand what should change and why. However, current research casts serious doubt on the value of self-assessment. One reason given for self-assessments is that people are wired to try to close the gaps between others’ views of themselves and their self-view (control theory).

In theory, if people see a gap between their self-rating and how others per- ceive them, it causes such a level of internal discomfort that they are motivated to close that gap, and their behavior changes. Whether this actually works in practice is widely debated. Other research indicates that people are just as likely to explain away the gap with excuses about the rater’s credibility or why they needed to act that way due to the demands of the organization. Although these are theoretical arguments, additional facts should discourage self-assessment:

• Self-assessments are inaccurate. People tend to be consistently inaccu- rate when rating themselves. Research shows that self-ratings do not correlate with anyone else’s ratings—peers, supervisors, direct reports, clients.6

• They can reduce motivation to change. Feedback that harms self- esteem makes motivation to change less likely. A large gap between people’s self- ratings and others’ ratings can create embarrassment that is completely counter productive to achieving their goals.

• Self-assessments can misdirect actions. People may focus on the larg- est gaps between themselves and others, when these are not the most critical issues to address.

• They focus on today’s problems, not tomorrow’s solutions. The feedforward philosophy we mentioned says that focusing on how to change in the future is much more productive than evaluating the past or present. Self- ratings focus inappropriately on today’s gaps.

Adding Value

Next we explain how we combine our do more–do less scale with a process to prioritize items to create the OPTM 360.

Prioritize the key action items. The OPTM 360 is brief, but the par- ticipant still receives data from thirty different items. We know that some of these items are likely more important than others, so we’ve structured the survey so that respondents prioritize the items.

Why 360s Don’t Work and How They Can 7

Provide specifi c advice for action. A big challenge in a traditional 360 is knowing what to do with the results. The OPTM 360 moves us closer to solving that problem. The specifi c start, stop, or continue suggestions that respondents list are presented in the report so that participants have specifi c actions on which they can act immediately. The comments are verbatim (a fact communicated to the respon- dents before they complete the survey) and presented for each of the three priority questions. We do not present the comments for questions that are not one of the top three priorities. They are interesting, but not critical—a value-complexity trade-off.

Focus the information to make immediate action possible. The heart of our survey report is a two-page summary drawn from the two items we have described. The report shows the three highest priority questions and lists the verbatim comments for improvement. By reading just the fi rst two pages, the participant knows exactly which behaviors to change, in which direction, and exactly which new behaviors others want to see.

Step 3. Inject Transparency and Accountability

Transparency

For an area like 360s, which have traditionally been steeped in secrecy, this transparency represents a fundamental change.

Be open about the process and reasons for it. If the 360 might be used to help evaluate a leader, everyone involved in the process should understand this before starting. In your communication, you should reinforce the importance of behaviors at your company and share the watercooler maxim (people already know everybody’s behaviors—the 360 is just a tool that records them).

Participants should widely share results and action plans. Sharing the 360 results and action plan with the respondents acknowledges that the par- ticipant heard his feedback, which encourages the respondents to keep providing it. It also makes the participant a role model for post-feedback behavior and shows that he plans to take action.

Acknowledge how the information will be used. We have discussed our philosophy that 360 data should be considered when making decisions about personnel moves such as assignments and promotions. How a leader behaves is already considered in these decisions, whether implicitly or explicitly, so we prefer that data comes from a fair, consistent source like the 360.

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Accountability

Accountability can play a large part in ensuring that managers take action on their 360. We can drive that accountability in a number of ways:

Let managers know their careers will accelerate or decelerate. Transparency about the potential impact of leaders’ behaviors on their career is a driver of accountability. If they know that proper behaviors are required to advance (and which ones), they are empowered to start improving those behaviors and they understand the consequences if they do not.

Measuring year-to-year progress. If your company is serious about behavior improvement, then hold managers accountable for annually improving their 360 scores. Ignore complaints that “different people will be evaluating me” or “I need to act tough to get this new group in line.” Behaviors are remarkably consistent across jobs and situations—people won’t become jerks just because they have new roles (and vice versa), and results can always be viewed in context.

Make the process transparent. Transparency in this process drives indi- vidual accountability. The more people who know someone’s development goals, the more focused he will be on achieving them.

In Summary: The OPTM 360 Assessment

Our recommended approach features several improvements on the typical 360-degree assessment. A focus on future behaviors, not on today’s, reduces the risk of defensive reactions to feedback. An easy prioritization process identi- fi es the three most important items to improve, allowing the manager to focus on those behaviors that matter most. Specifi c recommendations for improvement from those who know the manager best mean that he or she can start working immediately on those behaviors.

Notes

1. Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi, “The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Perfor mance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 2 (1996): 254 –284.

2. Ibid. 3. Ibid.

Why 360s Don’t Work and How They Can 9

4. James Smither, Joan Brett, and Leanne Atwater; “What Do Leaders Recall About Their Multisource Feedback?” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 14, no. 3 (2008): 202–218.

5. Marshall Goldsmith, “Leadership Development: Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback,” Journal for Quality and Participation 26, no. 3 (2003): 38–42.

6. Anne Tsui and Patricia Ohlott, “Multiple Assessment of Managerial Effectiveness: Interrater Agreement and Consensus in Effectiveness Models,” Personnel Psychology 41, no. 4 (1988): 779 –803.

◆ ◆ ◆

Marc Effron is president of The Talent Strategy Group and coauthor of the best-selling book One Page Talent Management. He helps the world’s leading companies transform their talent management practices. Marc is a sought-after speaker, widely quoted in the business press, and founder of the New Talent Management Network.

Miriam Ort is director of Human Resources at PepsiCo and coauthor of the best-selling book One Page Talent Management from Harvard Business Press. She is a regu- lar contributor to publications on leadership and talent and has been a featured speaker for organizations such as The Conference Board and Harvard Business Review online.

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Y CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

COACHING EXECUTIVES FOR SUCCESSION

A Three-Phase Approach

By Linda D. Sharkey

Although succession planning is a widely used process in organizations today, it lacks the rigor and effectiveness that would make it the powerful tool it can and should be. When we look at talent management initiatives in most organiza- tions, we see that only about 25 percent cite using their succession plans to fi ll open positions. This seems rather ludicrous as so much time and energy is taken to create succession plans for, at minimum, key roles. Some businesses create plans for several layers of their organizations, feeling good that they know they have successors should someone leave the enterprise. The question becomes, then, why are these plans not used more extensively to fi ll open positions? Perhaps it is because of how we think of succession and the plans that are created.

Here is a case in point. A successful organization wants to be sure that they have successors for key roles, but they have no plans for turnover in those key roles. The planning process is in place, therefore, only as a backup process to mitigate any talent risk and in some cases to ensure the board that there is good coverage for the leadership. The cultural mindset of this company is not neces- sarily to move talent and to ensure they can fi ll open positions with existing tal- ent. This company is blind about why and how to use succession planning. They may believe that there is better talent outside the organization to fi ll the opening. The cost to the organization is immense. The sunk costs of succession planning

2 Coaching for Leadership

itself and the fact that the organization will still have to recruit externally, which costs on average 1.5 times the salary of the individual being recruited, is mind numbing.

This example highlights some of the common problems with succession plan- ning. The key issues tend to be the following:

1. A lack of clear goals for the succession planning process. 2. An inconsistent assessment of the succession candidate. Do they really have

the capability to do the job? 3. A lack of understanding of the candidate’s aspirations and ensuring alignment

with the succession role. 4. Poor or no development to prepare the candidate for seamless entry into the

new role. 5. No rotation or career planning process exists to support executive or talent

movement. 6. A lack of help for the outgoing executive to make the transition to his or her

next situation. 7. Leaders not trusting the succession planning process to provide great talent

for their open senior roles. 8. Limited or no accountability for managing the succession process.

Because of these common issues in succession planning, companies don’t make the most out of the great talent that already exists in their organizations. They don’t use a robust talent management process to create talent pools, nor do they use these pools to fi ll open roles quickly. In addition, they have no way of accurately determining whether the successor is ready for the role unless they do a thorough, consistent assessment of the talent against agreed to requirements and behaviors for the role. Further, the development aspects of preparing the successor are often ignored. Untried and ill-planned development plans are put in place. They are not monitored, and often no one is accountable for ensuring that the appropriate development is provided.

Coaching for Succession: A Three-Phase Approach

The three-phase approach to coaching for succession described in this chap- ter is a proven-effective method that combines assessment and coaching for

Coaching Executives for Succession 3

C-suite executives and one level below. Briefl y described, the three phases are the following:

Phase 1—Initial Preparation: Here, the selection of the succession candidate is verifi ed and developmental planning begins using a thorough assessment. In this phase, the potential successor is introduced to and coached for the behaviors and knowledge they will have to gain in order to step into the new role.

Phase 2—Organization Engagement: During this phase, the successor’s initial transition and introduction to the organization are highlighted. The successor works with the broader organization to gain acceptance in the new role, and to learn the requirements of the job and how to communicate more broadly with the organization members and stakeholders.

Phase 3—Assimilating into the New Role: At this juncture, the successor offi cially assumes the new role. In this phase the coach assists in helping the new leader bond with his or her new team and understand the additional behavior(s) and organizational requirements that will make him or her successful in the new role.

Taking a Closer Look: The Three-Phase Coaching for Succession Process in Action

What follows is a discussion of each phase and how coaching is applied to help the successor/coachee and the person being succeeded move seamlessly through the process. Although these steps are intended for senior roles (C-suite and one level below) within the company, they can also be applied to a less intense degree to any role requiring a successor. Often, great internal organizational develop- ment (OD) and human resources (HR) people can leverage this approach to add value to their talent processes and development initiatives.

To illustrate the process and how coaching is intertwined with succession, I will describe a real situation disguised to protect the organization. A large manu- facturing company in the Midwest knows that their chief fi nancial offi cer will be leaving in approximately nine months. They engaged me as a coach to help with the transition. I used the three-phase coaching for succession process outlined above to ensure success for all parties involved.

4 Coaching for Leadership

Phase 1—Initial Preparation In Phase 1, the company identifi ed three poten- tial candidates for the role. A thorough assessment of each of the candidates was conducted to determine if one person was best for the role. In some succession cases, all three candidates were perfect, and the expectations of those who don’t get picked have to be managed carefully. In other cases, there is a clear top run- ner, and again, the others have to be coached and supported in their own devel- opment or the organization is likely to lose them. If they do end up leaving, it is best if they leave on good terms, as they will then be friends to your organization in their next company. In this case study, a clear winner was identifi ed through the assessment and the others were happy to have been considered for the role. The deep assessment helped them understand and conclude on their own that they were not ready for that next step. You should be sure that everyone involved feels good about the process, that it was fair, and that the best candidate was moved forward.

