Openings
In coaching, timing is everything. Knowing when to start may well determine if you get anywhere. Since most people aren’t walking around soliciting coaching, it’s the coach’s job to determine when the correct moment occurs. Of course, we can only find an opening by knowing what it is and then looking for it. Here’s a chance to begin both activities. The underlying principle of this chapter is from Heidegger. He claims in Being and Time (1962) that the artifacts and routines of our everyday life are transparent to us until they break down. For example, we normally don’t notice the flow of traffic until it jams, and we don’t feel our shoes until the heel becomes loose, etc. Similarly, most people don’t seek out and are not ready candidates for coaching until their everyday life is interrupted. Also see Flores and Winograd (1986) for a lucid explanation of breakdown.
An opening for coaching is an occasion: an event that makes it more likely that the potential client will be approachable for coaching. Undoubtedly, there is a certain percentage of people who are always open to coaching, people who are open to ideas and input from everyone else nearly all the time. One category of such people may be folks who feel guilty all the time and are attempting to settle their feelings by going off in as many directions as people want them to go in. Other people don’t seem particularly attached to any way of doing something and will readily change according to someone else’s ideas. And then there are the rest of us.
Habits
Many of us are not looking for coaching even though in many organizations the buzzwords of “continual improvement” and “international competition” seem to necessitate that we do. Maybe the best way of explaining why we aren’t open to coaching is by attempting to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing now, and how we came to do it that way.
When I say we should explore why we are doing what we’re doing, I don’t mean it as a beginning of an inquiry of a theory of motivation. Instead, I mean it as an invitation to study the conditions present in every human being that can account for the consistency in our response to life. Coaches take on the task of intervening in this consistency of response which we usually call habit. Coaching, though, is not a matter of a client changing matters; instead the point is to build the client’s ability to observe and select appropriate action. The difficulty in coaching adults is that we are already in the middle of habitual ways of acting, although with great effort we can sometimes suppress one action and start another. It is more problematic when we attempt to continuously undo our habits and freshly approach life. That’s what I mean when I say that a client is self-correcting and self-generating.
In essence, coaches coach the nervous system. That may sound strange to some readers and obvious to others. By saying that, I am proposing that it’s only by reeducating the nervous system that behaviors, responses, and reactions—as they occur in real time, not in reflection—change. We make the novel, be it a new behavior, process, or protocol, into the everyday and familiar by allowing it to migrate into the background of our consciousness. The migration occurs when we consciously take on new practices and persist with them. All of what it takes to bring about this reeducation, in alignment with the principles specified in Chapter 1, is what I’m calling coaching.
We learned to do everything that we do. All right, there are certain things we’re doing that we didn’t learn how to do, but these are mostly physiological and reflexive and are not the topic of coaching anyway. In the process of learning, we found a comfortable way for ourselves to accomplish a desired outcome. Usually we listened to other people, read instructions, or took a class, and then did our best to put into action what we heard or read. Over some period of experimentation, we sorted out what worked best for us in terms of our temperament, preferences, and ability. After this experimentation, we practiced what we decided to do again and again until we were able to do the task without having to stop and think about it. This period of practice has habituated us both mentally and physically.
A simple example of this is how you dress in the morning. Try sometime to reverse how you do it. Start at the top if you usually start at the bottom; start at your right side if you usually start on the left; and notice how you react as you do this. It’s likely that you’ll feel awkward, uncomfortable, and that you’ll come to the conclusion that the way you were doing it before was better.
When I say we’re habituated physically, I mean that both our nervous system and muscular system have become accustomed to a repeated action or response and have built structures such as opened neural pathways and strengthened particular muscles to facilitate the duplication of the behavior. When I say we’ve become mentally habituated to something, I mean that we have learned to perform the action without it having to take the forefront of our attention, or at least that it requires less attention than it did at the beginning.
