I eavesdropped a coaching conversation. I heard the coach conversing with a gentleman who has been working for one of the Big Four consulting firms. As I listened to them working out his goal to make 200% more revenue this year and their detailed planning, I heard the coach asking for the gentleman's commitment, (almost) convincingly committing to the plan and targets he just presented her. Intuitively, I knew the job was not done and that the coaching process was going in the wrong direction. This is how I knew it:
1. If the client could have done it, he would have. He did not rise to a senior position by being stupid enough to not know how to plan by himself.
2. What is the business of the coach trying to solve a problem at the level at which the client is far more qualified to solve it himself?
This coaching session was part of the excellence coaching certification and this was the field day, where the upcoming coaches bring someone they know and coach the person to succeed with a real achievement. One of the most important traits I look for when certifying a coach is for the coach to accurately know when their work is really ‘complete’. What happens with an average coach, is that the client commits to a fancy target, gets back to work and forgets all about the commitment. And would then run as fast as possible to avoid the next coaching session.
I mean think about it, when people procrastinate, when people delay making decisions, when they don’t achieve their goals - what is really going on? Don’t human beings work towards their own interest? Then why would someone choose not to do what is best for them? This is the question that leads me to get answers. I am curious all the time believing that, if someone didn’t do something, it probably means they couldn’t do it, it probably means it wasn’t the choice that they really had. It may appear like a choice when they are not into the situation, but if they didn't do it before, it most likely means doing it wasn’t a choice to begin with, and they won’t do it again, no matter how convincing the person appears at that moment!
So, with this gentleman, I stepped into the coaching process. I looked straight at him and said: “No one is more qualified to plan how you can achieve your target than you are. So, that is not what we are going to do here. You have come here because you said you want to achieve a target that is just not happening, and I assume you are good at what you do, so tell me what has stopped you from achieving this target?” And as we discussed, he spoke about how he needs to be closing deals but instead he is focusing on the execution because his team is not executing properly. And further we explored how he has successfully created a team that doesn’t do the job they are supposed to do. It turned out that the problem was ONE guy, who he knew had to be fired two years ago. Even worse was what he said: “I am a people person, I can’t fire anyone, I am very selfless”. Now, this is what I wanted to know. I wanted to know what was his personal limitation that stopped him from achieving what he is capable of, by himself. So, in the next few minutes I got him to realize that what he has been doing was actually being super selfish. I asked him how many people have suffered in his team because of his decision and he replied that six of his team mates have lost incentives and have worked extra hard to compensate for the goof-ups of that one person. And I said: “So what you are telling me is that, because you don’t want to feel the way you feel, when you think you are hurting someone, you have been making the lives of six people miserable?”. At this point, he turned around and realized what he had been doing by not firing this guy had actually made him selfish, not selfless. This was the turning point. This was the awareness that was lacking. But again, awareness alone is not sufficient, we need to close the loop by making a real change. I asked him how he felt about going back to his office and doing what needs to be done. He played the situation in his mind and I noticed that his body felt uncomfortable. I asked him: “What is it that you feel now?”. He explained what he felt and how he feels the same way in many similar situations, especially when he has to say ‘no’ to people. So, I got a volunteer to do a Neuro-Linguistic Programing technique known as the collapse anchor to help him feel differently in the situations where he used to feel uncomfortable. Now, the work is complete. This is the closure.
I didn’t bother wasting his or my time on the details of the plan. I know he will plan things out himself, the plan will probably change, it will evolve. It is not in the planning that a coach adds value, instead, the value of proper coaching comes from identifying what the client is doing that he or she is not aware of and then creating the choice of new behaviors in those situations. This is not only true for coaching another individual, it is also true for each of us. We always do what's best for us. If we could have done something, we would have done it – this is the frame that will equip us to look closely at what really stopped us form doing things in the first place. Now, this gentleman has a choice. He has developed access to new behaviors, new emotions in the situations where he lacked certain flexibility. Finally, I connected the change back to the bigger picture of him achieving his business outcome for which he had actually come. Knowing that the work is complete and that the coach has learned as much from the interaction as the coachee has, I slowly got up and scanned the room for the next coaching conversation to eavesdrop.