Assessment is a fundamental and foundational element for coaching to get the coachee ready. I use a best practice I learned while I was at GE. It is a core competency of GE’s senior HR leaders, and it is a different assessment than those used for uncovering strengths and development discussions or 360-degree assessments that usually precede coaching. In this assessment, the following items are explored:

• Personal Background: This entails a thorough understanding of the can- didates’ personal history—where they went to school, what sports or activi- ties they selected, what they liked about school, why they chose the college, courses, and concentrations they did. We explore role models and why they admired these individuals. This provides a terrifi c window into what makes them tick. Choices from our early days often shape our values, beliefs, and patterns and will arise throughout our career and life development. This information can be used in coaching to help provide examples of lessons learned and choices made that may need to be stopped or continued. For instance, I once coached a person through this phase. He had grown up on a sheep farm in Australia, and this experience was the underpinning of who he was as a leader and the career choices he made. He went on to be a successful fi nancier, but always stayed close to his farming roots. He was unhappy par- ticipating in what he perceived as “fancy” Wall Street deals and companies.

Coaching Executives for Succession 5

He felt they operated far from his beliefs of why banking and fi nance existed in the fi rst place.

• Professional Background: This involves a thorough understanding of the candidate’s professional background. This critical part of the assessment helps highlight which additional professional areas the individual may need to learn during the succession coaching phase. In this discussion, you, the coach, are trying to understand the roles they had, the impact and results they achieved, and the leadership lessons they learned along the way. This is particularly important, as you can see whether they have the technical experience to perform the C-suite job and, if not, to determine the gaps. This will prove important when working with the person who is being suc- ceeded. In this type of coaching the person being succeeded plays a pivotal role, and the coach must work with both him or her and the successor extremely closely.1 Involving the person being succeeded is critically impor- tant. It gives the leader being succeeded great insight into what he or she needs to impart to the successor/coachee and the experiences and exposure he or she needs to provide the coachee before the latter actually assumes the new role. It also gives the departing leader a clear coaching and mentor- ing role in the process, which helps with his or her own transition. During this part of the assessment, I explore with the outgoing executive the leader- ship lessons learned and challenges faced in various roles and what he or she did to overcome them. I use this information to help the coachee refl ect and learn from the assessment process. Really great leaders show tremendous resilience, and this will come out in this part of the discussion. This helps coachees see that they are successful and can be successful with refl ection and focus in the next role. Whether people admit it, successors are always apprehensive regarding their ability to understand the business as well as the leader they are succeeding and whether they will be accepted—especially if they are replacing a highly regarded and oftentimes loved individual in the organization.

• Leadership Strengths and Development Needs: I ask the coachees for their view of their professional strengths and development needs. Then I probe into issues about which they may wish to gain more insight. For this step of the process, the coachees reveal references (or stakeholders) with whom I should speak for further information regarding their leadership strengths and needs. This is similar to other coaching engagements and is

6 Coaching for Leadership

based on Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder-centered behavioral coaching model. I usually check with ten to fi fteen individuals to gain a 360-degree view of their leadership capability. At this point, it is helpful if the company has a leadership framework for leaders to demonstrate. In the case of GE and HP, we worked with a robust framework for assessing leaders. This was helpful in putting the coachee’s behavior in the context of the company leadership requirements.

• Career Next Steps: I always explore the career aspirations of the coachee to make sure there is alignment with the role he is about to assume. Sometimes people get enamored with a position, the level, and associated compensation, rather than truly being passionate about the role and having a vision for suc- cess within it. I also check with their references on this question, as it gives the larger organization a mirror into what others think of this individual’s longer- term capability.

With this assessment in hand, the real coaching begins and the organi- zation’s alignment around helping the successor be successful in preparing for the new role begins. At this point, it is important to get clear goals for the coaching process on two fronts—exposure, professional experiences, and learning what the individual will have to gain, and the one or two behaviors they will need to hone to be successful. A word of caution—if there are many professional areas in which this individual will need to focus, you probably don’t have the right successor for the shorter term. You may need to con- sider the effi cacy of continuing with the coaching for near-term succession (that is, six to twelve months). An action plan is created, and from the list of references, you and your coachee will select stakeholders who will provide ongoing feedback on the behaviors the coachee is working on over the next period of time—usually six months. These stakeholders will be asked to rate the coachee’s progress on changing his behavior; thus, they are an extremely important part of the process. The leader to be succeeded will play a signifi - cant role on the professional side of the aisle to ensure that the right profes- sional experiences and exposure are in place. Your role as coach is to support the coachee in working with his or her boss and stakeholders. It is important here that you are coaching on several fronts, the coachee and the leader to be succeeded. Figures 33.1 and 33.2 show a blank succession coaching action plan and a sample plan.

FIGURE 33.1: SUCCESSION COACHING ACTION PLAN

Business Leadership Behavior

Goal(s):

Support:

Measures:

Actions:

Goal(s):

Support:

Measures:

Actions:

FIGURE 33.2: SUCCESSION COACHING ACTION PLAN SAMPLE

1. Attend Investor Relations calls 2. Debrief typical calls with CFO 3. Make presentation in next month to

Investors

Business Leadership Behavior

Goal(s): Learn to respond to the investor community

Support:

Measures:

Actions:

• CFO and head of Investor Relations

• Able to tell the company story to investors

•

1. ideas/suggestions

2. Select suggestion(s) and agree with team on actions

3. Make presentation in next month to Investors

Goal(s): Get out of the details — less micromanaging

Support:

Measures:

Actions:

• Mini-survey with directs on progress

• Direct reports • HR leader

8 Coaching for Leadership

Another useful tool to have is a personal action plan for the leader to be suc- ceeded. At a minimum I use an action planning form. Essentially, it covers the support the leader will provide in each phase of the process and a section on their personal transition plan.

Phase 2—Organization Engagement Sometime during the fi rst six months or right at the four-month mark, it is time for the organization to make the announcement that your coachee is the formal successor. This adds another dynamic to the equation. Now organization members know who the successor is, and in the case of a C-suite succession, the board of the company will likely be involved as well as outside constituent groups. In the case of our manufacturing plant’s CFO, the investor community became very important. The coachee now has a broader community to address, and this community is sizing up the behav- ior and skills of this new leader and making comparisons with the leader who is leaving. At this juncture, the successor may be leading meetings that the departing leader used to lead. This can be a diffi cult challenge for both the successor and the departing leader. Sometimes it is hard for the leader to let go, as so much of a person’s identity can be tied to her job. Conversely, it is diffi cult for the coachee to step up, as the leader is still there. The coachee no doubt has things she will want to do differently, but is reluctant to do so until the existing leader leaves.

Let me give you a case in point. One of the best examples of successful lead- ership transition was when Jeff Immelt was appointed to succeed Jack Welch at GE. Even in this extremely well orchestrated transition, issues arose. Jack decided to stay on for a full year before he offi cially turned over the reins to Jeff. Though it was never openly said, it seemed a long time before Jeff could show who he was as a leader while he was still in Jack’s shadow. It may have appeared to organization participants that Jack could not let go and Jeff was stifl ed in moving the company forward in a direction that refl ected him as a leader. One of the early moves that Jeff made was to change the famous Jack Welch 4 E’s for leadership—Energy, Energize, Execution, and Edge—to his own Leadership Growth Traits, which were a bit less “edgy” than Jack’s leadership approach.

This story highlights the challenge for the coach: He must work closely with the departing leader to help him give the successor room to be herself while also “greasing the skids,” so the successor can be successful within the broader arena. This may mean that the leader must step down from certain meetings, or spend time behind the scenes coaching the new person himself on how to interact with

Coaching Executives for Succession 9

the respective new audiences. As a coach, you must recognize this to help the departing leader manage his own emotions and focus on the next phase of his life.

For coachees, behavior change and communication are all important. Their behavior is now viewed by a much larger audience. The coach supports succes- sors in thinking through the behavior they are working on in Phase 1 and how it will be seen by the larger organization. In addition, the coach helps them explore what the impact of this behavior will be in their new role if they don’t continue to work on it. The best way the coach can be supportive is through listening and enacting “behavioral rehearsals.” Behavioral rehearsals are sessions in which the coach and the coachee practice how to communicate messages to larger groups, to the board, and possibly to the CEO, depending on the role. Regular check- ins are essential to provide support through the changing environment. Think about the movie The King’s Speech: King George’s coach frequently helped the king rehearse how he was going to communicate with others. Rehearsing new behavior and presentations to larger audiences is essential.

Finally, in this phase leveraging the stakeholders for their perceptions of how the coachee is doing is critical. Checking in with these stakeholders every month will give the coachee, and the leader that he or she is succeeding, assurance that the process is going well or insight into what needs to be adjusted along the way. As with all coaching assignments, these regular stakeholder “check-ins” or “mini- surveys” are a great way to keep track of the coaching engagement, to jump-start it again if the process stalls, or to continue to energize the coachee around prog- ress.2 Along the way remember to:

• Review and revise the action plan as appropriate—particularly the business learning and integration section, as the business learning will shift through each phase.

• Assess the degree of behavior change and defi ne what else may be needed to reinforce that behavior change.

• Celebrate progress.

Phase 3—Assimilating into the New Role Now your coachee is the new leader. Your job is not over yet. The next phase of your coaching is to assist the new leader in assimilating with his or her team and assessing new behavior require- ments that will impact her success. Here is another example of how I combined

10 Coaching for Leadership

a “best practice” from GE that I implemented at HP and used in conjunction with Marshall’s behavioral coaching model used throughout the entire coaching engagement.3

This phase starts when the successor assumes the new role with a New Executive Assimilation (NEA) process. The process is as follows.

The leader informs her team (the direct reports) that they will be having a half-day session with the coach to discuss how they will work together for maxi- mum success. The coach then convenes the session without the leader in the room and asks a series of questions:

1. What do you know about the new leader? 2. What would you like to know that you don’t? 3. What would you like the new leader to know about you? 4. How would you like to communicate with the new leader? 5. What one piece of advice do you have for this leader? 6. What one behavior will be critical for them to demonstrate in this new role? 7. What are the three things that this team must accomplish this year to be

successful?

The coach facilitates this confi dential dialogue with the team and captures the main points. The coach is careful to ensure that everyone is heard and that all the burning issues get out on the table. Once the discussion is complete, I often ask, “If there was one question you would ask but have not, what would it be?” This can generate some interesting fi nal points that may prove useful.

Once this step is complete, they leave and I bring in the new leader privately to review and understand the data. I help her hear the context and nature of the issues. In particular I help her:

• See the themes • Understand the intensity of some of the issues raised • Formulate responses to the questions and thoughts to put forward • Rehearse the responses she will use with the group

Obviously, this is an important step for the new team to bond with their new leader. This action alone substantially jump-starts the team building process, which can take even more time without this crucial step. Personally, I never let a

Coaching Executives for Succession 11

new leader start a position unless they do an NEA shortly after they take over the role. I have seen measurable differences at HP and other companies that I have supported between leaders who use this process and those who don’t. Invariably, when a leader has chosen not to do an NEA, they have had to circle back and do some form of team building down the road. By then, relationships in some corners of the team have been damaged and the dynamics are less than optimal.