Our nervous system has learned to readily recognize exceptions to the usual pattern, so that we can respond to the exception automatically. The next time you’re in a diner, notice how the short-order cook is able to attend to many different dishes in preparation simultaneously. That’s because she has learned to immediately notice and correct any anomalies and, in fact, she usually does so with such skill that we do not notice the correction being made. We perform the same level of sophisticated response when we are driving through city traffic and maneuver around pedestrians, potholes, and road hazards while continuing to think and plan for our day or talk on our mobile phones.
Clearly, our propensity for habituation has survival value and is the product of long evolution. Consequently, it has the momentum of any similar biological survival mechanism, for example, fight-or-flight response, and our reproductive urges. For this reason, it’s highly unlikely that we can escape having to deal with habituation when coaching someone. This partially explains why simply telling people how to change rarely works, and why making a resolution ourselves to change has the same low degree of success.
In summary, people generally aren’t open to being coached because they already have a habitual way of accomplishing something with all the resultant components of that process, both physical and mental.
As you may have gathered from my description of Bob, he was someone with a very strong will and had accomplished a lot through pure determination. He put himself through night school, completed his MBA, and acquired CPA credentials while holding down a job. The forcefulness of his will, though, was now becoming an impediment in his career. He had to learn to be more collaborative, more flexible, more entrepreneurial, and more open. He had to change his habit of applying his strong will as a way of prevailing and he couldn’t use his strong will to change his habit. That’s why Nancy saw that he needed some coaching. He needed a chance to develop new skills in a safe situation in which he could gradually let go of his old habits of success, which were now his biggest obstacles. Maybe from this brief description you can see why it is hard to undo our habits; we use our old habits to try and make new habits. It’s rather like trying to wash off red paint with red paint.
Social Identity
Besides the power of habits, a person’s social identity presents an obstacle to coaching. Social identity has several parts. The first is how the person is known by people around her. That is to say that each of us has a particular reputation that determines the way people interact with us. Our preferences are known, our accomplishments are public, our prevailing mood is familiar, and our style of work and communication is expected. Given the prevailing nature of our social identity, people begin to interact with us in a way that makes it more likely that we will respond in the anticipated ways. When we don’t produce the expected behavior, often the social environment will press back on us expressing surprise, questioning change, and perhaps voicing a negative judgment about the difference.
You might remember from Chapters 1 and 4 that I emphasized the importance of relationship in coaching. A social identity is a relationship with others that has become hardened through a repetition of behavior and bound by the inflexibility of expectation. The point of the coaching program for Bob really was for him to establish a social identity so that he could be promoted and have the opportunity to lead a large part of the organization.
In addition to the public factors of social identity, there also exists a private component made up of the story we tell about ourselves. We have a narrative, in other words, that we add to each day as life goes along, as we meet people, as we make decisions, as we take actions, and as we compare what’s happening with what we want to have happen. In short, we give a meaning to life within the boundaries of our narrative.
So frequently do we repeat the story and so fervently do we believe it that, in many instances, we lose the distinction between what actually happened and how the event fit into our story. For many people, the story takes on a greater reality than the event itself. In a sense, we become a character in our own stories. Naturally, other people are also characters in our stories, and it’s this automatic procedure of making people, including ourselves, into characters that I’m referring to as social identity. We then do our best to act the way we think the character should act, staying in role.
Of course, there’s a symbiotic relationship between the roles that organizations and cultures provide for people and the roles that people take on in their private narratives. Each reinforces the other and, in most cases, cannot exist without the other. The structure of social identity as briefly described here has people believe that what they’re doing is correct and is the best possible action, given the circumstances and their role in the circumstances.
When, as coaches, we attempt to question someone, frequently we encounter defensive routines that are consistent with the role that person has taken on. The point of such routines is to ensure the continuation of the public identity, since it has a structure that has proven successful in some way up to this point. Sometimes we forget that when we are asking a person to be coached, we are bringing into question her self-characterization and her public reputation, which are, as I said, woven together into a narrative and protected with stories, justifications, excuses, and so on.