At this juncture, you have enough information from the NEA to review and revise the action plan. You may also work with the leader to refl ect on the stake- holders. At this point they may need to shift a bit. The new leader’s boss is differ- ent, as are the subordinates. It is also possible that a board member or two might be necessary as stakeholders. This will depend on the level of the leader. Now the process repeats itself. The new leader has a successor whom he or she should be thinking of supporting; he or she most likely has another new behavior to learn to continue to be successful, and perhaps some additional business exposure issues that need to be addressed. Revise the action plan accordingly, update the stake- holders, and track progress through the “mini-survey” process.

Parting Thoughts

Remember, in this process there is always the person being succeeded who needs to be considered. Help him engage actively in the process and in his own transi- tion. This creates a “win-win” for all parties involved. In many cases, the successor also has a successor he will need to help along the way. Behavior will be a big piece of the equation, but also business needs will be different as the coachee moves to a higher level and the coachee will need support and help here. Communication by the organization and the new leader will be crucial in this type of coaching. Be sure not to ignore this aspect of successful succession. Measuring and tracking progress is essential as is being transparent about the process, the progress and other important elements. Do not keep the coaching a secret and ensure your coachee is effectively and consistently communicating with stakeholders and other constituents where appropriate. This sends an important message to the organiza- tion’s members, investors, and board members that the company is systematic and serious about succession planning, leadership development, and leader success!

Finally, use this process and you will see that these approaches become a lifelong part of the coachee’s development. She has learned to ask for and accept

12 Coaching for Leadership

development feedback to help her improve regardless of where she is in her career or life. It will become part of her DNA as a leader. This aspect of her leadership can only help the organization and the teams they lead. Good luck and have fun with this approach; it is rewarding for all involved.

Notes

1. I learned this from Marshall Goldsmith, and it is outlined in his book, Succession Are You Ready: Memo to the CEO (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2010).

2. M. Goldsmith and H. Morgan, “Leadership Is a Contact Sport,” Strategy�Business 36 (2004): 71–79.

3. See the “Coaching for Behavioral Change” chapter by Marshall Goldsmith in Coaching for Leadership.

◆ ◆ ◆

Dr. Linda D. Sharkey is an HR executive and business strategist with extensive experience in Fortune 10 companies coaching, developing leaders and teams, and driving talent initiatives that support productivity and company growth. She is a founding member of the Marshall Goldsmith Group focused on helping suc- cessful executives become even more successful through executive assessment, coaching, and leadership development. Dr. Sharkey also leads a network of lead- ing companies on the topic of talent management, executive development, and culture change.

Prior to joining the Marshall Goldsmith Group, Linda was VP of People Development for HP and held executive Human Resource positions at GE. At GE she designed a high-impact leadership development initiative named a best practice by Jack Welch. Linda is widely published in the area of leadership devel- opment, culture change, and executive coaching. Most recently, she coauthored an acclaimed book on talent management and development entitled Optimizing Talent: What Every Leader and Manager Needs to Know to Sustain the Ultimate Workforce. Her new book Winning with Transglobal Leaders will be published in Spring 2012. She is frequently a keynote speaker at company events for Linkage, Talent Management Magazine conferences, Conference Board, ASTD, and the Organization Development Network. Linda holds her PhD from Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. Linda and her husband, Tom, live in Saratoga, California.

005c36.pdf

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

COACHING EXECUTIVES

Women Succeeding Globally

Nancy J. Adler

I used to question what executive coaches brought to clients that the execu-tives themselves didn’t already know from their own experience. Having had the privilege of coaching many executives, I now understand that the answer is perspective—a perspective beyond that of their own experience, organization, and culture. In particular, given my background, I almost always have the oppor- tunity to reframe issues in a broader, global perspective. More frequently today, I have the opportunity to reframe business realities that have previously been appreciated primarily from a man’s perspective into broader possibilities as seen from both men’s and women’s perspectives.

Part of bringing a broader perspective is to offer a context of meaning beyond each executive’s unique position, organization, and industry. By quietly asking questions that are beyond the bottom line, coaching dialogues offer oppor- tunities for executives to consider more consciously the types of contributions they are making to their companies and to choose the kinds of contributions they would like to be making more broadly for the betterment of the world. Examples of these questions include:

• “What does success mean to you?” • “In which ways does your work lead to your company doing well financially

and simultaneously doing good for society?” • “Why would your daughter be proud to tell her daughter about what you are

accomplishing?”

2 Coaching for Leadership

These questions often appear illegitimate when taken out of the privacy of the executive coaching dialogue. In the public glare of business-as-normal, such questions frequently fail to appear sufficiently pragmatic to warrant execu- tive time. And yet the conversations, reflection, and learning that such questions generate often bring soul, along with deep, personal motivation, back into the pragmatism of professionalism. Context, significance, and purpose are without counterparts in the pragmatism of successful careers, successful lives, and suc- cessful societies.

How Does Coaching Women Executives Differ from Coaching Men?

Although few people question that the economy has gone global, most assump- tions about building a global career and succeeding as a global executive remain based on the experience of men. Many of the most fundamental assumptions about executive success remain parochial—limited not only to the experience of men, but often to the experience of men working within their own home countries. If companies continue to believe current parochial assumptions about business success, few, if any, women will venture out into the world beyond their national borders, and even fewer will succeed once there. In these opening years of the twenty-first century, one of my roles has become coaching executive women to succeed in a global economy by going beyond the myths and errone- ous assumptions of history.

Because so few women worked as global managers in the twentieth century, let alone as global executives, ignorance and misleading myths abound. Not sur- prisingly, many women, especially in such English-speaking cultures as the United States, have been led to believe that they must emulate men to succeed. Fearing to differentiate themselves in any way from their successful male predecessors and contemporaries, many women become reticent to challenge openly the abundant myths about the barriers women supposedly face when attempting to conduct business abroad. One of the most valuable aspects of executive coaching, there- fore, has become the private space it creates for women managers and executives to ask such societally unacceptable questions as:

• “Is it true that businesswomen can’t succeed in the Middle East?” • “Will I insult the Arabs if I lead the negotiating team in Saudi Arabia?”

Coaching Executives 3

• “Is it true that our company’s expansion into South Asia will be jeopardized if I head up the project?”

• “Even if I succeed in getting the CEO to send me to Korea, will I fail once I’m there? I’ve heard that Korean businessmen just ignore women. Is it true that they never take a businesswoman seriously?”

• “Will our joint venture partners be annoyed when they see that my company has sent me as the lead engineer?”

• “Will men in Latin America really think that my company has sent me as some kind of sexual plaything? What do I need to do to get them to respect me?”

As I listen to women telling their stories and asking their “unaskable” ques- tions, my most frequent response is, “Why?” Why do you think that might happen to you? What reality do you want to be true for you? How can you go beyond all the negative scenarios of what you and others in your company imagine will occur? Why do you think foreigners will be more prejudiced against you than are some of the executives you have already successfully dealt with here at home? How can you go beyond history’s erroneous assumptions to create your own reality? In the privacy of executive coaching dialogues, we laugh, question, and explore a world that has literally been foreign to all too many women and companies. In the process, we lay to rest the misleading belief that women cannot succeed abroad or that, in order to succeed, they must act like men. Let me give a few examples.

Myth One: Global Experience Is Not That Important

Lisette, an executive in a major consumer products company with two teenagers in high school, recently turned down an assignment in Brussels. Annoyed with her, Lisette’s boss told her that he would not consider her for a senior vice presidency because she was not mobile. He emphasized that her promising career would plateau if she did not willingly move abroad to take the expatriate assignment.

Lisette challenges the importance of international experience. She knows that neither her boss, nor his boss—the CEO—have had much experience abroad beyond regularly boarding airplanes. Given that she is currently the high- est ranked woman in the company, the requirement that she gain international experience looks suspiciously like another hurdle her boss is putting in the way of her career progress—the latest hurdle defining the glass ceiling.

My response to Lisette’s angry phone call is a resounding, “No!” Business has gone global. Requiring international experience reflects neither sexism nor

4 Coaching for Leadership

a new variant of the glass ceiling. “Your boss is right. If you choose not to get international experience, it is you who are choosing to remain well below the glass ceiling. No man or woman should be promoted into the executive ranks of a major twenty-fi rst-century company without having a profound understand- ing and appreciation of global business dynamics. Your boss and the CEO grew their careers in another era, an era of domestic or, at most, multi-domestic busi- ness. Unless your aim is to progress backward through history and to attempt to have a parochial nineteenth- or twentieth-century career, you don’t dare consider limiting your experience to domestic, stay-at-home assignments.”

Lisette doesn’t like what I am saying, but she believes me. As an execu- tive coach, an outsider, she knows that I am on her side and that I will tell her the truth—even if it is an inconvenient truth that she would rather not hear. Recognizing the truth, however, does not imply resignation to a career stopped by a seemingly impenetrable global glass ceiling. The outwardly paradoxical question I raise with Lisette is: “How can you acquire significant global experi- ence while simultaneously keeping your commitment to not move abroad during your children’s formative high school years?” Asking such paradoxical questions as: “How can you both move abroad and not move abroad?” and then helping executives resolve them is a significant part of my executive coaching role.

Myth Two: Given Family Commitments, I Can’t Take a Global Assignment

In reflecting on her dilemma, Lisette realized that expatriation, though a very powerful way to gain global experience, was not the only alternative open to her. As we brainstormed options, Lisette discovered that she could increase her global experience significantly by participating on global task forces, increasing her international business travel, and—her most creative idea—taking short-term assignments in Europe and Asia while her two teenagers were away each summer at camp. For Lisette, as well as for many other executive women, the problem is the form in which global experience has traditionally been offered (expatriate assignments), not the requirement for global experience itself. The trap for Lisette would have been to reject global experience because it was offered in its tradi- tional, and to her unacceptable, form—as a three- to five-year expatriate assign- ment. The trap for me as a coach would have been to accept her boss’s definitions of reality, rather than helping Lisette to think beyond the mythology surrounding the corporation’s increasingly anachronistic requirements. As Lisette’s subsequent discussions with the CEO revealed, expatriation as a developmental strategy was

Coaching Executives 5

a better fit for the company’s needs in the past, when their business strategy required key executives to have an in-depth knowledge of only one foreign cul- ture. By contrast, today’s globally integrated transnational business strategies require key executives to understand multiple cultures and their interactions. The very option that Lisette was suggesting for herself—shorter-term exposure to mul- tiple countries—has actually become preferable in many cases to the company’s traditional emphasis on a single, longer-term expatriate assignment.

Myth Three: Being a Woman Is a Disadvantage for Global Managers Because Certain Cultures Make It Impossible for Women Executives to Succeed

This is a pervasive and erroneous myth that finds its way into the thinking of the vast majority of today’s executives, both male and female. Valana, a senior financial analyst for a major pharmaceutical company, was offered a regional vice presidency in Japan.

Given the company’s new startup operations in Pakistan, the position in Japan would involve considerable travel to this Islamic country. Valana felt simul- taneously excited and cautious. As a woman, would she be able to succeed in Japan and Pakistan, both countries reputed to act with hostility toward women managers and executives? She worried that if she openly raised her fears with her boss, he would change his mind and that, once again, the company would assume that it could not send women abroad. To make sure that she did not ruin the opportunity to work abroad for herself or for other women, she chose not to raise her concerns inside the company, but rather relied on the confidentiality inherent in the executive coaching relationship. She called me.

Valana’s initial fear was that no woman could succeed in Japan or Pakistan. Her real fear was that if she accepted the position, she would be setting herself up for failure. When I asked her why she believed she would fail in either of these two Asian countries, she immediately cited the cultural limitations placed on most women in Japan, as well as in most Islamic countries. Unconsciously, yet understandably, Valana had fallen into the Gaijin Trap. She had assumed that, as a woman, she would be treated similarly to the local Japanese and Pakistani women, few of whom are given the cultural latitude to succeed as executives in major multinational businesses. Her mistake was not in her statistics; she was right that there are still very few women executives in either country. Rather, her mistake was in overemphasizing the salience of being a woman. Based on the actual expe- rience of women executives who have worked abroad, we know that American

6 Coaching for Leadership

women are treated as foreigners who happen to be women. They are not treated in the same way as local women. Although both the Japanese and Pakistanis limit the roles that local women can take in business, neither culture confuses foreign women with local women. Valana’s freedom to succeed lies in the fact that she is visibly foreign. The mistake for Valana would be to assume that the Japanese could not tell that she is not Japanese (or that the Pakistanis could not tell that she is not Pakistani); they can.

To get accurate tips on how to succeed in such cultures, I suggested that Valana restrict her advice gathering to conversations with other North American and European women who have worked for major global companies in Japan or Pakistan. From them she could learn the nuances of showing respect in each culture without limiting her own success. I strongly advised that she disregard suggestions made by both men and women who had not had direct experience with women working in the particular countries in which she would be working. Without direct experience, even the best-intentioned colleagues unconsciously pass on myths disguised as advice. The only thing that eradicates the myth that women cannot succeed abroad—and, simultaneously, the fear that such myths engender in both women executives and the companies that hesitantly consider sending them on global assignments—is learning about the actual experiences of women executives who have worked abroad—the majority of whom have suc- ceeded. (See Adler, 1994, for further research on this topic.)

In the next couple of weeks, Valana did talk with many such women, coming back to me frequently to ask whether I thought their suggestions would be rele- vant for her. Among her many questions, Valana asked if it were true that women executives did not have to stay up drinking until late into the night in order to do business with Japanese fi rms. My answer: “Absolutely true.” Whereas male business behavior in Japan is fairly codified and usually includes a lot of business entertainment and drinking, the newness of women conducting significant busi- ness in Japan means that male/female business behavior has yet to become rigidly codified. Given the ambiguity at this point in history, women have more latitude than do men to conduct business in ways that feel most comfortable to them. As one highly successful American woman executive, who had been based out of Tokyo for years, laughingly related to me, “Among all of my male colleagues, I am the only one who has consistently maintained great relationships with Japanese clients without needing to put my liver in jeopardy! I can get away with conduct- ing business over lunch and a Perrier; the men can’t.”

Coaching Executives 7

Myth Four: Public Is Public, and Private Is Private; to Be Taken Seriously, a Woman Executive Must Hide Her Role as a Wife and Mother

The myth, albeit false, is that foreigners will not take a businesswoman seriously unless she is completely focused on work. American women, who come from one of the most task-oriented cultures in the world, often fall into the trap of attempt- ing to emulate American businessmen. They try to focus almost exclusively on business—to the detriment of both their worldwide business success and their private lives.

Perhaps one particularly successful businesswoman’s experience says it all. On a business trip to Hong Kong, Katia, a marketing vice president for a global telecommunications firm, was negotiating her first major contract with a con- sortium of Thai, Malaysian, and Chinese companies. The negotiations were not going very well and looked to be in jeopardy. At a particularly tense moment in the deliberations, Katia glanced at her watch, stood up, and apologized for need- ing to take a ten-minute break. While receiving quizzical looks from the group of men, she explained that it was bedtime for her seven-year-old daughter, back home in Chicago, and that she always called to say good night to her daughter, no matter where she was in the world.

Returning ten minutes later, Katia was surprised to discover that the tension around the negotiating table had melted. As she entered the room, the Thai exec- utive asked how her daughter was doing, the lead Chinese negotiator asked Katia if she had a picture of her daughter, and the other negotiators expressed how difficult they imagined it must be for a mother to be so far away from her daugh- ter. After this brief exchange of warm interest and concern, the negotiations continued, now clearly with a focus on efficiently finding a mutually beneficial agreement. At noon the following day, the negotiation that had appeared irrevers- ibly stuck came to a successful conclusion.

Most women from Anglo-Saxon cultures, and especially those from the United States, have been coached by their colleagues to separate their private lives from their professional lives. To succeed abroad, however, these same women need to unlearn the advice they have received from their Anglo-Saxon colleagues. Unlike the task-orientation of Anglo-Saxon countries, most countries in the world emphasize relationship building. In countries such as China, Malaysia, and Thailand, people will only conduct business with people they know, like, and trust. Revealing who you are as a whole person—including unmasking some aspects of your private life—allows colleagues from relationship-building cultures to get

8 Coaching for Leadership

to know you, and, therefore, to want to do business with you. It is not that people from relationship-oriented cultures aren’t concerned about accomplishing the task; they are. It’s just that relationships must precede task. Katia’s relationship with her daughter added the dimension of wholeness that she needed to succeed.

Katia laughs today that a number of her women friends, who are also global executives, now carry pictures of their children very visibly in their business-card cases. Why? Because from the first moment of contact, clients know that they are whole people—wives, mothers, and businesswomen.

Executive Coaching: Reaching Beyond the Myths of History

The privacy of coaching sessions makes it easier for executives to say, “I’m not certain . . . I just don’t know. . . .” Privacy and supportive advocacy legitimize moments of not knowing. Premature certainty and commitment extinguish inno- vative possibilities. For both women and men, coaching dialogues can foster a depth of questioning that allows executives to escape the bounded thinking of their own professional, organizational, and national cultures. For women, coaching sessions encourage exploring alternatives that reach beyond the accepted “wis- dom” of successful men who have worked worldwide, primarily with other men. At their very best, coaching sessions provide the time, space, and learning oppor- tunities that allow executives to offer profound and wise counsel to themselves.

Reference

Nancy J. Adler and Dafna N. Izraeli (eds), Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy, (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1994).

◆ ◆ ◆

Nancy J. Adler is the S. Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University, Canada. She conducts research and consults worldwide on global leadership. She has authored 125 articles, produced two films, and published ten books and edited volumes. She is a Fellow of the Academies of Management and International Business, and the Royal Society of Canada. She is also a visual artist. Nancy J. Adler can be contacted at: [email protected].

001c32.pdf

Y CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TEN SUGGESTIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL PEER COACHING

By Dr. Robert M. Fulmer and John E. Brock

OK! “Suggestions” isn’t quite as strong as “commandments” for a title. Although we have research-based data to support our conclusions, we do lack divine, mountaintop revelations or tablets of stone. Still, peer coaching is clearly an emerging strategy used to develop leaders and establish a coach- ing culture in organizations—especially in high-tech fi rms.1 A peer-coaching relationship can be less expensive than professional executive coaching, often is more intimate and honest when compared to a boss-subordinate relationship, and provides a more diverse perspective to issues and needs. It also places coach- ing at a collegial level, and builds coaching skills as part of a developmental experience.

Research Overview

One of the principal fi ndings in a recent study conducted in collaboration with Duke Corporate Education, Human Resource Forums, and Bay Area Executive Development Network was that “most companies want and need to create coach- ing cultures, but struggle to build it into the corporate DNA.” The respondents were clear: Leaders and team members recognize the need for coaching to help them succeed in their work and careers. They are not quite so sure about why they should be involved in the coaching process.

2 Coaching for Leadership

We discovered two reasons for the coaching capability gap. First, most leaders are problem solvers who are rewarded for their expertise. Altera’s Kevin Lyman suggests that the company culture has typically been a “master/apprentice” arrangement in which the apprentice learns but is often dependent upon his or her technical or functional leader to give guidance and be the expert solution provider. Many leaders mistakenly call this coaching. Unfortunately this approach creates a dependency model rather than an empowered organization culture.

Second, a coaching capability gap also exists because many organizations reward their leaders for individual achievement rather than how well they have enabled and developed others. At Microsoft, there is a major emphasis on individual commitments as the key measurement of performance and advance- ment. Sue Larson explains: “The focus is on shipping products or on getting things done . . . but there isn’t as much focus on my role as a senior leader in developing the talent below me.”

If you are hired and rewarded for being the smartest person in the room, where’s the incentive to enable and instill this capability in others? The key to developing a coaching mindset is for leaders to be recognized and rewarded for making the transition from being “all knowing” to being “all developing.”

Our research revealed three strategies for building a coaching culture. The fi rst focuses on development for coaching skills in leaders through programs and training. Indeed, this was the second-highest ranked approach for developing leaders in the study. Yet few organizations are satisfi ed with the return on this investment. IBM’s Beach reports: “We have coaching workshops . . . but the practice of coaching is not as pervasive as it needs to be. We don’t use the skills enough, and we don’t give leaders enough utilization time to do it.”

Efforts to develop coaching skills are important, but programs without a sup- portive organization climate are likely to create frustration.

The second strategy introduces the benefi ts of coaching through bringing expertise from outside the fi rm with external executive coaches. Firms famil- iar with outsourcing production fi nd this a natural solution. This approach has merit but increases cost, lacks scalability, and doesn’t develop internal coaching capability.

Peer coaching is the third and most rapidly growing strategy. Many fi rms have found success and improved program ratings from involving their leaders in this approach. In many company cultures, this can be much more accepted and respected than using outsiders. Microsoft uses peer coaching in both its high- potential and college hire programs. Shannon Wallis, who runs the high-potential

Ten Suggestions for Successful Peer Coaching 3

program, explains: “Peer coaching works particularly well for the millennial gen- eration. They don’t feel intimidated by it . . . Structured peer coaching . . . ensures learning and feedback beyond specifi c educational events and gives participants an opportunity to share their Microsoft work and career experience in a way that is not afforded by a manager/subordinate relationship.”

Microsoft creates opportunities for this type of coaching and uses a rigor- ous peer-coaching process that encourages participants to hone coaching skills with program peers. The most productive topics for this approach include career advancement, handling diffi cult team members, managing up, and strategic infl u- ence. Peer coaching is popular and successful at Microsoft where leaders see the benefi ts of coaching and being coached. Peer coaching may be an optimum strat- egy for introducing coaching skills and building a coaching culture and mindset.