Self-characterization and justifications are in most cases undiscussable. I don’t mean to say that as coaches we ought not do such questioning, but rather that we ought to do it with awareness, keeping in mind the forces with which we are dealing.
For most of us, habituation and the power of social identity are in the background as unexamined elements in our commonsense coping with life. They allow us to function in a more or less conflict-free way in our daily dealings, and we don’t question them until an event occurs that contradicts our story or frustrates our intentions. These types of contradictions or frustrations create the most obvious and powerful openings for coaching and, in many cases, they are the only openings, especially for people who are performing adequately in a stable environment.
Openings
Sometimes coaching fails because the coach has not coordinated the beginning of the effort with an appropriate opening. So much for the constrains or challenges to beginning coaching. Let’s spend some time looking at what are the powerful occasions in coaching. Probably the biggest opportunity coaches will have with their work is when the client is experiencing an interruption in her ability to fulfill a commitment. Who of us would not be open to the support of someone when we were somehow held back from accomplishing that which was very important for us? For example, imagine getting a flat tire on a snowy December Michigan night when the temperature is 25 degrees below zero. That would be bad enough, but what would it be like if you opened your trunk and to your dismay discovered that you did not know how to use the tools that were there to change your tire. Wouldn’t you be very happy if someone arrived on the scene to coach you in how to use the tools? Perhaps you can see from these examples the importance of timing. If your tire-changing coach had arrived one half hour earlier and tried to flag you down so she could teach you how to change your tire, it is likely you would have ignored her as your car was humming along through the night. Similarly, if the coach had arrived too late, you might have already abandoned your car or succumbed to the elements.
Besides breakdowns there are other recurring events that leave clients more ready to receive coaching. Many of these are obvious ones that I am sure you already know about. They include performance reviews, the need for a new skill when someone takes on a new position, business needs such as requirements for higher quality and lower costs, and the client’s request for coaching. The essential point is that the opening exists with the client, not simply with the coach.
A coach may feel as if it’s now time to improve a person’s performance or improve her competence in some way because of something the coach believes is important. On other occasions, coaching starts because the coach sees the client doing something that she doesn’t like or isn’t comfortable with. Although it may be necessary on some occasions to take action because of those criteria, it won’t lead to the products of coaching. Even though such interventions in someone’s behavior have been called coaching, in my view they are really behavior modification with all the accompanying techniques and coercive force of that approach. My proposal is that genuine coaching never happens unless there’s a partnership. We’ll discuss this at length in the chapter about enrollment. It’s important to remember that long-term excellent performance cannot be foisted on someone by an external party, even with the best intentions or level of expertise. Unfortunately, Fournies (1978) proposes just such a course of action.
Sensitive clients, in fact, will immediately recognize what’s occurring in such circumstances and will employ sophisticated avoidance and resistance procedures to ensure that their independence is maintained. Probably all of us have seen, or maybe even participated in, such charades. The charades occasionally degrade into full-scale power struggles reminiscent of encounters with 2H-year-old children or recalcitrant adolescents. The point is, you must have an opening for coaching before you start in order for the program to be successful.
There are occasions when a potential client is stopped in her intention to accomplish something, or when her social identity is challenged. In order to find such occasions, it’s necessary to look for them. Stay alert for times when someone expresses to you her frustration, disappointment, or need for help in getting something important done.
At such moments, it’s often an easy and appropriate time to offer your coaching, and you will probably find a willing recipient. I have already listed some other examples of events that can be openings for coaching. You will have to determine for yourself how open the person really is because, in the end, it’s not going to be the event that leads to the potential client being open; it’s the interpretation the potential client brings to the event and how it fits in with her narrative and her habitual reactions.
If you already have a solid relationship, you won’t be putting much at risk if you offer coaching and it’s turned aside. I recommend that you take a chance and offer, even when you’re not entirely sure that your coaching will be welcomed. At the same time, be willing to hear someone tell you no, and make it easy for the person to say that to you. Making it easy means that you don’t act surprised or disappointed when you are told, and that any subsequent conversation you have with the person never becomes argumentative, forceful, or coercive. It also means that you say explicitly in your invitation that you fully understand and will accept no as an answer.