Peer coaches cannot be expected to have the same coaching skills, or even to use the same techniques, as experienced professional coaches. They need guidelines and techniques that are relatively simple to understand and imple- ment. We will introduce key techniques for effective nondirective peer coaching; however, peer coaches should develop a coaching mindset in their work. This includes showing commitment to the goals, questioning that leads the coachee to make and assume responsibility for choices (rather than dialogue that leads to the coach’s solution), and an intention to assist the coachee in learning rather than teaching. Frequently, an outside professional coach can be helpful in teaching and guiding the beginning efforts of peer coaches.

The GROW Model

The essential activities of coaching were originally described in the GROW model, a simple but powerful framework developed by Sir John Whitmore to guide coaches in structuring conversations.2 Other authors in this book are likely to cover this or other guides for coaching activity in greater detail, so we will provide an abbreviated description of the GROW model, representing stages of a coaching conversation. A coach assists clients in:

1. Goals: identifying and clarifying goals of the coaching conversation and lon- ger-term goals;

2. Reality: describing the reality surrounding each goal, including previous efforts, anticipated obstacles, and feedback;

4 Coaching for Leadership

3. Options: exploring potential actions and alternatives for pursuing the goal, and the reality surrounding those actions; and

4. What is to be done, when, by whom, and the will to do it: making the goal a pri- ority, identifying the support needed, and committing to take concrete actions.

A coaching conversation typically centers on some of these elements. A coach asks questions and guides conversation that help clarify and choose what the goal is, understand reality as it relates to the goal, generate and examine options to it, and then choosing what is to be done, when, by whom.

The Ten Suggestions

While the GROW model describes the essence of what a coach does, the follow- ing best practices can help a new peer coach understand how to use the model effectively in leading coaching conversations—and to be more successful in this key leadership skill.

1. Practice inquiry and active listening rather than giving advice or problem solving. Inquiry is simply asking questions using the four elements of the GROW model as a guide. Active listening is seeking to understand what is being said and restating or paraphrasing what was heard in order to check understand- ing. Whereas problem solving and advice involve the coach in developing ideas and solutions, active listening is more effective because it provides the coachee with space to generate insights and develop goal-focused plans.

Active listening is easy in role playing, but diffi cult in an actual conversa- tion without practice and conscious intention. Practicing this skill in routine conversations, as well as coaching projects, will prepare you to combine active listening and inquiry with the GROW model.

2. Practice visual thinking3 (also called picture thinking). Visual thinking is a pro- cess of starting without assumptions and forming a picture (without words) in your mind of what another person is telling you, then asking questions that will help you complete the picture. Thinking in pictures can allow you to process information more quickly and accurately, while enhancing the abil- ity to understand complexity. Try to start without seeing pictures that refl ect your own assumptions, beliefs, hypotheses, biases, judgments, or comparisons. Listen only to what the other person says, picture it without adding details,

Ten Suggestions for Successful Peer Coaching 5

and ask questions that complete the picture. This method precludes the use of a questionnaire as the queries must be motivated by curiosity about what is said.

For example, a colleague begins a conversation by reporting diffi culty in motivating a direct report. Without using visual thinking, I immediately use my “vast knowledge and experience of motivating people” and consider all the knowledge I have about that person or my assumptions about him. This “imagined” sketch of the person provides a whole set of assumptions, beliefs, and preconceptions. Almost immediately, I am halfway to “solving” the prob- lem—unencumbered with little actual knowledge. This solution is likely to be inappropriate and robs the coachee of a true learning experience.

By using visual thinking to guide the same conversation, the process moves without preconceptions, assumptions, or beliefs about the direct report or the situation, potential solutions, or my theories. Instead, picture a blank sketch of the parties in the situation. The fi rst questions may be the same as without visual thinking, but the thought process and the conversation will take different paths as you develop a picture of the people and the problem. You may ask questions such as: “What would it look like if he were moti- vated? What would he be doing differently?” “What does it look like when he is unmotivated?” “What else does he do?” “Why is he not doing what you want?” “What have you tried to motivate him?” “Did he do anything differ- ently?” “Why?” This process continues until you have a vivid picture of the current situation. Be careful to avoid assuming more than what the colleague says. She will need to describe her options in suffi cient detail for you to picture the employee’s possible responses. At the end of the conversation, she may not have a clear solution, but at least she will have thought through the issue, clari- fying an appropriate goal and actions that may achieve the goal with a better degree of clarity than would have evolved with a more directive approach.

Using visual thinking is a journey of discovery rather than a journey of confi rmation. Hypotheses only muddy the water. Stay open to knowing who the person is, what they want, and why by understanding their “reality.”

3. Insist on an overarching goal at the beginning of the coaching relationship and an objective for each conversation. A few points on goals and objectives may be helpful:

a. Two parties begin a coaching relationship by establishing a contract in which they agree on the overarching goal(s), and time frame of their work together. This goal must be chosen by the coachee rather than imposed.

6 Coaching for Leadership

A coachee who is going through the motions to satisfy someone else or to meet a requirement will not bring the same energy and attention to the work as one who is focused on achieving an important result.

b. The objective of each conversation should be in support of the overarch- ing goal as chosen by the coachee.

c. Encourage a tie between goals and objectives to specifi c desired out- comes. For example, “I want to be more effective at sharing my thinking about decisions with team members” is a more productive goal state- ment than “I don’t want my team to be confused about why I made this decision.”

When coachees state a goal, ask them to imagine that the goal is fully realized, then follow with “What would achieving this goal actually get you?” This question can be repeated until the answer is intrinsically important rather than a means to an end. By connecting goals to desired outcomes, the coachee develops clearer focus and priorities.

Throughout the coaching process, continue to use the GROW model as a guide rather than challenging the coachee. The primary function of coach- ing is not to challenge people to do something better or differently. People who have voluntarily entered a coaching agreement need to be heard and questioned skillfully rather than constantly challenged. By effectively creat- ing the parameters of the coaching agreement, both parties are aligned to achieve the same goal. The coach’s job is to remain curious and ask questions about the goal and the reality surrounding that goal, discuss optional paths to achieve the goal, inquire about the coachee’s willingness to take the actions to reach it, and agree on how to be accountable. The coachee is better served by your remaining in the role of a curious and very active listener than by constant challenging. “Help me understand” is more effective than “why in the world did you . . .”

4. Be judicious in sharing information, tools, or your perspective. Coachees should proba- bly talk two or three times as much as the coach. When and how often to share your thoughts will depend on the coachee, the situation, and on your experi- ence and knowledge of the specifi c situation. A good rule for any coach is to ask only open-ended questions. By practicing this approach, the coach stays in a facilitating role rather than being the “expert.” Try to offer information, tools, or perspective only when absolutely necessary. Coaching is an unnatural

Ten Suggestions for Successful Peer Coaching 7

conversation that calls on the coach to assist others primarily through effective listening and questioning.

Often, a coachee will ask, “What would you do?” or “What do you think I should do?” Again, resist the urge to provide an answer and ask what they would like to do or continue to ask questions exploring the goal and reality of the situation. These questions will help generate new insights and options.

5. Focus on clear distinctions. Coaching is often about helping others make and adopt clear distinctions that will assist them in achieving their goals. For exam- ple, a coaching conversation about motivating others might include distinc- tions between leadership and management, between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, or between making a personal choice to pursue a goal versus an imposed goal.

Similarly, any coaching conversation may involve developing a clear dis- tinction between objective reality and subjective perceptions, assumptions, conjecture, and fantasies, or between what she can infl uence and what is out- side her infl uence. Focusing on obstacles versus focusing on a goal is another critical decision in goal setting. A conversation about leadership, politics, or change could require a clear distinction between abuse of power and intel- ligent use of power.

At a deeper level, distinctions between obsession and an appropriate level of attention on problems or goals may come into play. Common obsessions include business problems but often include resentment of others or a fi xa- tion on protecting or enhancing personal image. A coach who sees the need to make such a distinction clear must do so carefully, of course, without judg- ment, and keeping responsibility for judgment and decision making squarely with the coachee.

6. Confidentiality and integrity are paramount in any coaching relationship. In a peer- coaching relationship, these qualities are exponentially more diffi cult than a relationship between a manager and an external coach. In peer coaching, both parties must share responsibility for defining what information is to remain private, what cannot remain private because of responsibilities to the organization, and what information is impossible to hold in absolute confi - dentiality because the information may infl uence future decisions. Both par- ties also share an additional responsibility to avoid sharing information that could put the other in an awkward position. Discussion of confi dentiality in a

8 Coaching for Leadership

peer-coaching relationship should occur frequently to ensure that both parties are clear on the boundaries.

Discussing disagreements or people problems are common issues in coaching and can present the full range of confi dentiality issues. Talking carelessly about other people can lead to damaged reputations, create bar- riers to effective collaboration and communication, and generate distrust. However, conversations about dealing with others can be handled in a way that maintains trust and integrity. The key is to examine reality by ask- ing the coachee to identify and consider the interests, views, assumptions, and capabilities of others as they relate to the situation being discussed. By bringing in these perspectives, your conversation is grounded in real- ity rather than opinion and conjecture. Thus, you give credence to other points of view, and your coachee can discuss the confl ict or disagreement without unfairly maligning the other party or avoiding responsibility by placing blame.

7. See reality as it is, not as you wish (or fear). Work with data and avoid letting hearsay, assumptions, opinions, or fantasies hijack the coaching conversation. Here are a few areas where beliefs and desires outside objective reality may be discussed if they are or will become reality:

a. A desire for someone to be different from who he or she is, or for their decisions, interests, and goals to be different from what they actually are.

b. A wish for circumstances to be different from reality. c. Beliefs about one’s own strengths or limitations, or those of others. d. Inaccurate beliefs about what is (or is not) within one’s control.

Unchecked assumptions, inferences, and biases should be always be ques- tioned or verifi ed. Ask how your coachee knows “this” to be true. Ask ques- tions like “What did you see, hear, or read to reach this conclusion?” Discover the underlying thinking by asking, “Tell me about your thought process . . . I am curious if you made an assumption or inference to reach that conclusion.” If appropriate, ask “Is there another meaning or interpretation you could make from this data?” Encourage the acceptance of “reality” (what they have actually seen or heard) and uncover other possibilities by asking exploratory questions. Don’t forget that emotions are implicitly a valid part of reality and who we are. Encourage, accept, and explore the coachee’s expression of feel- ings, perceptions, and concerns.

Ten Suggestions for Successful Peer Coaching 9

8. Address potential obstacles to action plans. Ask what obstacles might prevent success in taking the action being discussed. To help realistically predict obstacles, ask, “If we are talking about this in two weeks, what might prevent you from taking the planned action?”

Obstacles may not be intellectually challenging, but dealing with them involves taking the time to anticipate, making a plan to deal with them, and taking actions consistent with the plan. Sometimes, it may feel unnecessary or even overly negative to ask about obstacles; however, providing space to recognize obstacles and plan appropriate actions is a key part of the coaching conversation. Frequently, goals are not achieved because of small things that could be easily addressed. Peer-coaching conversations can help identify the need to take these seemingly small actions.

9. Build in accountability. To support the coachee in achieving goals and following through on commitments to action, always make a note of the commitments and goals that have been created. Follow up in the next conversation to see if the action was taken and what results ensued. You can also help the person you are coaching by encouraging them to develop a habit of holding them- selves accountable for commitments. Encourage them to establish reminders, mileposts, or metrics to remind and reinforce the agreements they make to themselves and others.

10. Feedback provides learning for everyone. Peer coaching provides a unique oppor- tunity for both parties to give and receive feedback. Build observation and feedback into plans to work together. If you have diffi cult feedback or lots of feedback, schedule a separate meeting for providing the feedback and helping the coachee understand it.

Remember that you are also part of the learning process. Ask for feed- back on your coaching. “What could I do next time to be a better coach for you?” might open the door for more receptiveness in exchanging meaningful feedback. Your willingness to accept feedback is likely to increase openness of your partner.

There are many causes of ineffective feedback, including lack of trust in the relationship or in the intentions of the person delivering or receiving the feedback. A coach’s preparation for a conversation involving feedback should include asking, “What is my intention in providing this feedback? Am I giving this feedback in order to advance my own goals, hurt someone, unfairly boost the other person’s self-esteem, or to save face?”

10 Coaching for Leadership

Conclusion

Peer coaching is an increasingly important and popular means of building coaching skills and creating a culture of positive development. The skills are similar to any coaching assignment but can be less expensive and a learning/ developmental experience for all parties. Thousands of pages have been written on effective coaching, as they have with the original “Ten Commandments.” Our suggestions may lack the authority of the original and are not likely to be the last word on the subject, but they can point the way to the Promised Land of successful coaching.

Notes

1. Robert M. Fulmer and Brian Hanson, “Developing High Tech Leaders: What’s Different and What Works,” HR People and Strategy 33, no. 3 (2010).

2. Sir John Whitmore, Coaching For Performance (Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2002). 3. Robert, Fritz Elements: The Writings of Robert Fritz (Newfane, VT: Newfane Press, 2007).

◆ ◆ ◆

Dr. Robert M. Fulmer is academic director of Duke Corporate Education and has held endowed professorships at Trinity University, the College of William & Mary, and Pepperdine University. He is author or coauthor of over 150 published articles and forty books, monographs, and editions. He has conducted executive programs or coaching assignments in twenty-fi ve countries.

John E. Brock is an independent executive coach and leadership develop- ment consultant in Durham, North Carolina. He is also a coach and facilita- tor in leadership programs for Duke Corporate Education, where he previously directed the development of custom programs for the world’s leader in executive education.

Discussion 7.docx

· Discussion 7.1 - Needs Assessment

· Jones and Brinkert, Chapter 13

· Stober and Grant, Chapter 9

· Discuss why needs assessments and program evaluations are integral to a successful conflict coaching program

· Discuss how behavioral assessments aid the conflict coach in achieving needed behavioral change

· Explain why cultural influences matter in conflict coaching processes

· Discuss the importance of evaluating conflict coaching programs

· Explain why process evaluation and outcome evaluation are dichotomous

Explain how quantitative and qualitative data can be used in a conflict coaching event

http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-4/conflict.html

Brinkert, R. (2006). Conflict coaching: Advancing the conflict resolution field by developing an individual disputant process. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 23(4), 517-528.

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2011/07/26/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-360d-evaluations/

Conflict coaches need to gather information to make decisions about whether to engage in conflict coaching, how to engage in conflict coaching, and to prove that they have positive results from conflict coaching. To accomplish this, coaches conduct needs assessments; program, process, and outcome evaluations; and individual behavioral assessments. Needs Assessment: Needs Assessors should contact stakeholders to determine their interest in conflict coaching and consider available resources for the conflict coaching practice. Program Evaluation: Conflict coaches need to evaluate whether their coaching practice is working for them. There are several reasons to evaluate your conflict coaching program:

· Monitoring a program to make sure it is operating as planned

· Improving a program by identifying strengths and weaknesses

· Expanding a program

· Gaining additional resources

Process evaluation: focuses on how well key processes are being conducted including:

· Assessment Process

· Planning Process

· Orientation Process

· Selection Process

· Coaching Training Process

· Coaching Program Implementation Process

· Program Maintenance Process

· Context/Environmental Factors

Outcome evaluation: focuses on whether, and to what extent specific, tangible goals and objectives established for the program are achieved. The crux of outcome evaluation is twofold: (1) to document what happened in terms of utility or frequency (as opposed to how it happened in process evaluation) and (2) to document what changed as a result of the program. There are five general kinds of outcomes that most programs are interested in at some level.

· Skills/Abilities learned

· Attitudes changed

· Behaviors changed

· Program utility

· Resources created

Psychological Behavior Assessments: Last week we reviewed the MBTI Behavior Type assessment. Going forward we examine the FIRO-B, Strongs, KAI, Baron-On EQi, Voice Leadership, and DISC assessments. Some are self-scored assessments and some are 360 degree assessments where folks in the workplace also score the individual for a complete (360 degree evaluation) of individual performance.

Behavioral and needs assessments and program evaluation data are important tools in marketing the nature and success of a conflict coaching practice. We need to understand the different styles of behavior, how individuals with each of these styles behave, and subsequently learn how to communicate with those who behave, think, and relate differently. We must learn to give merit to and respect differing perspectives. Ethics, Morals, and Cultural Values Ethics, morals and values are inextricably different yet closely linked. They are often inappropriately used interchangeably. Do not make the mistake of assuming your coaching clients hold the same standard of ethics, morals, and values as you or their counterparts. Ethics are broadly applied social standards linked to right and wrong; they grow out of particular philosophies accepted by individual societies. A society is nothing more than an ordered community. It can be a group (like a work group) or it can be a community of people in a town, region, or country. Hofestede and Hofestede (2005) define values as the core of culture; i.e., the culture of an organization, of a nation, of a country, or of a population within that country. Values are polarized feelings with dimension: evil vs. good, dirty vs. clean, dangerous vs. safe, forbidden vs. permitted. Hofestede cautions folks not to burden an individual with the values of their respective culture. If you have a Japanese worker, do not assume that individual holds true to the Japanese cultural values. In other words, do not brand the individual. Morals are individual and personal beliefs tied to a singular person. While a culture's core is based on values, individuals' morals determine their behavior. Ultimately, one's cultural values influence one's behavior. One's personal morals may differ from their respective cultural values. As a culture, the American people have accepted abortion as ethically acceptable, yet many individual Americans consider abortion morally wrong. While the general population may accept abortion as ethically correct, a woman's personal morals or religious ethics may dissuade her from seeking abortion for an unwanted pregnancy. Or even though her religious ethics may preclude the abortion option, her personal morals may allow her to, in good conscience, obtain an abortion under particular conditions that fall outside of her respective religious paradigm. All psychologically healthy Americans value life. The degree to which we, as a people value life drives our behaviors in public, yet not our personal morals. Clear as muddy water? Ethics, morals, and values are separate concepts, yet they are not mutually exclusive. These concepts are difficult issues when blended together, especially when clients do not openly address the concepts. When negotiating outcomes with your coaching client, the key to these three issues (cultural values, ethics, and personal morals) is to identify the boundaries and expectations of each involved party early on so the parties act within the agreed upon borders. What is the bottom line? You cannot control others' behaviors, you can only control your own. People tend to mirror each other's attitudes and emotions. The best you can do is to model the behavior you seek. If you find yourself at odds with another person's behavior or ethical standards, sometimes your best recourse is to walk away from the relationship or try to engage with a different person/manager of like moral and ethical standards. Find one who shares your perspectives. ____________________________________________ Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (2nd ed.). San Francisco: McGraw Hill.

Discussion 7.2 - Models and Coaching for Leadership Goldsmith, Lyons & McArthur (2012) review coaching models for leadership, discuss peer-coaching, and explain why 360 assessments can be unreliable. Choose two concepts from each chapter and explain how organizational leaders may apply them as a means of productively managing conflict. Use real world examples to cite application and reference the text material.

Article Review

This is to be a three-to-five page, double-spaced paper (750 - 1250 words). Objective Article reviews are purposed to help you learn how to research scholarly information, write in the APA style, and broaden your knowledge base of course subjects that help you succeed in the business world. Project Criteria

. Scoring depends on linking the subject to course concepts, life-examples, completeness of assignment, professionalism, and grammar. You must post a copy of your scholarly article (not just the link) in the same drop box as your written article review. Your articles may not come from a generalized Google search, magazine, trade journals, newspaper articles, or blog source. You must use either the Sullivan Library online resources or Google Scholar to research academic or scholarly peer reviewed articles. If the article does not have a list of resources at the end of the article, then it likely is not peer reviewed or from a professional journal. If you have questions about whether your resources meet the requirments, please ask before you submit your article review. If you need research help, please contact the library. Failure to use a peer-reviewed journal article results in a zero. If you have found a resource you would like to use and are unsure if it qualifies, please ask before posting your submission. If you need research help, view these library tutorials or contact the library. Papers are checked for plagiarism, so please make sure it is your own work. Process Synthesize the research material and link it to the course content using the following guidelines.

· Summarize the article (don't just copy it into your paper, but put in your own words).

· Offer your insights into the article. This should include new learnings, what you agree or disagree with and "ah-ha" moments, etc.

· The best article reviews also tie the article to the materials we have learned in class. Focus equal attention on each of the two sections (summary and insights).

· Discuss the relevancy of your new material to the course material and conflict coaching methodologies.

This is to be a three-to-five page, double-spaced paper (750 - 1250 words). I am looking for substance and linkage to the course concepts, not personal opinion or filler rhetoric. Do not merely provide a series of direct quotes...synthesize the material using your own words so other students can gain from your work. Be explicit enough that I can tell you have mastered the concept or material in the article you reviewed.

004c35.pdf

Y CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

LEADERSHIP AND POWER

Where Responsibility Makes the Difference

Bruce Lloyd

An enormous amount of sociological literature is to be found on power, but little relates to management issues of responsibility, leadership, or learning. Many publications exist on leadership, yet sadly only a few discuss the nature and role of power. Even fewer consider the relationships between power, responsibil- ity, and learning. Writings on learning abound, but very few consider the nature of power and its abuse in a learning context. Ethics is an emerging leadership topic that promises to bridge these concepts. But a satisfactory analysis of the use and abuse of power by a responsible business leader in a learning context is only now starting to emerge.

Leaders—and those who coach them—have a duty to use power responsibly. Some common understanding of the relationships, interactions, and dynamics of power are vital prerequisites to support this high aim.

Coaching redefi nes the way we look at responsibility, leadership, learning, and our legitimate use of power—at a truly fundamental level. The coaching approach enables leaders to transform their organizations into ones in which personal accountability, creativity, risk taking, and achieving business results are hallmarks. Coaching is not power-neutral. Coaching determines a complex power relationship based on openness and merit.

2 Coaching for Leadership

Coaching for Leadership

Coaching is the methodology for shifting a culture of “power over” people to one in which “power within” people is unleashed. It provides the vehicle for organiza- tional learning to take place and for the honest interests of all stakeholders to be actively pursued by individuals throughout the enterprise. By applying coaching methods, we facilitate the corning-of-age of a new organization model, one in which responsibility, leadership, and learning have exciting new meanings, and in which power is always released in order to enable, never to constrain.