Someone declining your invitation does not leave you helpless. You can discuss in detail why the person is declining. Be careful at this point to keep honoring the person’s decision. You can do that by keeping your questioning in an interrogative tone rather than as a strategy for maneuvering the person into what you want them to do. You’ll have to stay alert and honest in order to do this. Alert means paying attention to the way the potential client is reacting to what you’re saying. Did she have a bad experience in the past? Does she feel it’s hopeless? Does she feel as if no one could help her? Maybe she didn’t regard your offer as sincere. Explore all these possibilities before you conclude that, at this point, there’s no real opening for coaching.
It’s also possible that when someone declines coaching, you are still accountable for the results of this person. What do you do then? I recommend that you use traditional management procedures at that point. For example, be sure there’s clarity about outcomes and the consequences for not reaching those outcomes. Offer any support that you can in terms of training or advice and hold the person to what she committed to accomplish. Provide appropriate sanctions and rewards as necessary. I’m not going into detail with these techniques because traditional management literature is full of advice on these points. Besides that, they do not lead to the products of coaching, as I’ve said before, and consequently are not within the scope of this book.
Additional Openings for Coaching
Additional openings for coaching include
- Performance reviews
- Broken promises
- Need for new skills, such as new equipment or a promotion
- Requests for coaching
- Business needs, as in requirements for greater quality and lower cost
- Project milestones
Let’s take a moment to apply these ideas in analyzing what happened in my coaching with Bob (see Figure 5.1). He was experiencing a breakdown, that is, his commitment to being promoted was being stopped by circumstances that he was unable to resolve. This left him very open to my interventions, and even though he did not contact me initially on his own, he was eager for what I could provide.
FIGURE 5.1 Openings for Coaching
These books provide many distinctions with which you can frame the opportunities for coaching you observe. By “frame,” I mean a way of relating to a situation that provides sufficient clarity for action.
Bar-Levav, Reuven. Thinking in the Shadow of Feelings. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
A tract that warns readers about the danger of losing clarity of thought in the emotional stream of feelings.
Bellah, Robert M., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Sweidler, and Steven M. Tipton.
Habits of the Heart. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
A classic sociological study of two forces that shape every U.S. resident: commitment and the pull toward individuality. Clear, precise, and powerful. Many useful examples.
Brown, Lyn Mikel, and Carol Gilligan. Meeting at the Crossroads. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Pinpoints the time when girls give up expressing their experience openly and begin to stifle their self-expression. Also proposes a new way to conduct longitudinal studies, which requires personal observation. Provides profound insights into the way U.S. culture shapes women’s realities.
Drucker, Peter F. The New Realities. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
The author, a famous consultant and professor, outlines his views of contemporary cultural trends that influence the success of any enterprise. It’s the gap between the competencies that an individual (or organization) has now and what competencies will be needed in the future (as described by Drucker) that can be the opening for coaching.
Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992.
Everyone living in the United States resides in a country divided by race. The author cuts through rhetoric and cites many statistics that reveal the pervasiveness of racism.
Johnson, Robert A. He. King of Prussia, PA: Religious Publishing Company, 1974; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
An exploration of male psychology through the retelling of the quest for the holy grail in Jungian terms.
Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organization. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1986.
Uses nine metaphors to show how organizations form, grow, meet conflict, and eventually dissolve. Evenhanded. Solidly grounded experientially and academically. Full of useful charts and summaries. An invaluable reference for understanding organizations and the people within them.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
By discussing the life and world of Nietzsche, the author makes a larger point about all our lives being stories full of plot and character with ourselves as the protagonists.
Reich, Robert B. Tales of a New America. New York: Random House, 1987.
Reich’s version of what’s required for U.S. business to flourish in today’s world. Gives us background for diagnosing current problems and predicting future ones.