Power

If we are to understand organizations we must understand the nature of power and infl uence, for they are the means by which the people of the organization are linked to its purpose. (Handy, 1985)

But what is power?

A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do. (Dahl, 1957)

And

They will say anything and do almost anything to hang onto power. (Kaletsky, 1994)

These comments are typical of the management literature on power. They reinforce the prevailing concept of power as illegitimate behavior designed to benefit self-interest rather than organizational goals. Occasionally it is recognized that:

The responsible use of power is a concern to all sectors of society. Somehow we need to marry the understanding and use of power with an appreciation of its consequences on those on the receiving end of it . . . to fi nd new ways to understand and act on the power structures of which we are all an inevitable part. (Hardy, 1995)

Leadership and Power 3

It is not surprising that power has been, and still is, a highly negative force in many organizations. Employees feel intimidated because they have little recourse for what they consider to be essentially arbitrary and potentially painful decisions. This reaction has led to a greatly increased concern over issues such as bullying in the workplace.

Whether power takes a constructive or destructive course depends primarily on whether it occurs in a cooperative or competitive situation. When people feel united in a common effort, they build up each other’s power and use it to achieve their common goals. When they feel competitive, they undermine each other’s confi dence and power. Unfortunately, it is often assumed that power inevitably involves a win-lose struggle. It should not be surprising to fi nd that severe alien- ation can easily lead to the generation of conditions for radical, or revolutionary, ways of redistributing power. In essence, history is the study of the use and abuse of power, and is at the core of understanding the rise and fall of organizations, public or private.

This analysis leads us to the conclusion that power has primarily been a self-focused or ego-driven preoccupation with the ability to make things hap- pen. Under these circumstances it usually has a short-term focus, and it will almost inevitably be abused, corrupt, corrupting, or corrupted. On the other hand, power that is concerned with accepting a wider sense of responsibility (that is, power that is essentially “others” focused) is more likely to have a long-term focus and incorporate a broader consideration of stakeholder interests in any decision-making process. In the end, power is about the ability to make choices, and its effective use requires a detailed stakeholder analysis of the potential impact of decisions on all those involved.

Responsibility

A responsibility approach has at its starting point the question, “In whose interests are the changes being made?” This question establishes a relationship between power and responsibility, in which power is defi ned as “the opportunity to exer- cise responsibility.” Next, the effective exercise of power requires an answer to the question, “What is in the long-term interests of the organization for which I am acting?”

To be effective over the long term, leaders must be concerned with issues associated with responsibility rather than issues associated with power. Before

4 Coaching for Leadership

going further, it is useful to consider some of the issues associated with the concept of responsibility.

A considerable amount of management literature focuses on responsibility.

Corporate responsibility continues to mean many things to us. It is the fair and equitable treatment of all our stakeholders, including associates, shareholders, customers, and suppliers. It is our sense of concern for all the well-being of the public at large and for our environment. And it is the time and money that we contribute toward strengthening the communities where we do business. (Brennan, 1994, 11)

The link between rights and responsibilities is emphasized by Brauer (1993): “When we speak of human rights, we should also speak of human responsibili- ties. . . . It is no use clamoring for human rights if we are not prepared to accept our human duties.”

Companies cannot expect to operate a responsibility-driven policy unless top management is seen setting an example—refl ecting two key elements of lead- ership: good practice and the ability to communicate that practice effectively. “Companies are part of society and have to behave responsibly. They have to take account of the views and contributions of their employees and customers” (Davies, 1995).

In a major report to the Royal Society of Arts, George Bull (1995), group chief executive of Grand Metropolitan, maintained: “Increasingly, business peo- ple are recognizing that their prosperity is directly linked to the prosperity of the whole community. The community is the source of their customers, their employ- ees, their suppliers and, with the wider spread of share ownership, their investors.” The report itself emphasized the importance of a stakeholder approach—the central idea of the “inclusive” company that values all its stakeholders. The report concluded: “There is clear evidence that companies which put shareholders fi rst do less well for them in the long run than those that recognize the claims of all their stakeholders.” In fact it can be argued that: “A failure to give due weight to important stakeholder relationships could thus constitute a failure by the directors to discharge their duty properly” (Plender, 1995).

Personal responsibility begins with self-understanding, which is essential if we are to manage our weaknesses and develop our strengths. “We all need to recog- nize and accept our obligations, which go with our organizational roles, and learn

Leadership and Power 5

to resist any temptation to abuse our positions of trust or power” (Tam, 1995). Add a responsibility to customers and suppliers to this quotation, and hence pro- vide the basis of the stakeholder analysis mentioned earlier.

Yet, as Firestone CEO John Nevin put it: “If you want to drive a person crazy, the easiest way to do it is to give them a deep sense of responsibility and no authority” (Stewart, 1989). This point is critical to effective policies relating to empowerment, and ignorance in this area is a major course of organizational stress.

The conclusion at this stage is that the most effective concept of power over the longer term is that which is responsibility-driven. The connection between power and responsibility can be made by ensuring that a thorough stakeholder analysis is undertaken within the decision-making process. The next step is to integrate these arguments on power and responsibility to: What do we mean by “leadership”? But before that connection is made, it must be emphasized that any stakeholder analysis must be believed in by those undertaking it. Effective results will be more dependent on the spirit of the analytical process than on whether or not the survey was undertaken technically.

Leadership

Many of the traditional, “macho” leadership views of power are revealed in the following quote from van Maurik (1994):

The concept of power is a preoccupation for many leaders. For some it is a drug and for others it is a source of fascination. In earlier chapters, I examined the sources of a leader’s power and so it may seem strange that the central focus of this chapter is “giving it away.” However, the concept of giving away one’s power is both a demand made on us if we are leaders in the work situation and a choice that is open to us. We invent most of the constraints. . . . So it is with leadership. The leader who clings to power, who is afraid to give it to others, will in fact cease to be a leader. In business, this person will increasingly become ineffective and in the end will be ousted, while in politics it is the leader’s relationship to power that makes the difference between a legitimate leader and a tyrant. (p. 1)

Put simply, some power-driven individuals (and organizations) can be defi ned as successful in the short term, but evidence increasingly suggests that these

6 Coaching for Leadership

individuals “contain the seeds of their own destruction.” Both leadership and power are best seen as a form of trusteeship; unless those who have power use it responsibly (and are seen to use it responsibly), it will be taken away from them in one way or another.

An alternative approach is that of servant-leadership, which defi nes leader- ship as: “The use of gifts and talents on behalf of all of us in a way that models what we can be and empowers us to try.” This statement is an echo of Robert Greenleaf ’s statement: “Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants” (DeShano, 1995).

The link between leadership and power is made by Kets de Vries (1993):

Those leaders who are able to combine action with refl ection, who have suffi cient self-knowledge to recognize the vicissitudes of power, and who will not be tempted away when the psychological sirens that accompany power are beckoning will in the end be the most powerful. They will be the ones who are remembered with respect and affection. They will also be the ones truly able to manage the ambiguities of power and lead a creative and productive life. (224)

It is not diffi cult to see the link between power and learning organizational concepts, as Conger (1989) showed:

Effective organizations hold leaders accountable for the development of all subordinates. . . . Empowerment is defi ned as the process of enabling and motivating subordinates by increasing their personal effi cacy. . . . Thus it becomes the leader’s responsibility to help each other subordinate reach his or her full potential. (171–172)

This positive approach to empowerment, which is at least implicitly con- cerned with matching power and responsibility, has a good chance of avoiding the limitations of empowerment mentioned earlier. However, it is valuable to recog- nize that: “The ultimate judgment of leaders is often not about how they acquire and use power, but how they relinquish it” (Sonnenfi eld, 1995). Ultimately, this comment refl ects how many politicians have interpreted their power. In the end, leadership is concerned with the effective and effi cient management of all the stakeholder interests and interfaces in the long-term interests of the organization

Leadership and Power 7

as a whole. It is the ability to act effectively and responsibly in the interests of those who are being. Essentially this refl ects the servant-leadership/ trusteeship approach.

At the core of the philosophy of servant-leadership are the following basic tenets:

• It takes people and their work seriously. The servant leader says human beings have a value in their own right. In Greenleaf ’s view, valuing people requires a new business ethic: “Business exists as much to provide meaningful work to the person as it exists to provide a product or service to the customer.”

• They listen, learn, and take their lead from their staff. The primary mission of the servant-leader is to encapsulate the will of the group, express that will, and then develop it as effectively as possible. “Servant-leaders today don’t have all the answers, but they do know how to ask the right questions.”

In practice the servant-leadership process emphasizes the importance of con- sensus building. It may take time to develop, but once it is established there is considerable evidence to suggest that consensus produces commitment, and that is invariably the key to improved performance. Increasingly, it is recognized that successful strategies are critically dependent on effective implementation.

• They heal. Servant-leaders manage openness and a willingness to share mis- takes, focusing on the critical process of learning. A learning environment is about passing on what you know. It is about empowering others, rather than being possessive about knowledge on the grounds that “knowledge is power.”

• They are self-effacing. Servant-leaders emphasize the interests of the group as a whole and recognize the value of humility as a basis for further learning. They are certainly not interested in the pursuit of power for its own sake. Servant- leaders are more concerned with ensuring that the results are relevant and effective, rather than focusing on who receives the credit.

• They see themselves as stewards. Servant-leaders strongly believe they have been entrusted with authority, and that drives them to take a responsibility-based, rather than power-based, approach. It also encourages decision making within a long-term perspective.

• Leadership is considered everyone’s responsibility. Servant-leaders refl ect into them- selves before they address the faults of others. Leaders must have their own

8 Coaching for Leadership

visions, but they also need to realize that everyone else in the organization may have his or her own vision. If this is the case, the leader’s role starts with the need to integrate that diversity. Increasingly the primary role of leader- ship is seen as “the management of organizational values”—using the word management in its inclusive interpretation. The servant-leadership approach also emphasizes the importance of the old phrase: “It’s not what you do, but how you do it.” Organizations and individuals who do not practice what they preach are pursuing a high-risk strategy that invariably ends in disaster. John Rosenblum, dean of the University of Virginia Business School, sums up the discussion by saying: “Servant-leadership at its heart is an openness, an ability to listen, and an ability to speak in a way that engages people directly affected by the choices to be made. It positively encourages commitment, and there is no better way to improve organizational performance.”

The link between leadership, power, responsibility, and the Greenleaf approach is also refl ected by Binney and Williams (1997), who concluded their study with the comment:

The paradox of leaders is that as they give power away, so they become more powerful! Rather than impose their will on others, they work through example and the evident authenticity of their words and actions. Their leadership becomes more compelling, and the people with whom they are working are more likely to respond because they feel more responsible, more committed, and more fulfi lled in their work.

Many people also argue that we are really only rediscovering old prin- ciples. For example, the quotation of Lao Tzu from over two millennia ago (Heider, 1995): “As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves’” and “The wise leader is not collecting a string of suc- cesses. The leader is helping others to fi nd their own success. There is plenty to go around. Sharing success with others is very successful. The single principle behind all creation teaches us that true benefi t blesses everyone and diminishes no one. The wise leader knows that the reward for doing the work arises natu- rally out of the work.”

Leadership and Power 9

However, few people in recent years have articulated a more relevant reinter- pretation of the vision of leadership than Robert Greenleaf. Not only do orga- nizations perform better using the principles of servant-leadership, but it is no surprise that they also help the world become a better place. In the long term, this is an even more important objective and result.

Learning

Within the confi nes of this paper, it is necessary to recognize the increasing impor- tance of effective learning as a critical success factor within all organizations and to emphasize the increasing role of the “learning organization” approach. As Zuboff (1988) said, “Learning is the new form of labor. It is no longer a separate activity that occurs either before one enters the workplace or in remote classroom settings . . . learning is the heart of productive activity.” The more change that is going on, the greater the need to get learning attitudes and structures right. And if the rate of change is greater than the rate of effective learning, there is little chance that the changes will be defi ned as progress. Refl ecting Reg Revan’s axiom: “For any organism to survive, its rate of learning must be equal to, or greater than, the rate of change in the environment.” With the amount of change in the world today, the learning process is becoming an even more critical chal- lenge for us all, both individually and organizationally.

Continuous improvement means recognizing the need for new ideas, identifying those that are relevant to the future organization, taking them on board, and then implementing them effectively. In order to be effective, an organization must be able to learn. The great advantage of humility is that it is an effective foundation for learning, with complacency and arrogance the most powerful barriers to learning. One paradoxical challenge for today’s wise leader is how to avoid becoming com- placent about one’s humility. a problem that has recently overcome some Japanese businesses. Nonaka and Takeeuchi (1995) defi ned organizational knowledge as: “The capability of a company as a whole to create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organization, and embody it in products, services, and systems.” This statement emphasizes the importance of the view that “The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization” (Senge, 1990).

The learning company goes beyond the idea of excellence to make learning the central process. Peters and Waterman (1982), among others, were concerned

10 Coaching for Leadership

with adaptability, responsibility, and learning: “The excellent companies are learning organizations.” Experimenting and learning are at the heart of the Peters and Waterman vision, but the structures and strategies of a learning orga- nization were not articulated until later.

If there is a responsibility and learning focus, there is a natural sympathy for processes such as upward appraisal—in contrast to a power culture, which often applies traditional appraisal systems bureaucratically in an attempt to exert control. It is not surprising to fi nd that the latter approach rarely produces the results expected.

The conclusion we reach is that the ability to change is directly related to the ability to learn, and the ability to learn, both individually and organizationally, is directly related to the ability to operate a responsibility-driven culture throughout the organization.

A power-driven approach tends to be preoccupied with the short term, whereas a responsibility-driven approach is more concerned with long-term issues. As a result, a responsibility-driven approach is likely to produce a more effective balance of the respective interests of all the various stakeholders so essential for the long-term success of any organization. It helps to provide a climate in which innovation is encouraged and failure is an opportunity for learning, rather than an excuse for punishment. In fact, the responsibilities will only be rewarding and positive if supported by an overall learning approach to all aspects of life and work. Unfortunately; taking responsibility, being able to live with it, and knowing how to use and develop it in others is rare.

Power cultures may well stem directly from the encouragement competi- tion—externally with competitors and internally with colleagues. In these cul- tures, information is seen as power, so people often focus on building themselves up as unique marketable resources by keeping information to themselves, rather than sharing it through a team-building approach.

According to Birchall and Lyons (1995), “Power in organizations is based on what and who people know. Access to information is vital to those responsible for managing business operations. Electronic systems make it possible to distrib- ute that information widely; cheaply, and quickly.” Hence, what is done with knowledge, whether it is kept or spread, can be a valuable indicator of whether an organization or individual is driven by power or responsibility. Both new tech- nology and more effective management approaches will require attitudes toward power and responsibility to change radically in the future.

Leadership and Power 11

A responsible approach to learning combined with learning to manage responsibility are essential prerequisites for any effective learning organization or learning environment. A learning environment is about passing on knowledge; it is about empowering others with knowledge, rather than being possessive on the grounds that “knowledge is power.” A learning organization approach can- not be expected to work without a genuine concern for others. Hence “learning organizations” cannot be expected to operate effectively within a power-driven culture. Similar points can be made about the effort to introduce empowerment programs.

The way responsibility is shouldered in an organization can have a profound effect on the decision-making process. When facing a crisis or disaster, Western managers tend to pinpoint blame, fi re the person involved, then pretend the prob- lem is solved. The tradition in Japan is that the executive who hired or managed a person who made mistakes is let go. This approach encourages an attention to detail and a focus on the development of people, which in turn encourages loyalty and respect. Because managers in Japan are held directly responsible for the behavior of their subordinates, they take more interest in ensuring that their subordinates do not fail or make mistakes. They are motivated to maximize the learning transfer, which generates a virtuous circle. In a traditional Western envi- ronment the position is often reversed, leading to a cycle of decline.

In theory, there are grounds for expecting female managers with more “femi- nine” characteristics to be more responsibility driven, and, hence, more open to learning and more future-focused than their more traditionally power-driven male colleagues. However, further research is needed to establish whether or not this difference is actually signifi cant. In addition, it will also be important to cross- check against differences in nationality.

This analysis has argued that the center of the debate about leadership should be more about how and what we learn about responsibility, rather than traditional preoccupation with power. In order to make progress, we need to generate new alliances (and improve the effectiveness of old ones) in which learning for leader- ship helps shift the historic power-driven approach into a more positive direction in which the prime emphasis is responsibility. Within this context, it is important to recognize that “political correctness” and attempts to overcome sexism and rac- ism are about minimizing the abuse of power and encouraging a responsibility- driven approach. Also, the role of ethics and ethical behavior by individuals and organizations must be fully rooted in the issues raised in this chapter.

12 Coaching for Leadership

In the end, the vital links between responsibility, leadership, and learning must be more widely recognized if we wish to be optimistic about the shape and nature of society in the decades ahead. But what do we do about this situation? At this stage, recognizing and emphasizing the importance of these links is a useful place to start. But it is only a beginning. As another authority perceptively put it: “The key facilitating role of directors is to create the climate in which learning is encouraged, rewarded, and allowed to fl ow freely around the organization” (Garratt, 1990).

Empowerment

Essentially, empowerment involves passing decision-making authority and respon- sibility from managers to employees. As Bowen and Lawler (1992) defi ne it:

Empowerment also necessitates sharing with employees information and knowledge that enable them to understand and contribute to organizational performance, rewarding them based on the organization’s performance, and giving them the authority to make decisions that infl uence organizational outcomes. (31–39)

Ford and Fottler (1995) say that the perhaps greatest challenge

. . . is for managers to carefully assess themselves, their organizations, and their employees. Are managers ready to give up decision-making authority, or are they distrustful of their subordinates? Are employees ready or willing to participate in empowerment programs or are they disinterested in the organization in general and their own job in particular? While these questions cannot be answered defi nitively, steps toward fi nding answers can be taken. (27)

Many of the factors that are critical to the success of empowerment programs have already been discussed. Essentially, these factors involve a basic commitment to a learning organization approach, within a responsibility-driven leadership culture. A similar point can be made about many other management techniques, such as total quality management and reengineering. Unless the issues relating to power and responsibility are both understood and implemented effectively, it is not surprising that a signifi cant majority of management programs fail.

Leadership and Power 13

Language

One dimension that cannot be ignored is the role of language in changing culture or behavior. As Berlin (1994) said: “Minds are formed by the character of lan- guage, not language by the minds of those who speak it.” The dynamics of the language employees use to communicate with one another and with management is a key component in helping the company decide what knowledge is legitimate and what is not. The world both refl ects the language we use and is changed by it. Nowhere are these issues more apparent, important, or problematic than over the use of the words power and responsibility. A wide range of phrases incorporat- ing the word power are in use: power politics; power dressing; abuse of power; absolute power; power to the people; corridors of power; struggle for power; lust for power; and balance of power. Would things change, would the world become a better place, if we all tried to substitute the word responsibility, wherever possible, for the word power? Perhaps it is up to us to start talking about the “corridors of responsibility” rather than “the corridors of power.”

Integration

Finally, if we want to improve the quality of life in the twenty-fi rst century, we must improve the priority given to the quality and quantity of our learning and emphasize the importance of the effective use of that learning. We need to incor- porate the latest ideas on knowledge management.

How do we learn? Why do we learn? What do we learn? Finally, what do we do with what we learn? These questions should be a particular focus for policy issues related to the learning and leadership development of the next generation. It is essential that we move away from our traditional preoccupation with power toward a responsibility-driven approach to decision making and change. These changes would benefi t organizations in the long term, as well as be a considerable benefi t to individuals and society as a whole.

Unless an integrated approach is taken to the relationships between respon- sibility, leadership, learning, and power, organizations will be increasingly less successful over the long term. At the core of this approach is understanding and effectively managing the relationship between responsibility and power. Only when this relationship is based on a strong foundation of responsibility can we be optimistic about the future of our organizations, individuals, and the society within which we live.

14 Coaching for Leadership

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Bowen, D. E., and Lawler, E. E. “The Empowerment of Service Workers: What, Why, How and When.” Sloan Management Review, Spring 1992, pp. 31–39.

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Tam, H. “Recognise Your Responsibilities.” Professional Manager, March 1995, p. 16. Townsend, K. Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. van Maurik, J. (1994). Discovering the Leader in You. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994. Zuboff, S. In the Age of the Smart Machine. New York: Basic Books, 1988, p. 395.

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Bruce Lloyd is principal lecturer in strategy at South Bank University, London, England. Over the past decade, he has been particularly concerned with writ- ing, researching, and lecturing on a wide range of strategic issues that critically infl uence organizational performance. Since joining the academic world in 1989, Bruce has provided a major input into the development of the university MBA program. Previous experience included seven years’ involvement in the interna- tional venture capital industry with the Commonwealth Development Finance Company and new venture development with ICI pic, as well as earlier experi- ence as an investment analyst in The City and as a plant manager with the British Petroleum Company, Ltd.

Bruce is the author of over one hundred papers and articles on strategy- related topics, from economies of scale to political risk management, with a recent focus on the future of offi ce and offi ce work; fl exible working; the relationship between power, responsibility, leadership, and learning; and the role of wisdom in knowledge management. He is editor of two volumes in The Best of Long Range Planning on Creating and Managing New Ventures and Creating Value Through Acquisitions, Demergers, Buyouts, and Alliances, and has spoken widely at international conferences.

Bruce is a member of the World Future Society and World Future Studies Federation, the executive committee of the Strategic Planning Society, and the editorial board of the Leadership and Organisational Development Journal and Futures. He is also a past chairman of the editorial board of the journal Long Range Planning, as well as being its review editor.