CHAPTER 11

ADVANCED COACHING: MOTIVATION AND CHANGE

They can do it – but will they?!

Sooner or later every leader, HR whizz, coach (parent!) despairs: people who are perfectly capable of doing something, know exactly what needs to be done, say yes yes yes they’re going to do it – and they don’t.

Business development, for example: we know the simplest, most powerful thing to do is just make the contact, but instead we put it off.

And that’s just one contact. Then there’s bigger structural change: breaking a lifelong habit, switching jobs, introducing new HR practices, leading your whole company into a merger, changing the political structure of a nation.

These are vast topics; here we just scratch the surface. We don’t dive into what academics, philosophers, writers, poets or pop songs have had to say on the subject; the objective of this chapter is rather to give you an initial taste, through two great tools to use in coaching and managing your teams, one for motivation, one for behaviour change. Some coaches already use the change tool, but fewer are aware of the motivation one. Both deserve much greater prominence.

Motivation

Understanding motivation has been the object of study for thousands of years, with a particular depth of enquiry triggered by the horrors and miracles of the 20th century. Brilliant minds around the world have come up with many lessons: needs, value, fairness, equity, reinforcement, all play a role in motivation.¹ The scientists’ lists and models have probably cracked it. But you see the problem. You’re standing at the podium, facing 2,000 anxious pairs of eyes, about to deliver a crucial speech. You need to persuade them to let go of the past, rouse them to action, inspire, motivate. Your palms are sweating slightly. The complex models probably have got all the answers, but in that moment they’re not going to help. Too complicated.

If that weren’t bad enough, a further twist is the huge variation between individuals. One is profoundly motivated by service to humanity; another will do anything for chocolate. Sometimes you know your client well, and/or have had the opportunity to do extensive psychometrics, and/or it has been appropriate to do extensive coaching to draw out their unique motivations. But many times, if a manager is helping a colleague with ‘one-minute coaching’, for example, we don’t have that fine-grained knowledge. And there are the times when we’re needing to motivate groups, teams and conference halls. We need a simple guide that works for most people.

Great news: there is such a thing! Like the GROW Model it is simple enough to be remembered under pressure, yet it has deep scientific roots. It doesn’t have a catchy name but was developed by the eminent scientists Ryan and Deci so I call it after them.² Their model is one of the most profoundly important first fruits from the hard science of Positive Psychology (for more on which, see Chapter 12). Their work is fascinating and I would encourage those interested to read it for other points of great value: for example, they cite research demonstrating that moving motivations from extrinsic to intrinsic has, in addition to the obvious business benefits described, an even more important outcome – it is good for your health. The achievement of extrinsic goals doesn’t significantly raise well-being, but achievement of intrinsic ones does. So make money, be happy!

How do we motivate people? Ryan and Deci start with the simple fact, known from both scientific research and common sense, that we can’t – it’s an internal state in a person and there isn’t a magic question or word or pill that can cause it to be raised from the outside – yet.

Then they untangle the different types of motivation and arrange them along a spectrum, from totally external, or extrinsic, at one extreme, to profoundly inner, or intrinsic at the other (see Figure 11.1). An extreme example of extrinsic motivation on the hard left of the spectrum might be, ‘I have a gun, do it or I shoot.’ At the other most intrinsic end, perhaps a parent’s love for their child such that they would leap to save them from harm, with no thought to their own safety. Between the two there are many intermediate steps along the way.

When we put it that way, we see instantly that a core task in business is to help employees, customers, sales prospects, etc. move along the spectrum from left to right, from extrinsic to intrinsic: from, ‘Do I have to . . . ?’ to ‘Wow! I so want to!’ Especially where the tasks might seem at first glance to be wholly of the outer world – increasing shareholder value, cleaning up that major oil spill, making the quarterly sales target, dealing with the pension fund liability – management would love to know how to have team members seize them as their own, unleashing the full-on dedication and energy of intrinsic motivation!

And how is this Holy Grail of management achieved? Ryan and Deci, as I said, are clear that we can’t (yet) beam it into people’s minds. What we can do though, is create the conditions where it is likely to happen – or remove the conditions preventing it. They argue that if these core conditions are present, people are much more likely to make that move along the spectrum and absorb the goal as their own.

According to Ryan and Deci, there are three such core conditions:

• ●autonomy: do I have a choice about doing this?
• ●competence: do I know how to do it?
• ●relatedness: is there social support in my context for doing it?

Let’s consider each in turn.

Autonomy

Straight away of course we hit a problem: clients will protest they have no choice at all. Salespeople need to meet their targets or else. The management consultant’s board presentation tomorrow must be (a) finished, (b) perfect, even if she has to work through the night to do it.

If other pressures pile on as well – one’s partner made redundant, school fees to pay, a boss who’s allergic to saying thank you, people can indeed feel demotivated – or as one put it, ‘trapped like a rat in a hole’. Coaching can haul clients out of that mental hole by reconnecting them with the fact that they do have a choice: they are not body slaves, somewhere along the way they decided to do this work, and they can undecide. They can at least revisit the original basis for their decision and see if it is still valid or if things need to be adjusted in some way. This usually needs to be done in two parts: first, giving them safe space to let out their feelings and frustrations, and only then to unblock them with O of GROW questions (see Chapter 5).

Figure 11.1 The Ryan and Deci Continuum

Source: APA, reprinted with permission. From Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) ‘Self-determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being’, American Psychologist, 55, pp. 68–78.

As ever in coaching, this intersects with the individual personality of the client. I coached someone once who was fine as long as I listened sympathetically to the terrible demands his glamorous life made on him, but who would get enraged when I ventured into the next part, of raising awareness that he had made choices and could revisit them. He was very high on neuroticism (see Chapter 7) and it was clearly too unbearably painful for him to admit he had played a part in constructing the situation and that he had made, and actually was continuing to make, a choice. The coaching went nowhere and was eventually terminated. But for most people, airing the issues brings relief. They may remain in the same situation, or they may make some adjustments, but reconnecting with the fact they have ultimate freedom to act removes that particular block to their motivation.

Competence

This is I believe the huge dark secret of modern business (and indeed political) life. Many people simply do not know how to do their job well. For reasons that are often beyond their control: screamingly fast technological innovation, rapid job churn, career changes, training gaps, big promotional leaps, etc., they do not have at their fingertips the procedures, best practice, explicit and tacit knowledge that a seasoned practitioner would. The seasoned practitioners have gone (fired in the last round of ‘moving to a technology-based solution’) and those left do the best they can.

The starkest example of this is lawyers. Highly intelligent people are trained thoroughly and updated regularly on the law, but in their first 10–15 years receive only minimal training in management. Then they are appointed to a senior role and are suddenly responsible for a budget of tens, even hundreds, of millions, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. (The even darker part of the joke in some firms is they are expected to do this in about 20 per cent of their time, while continuing to make their 80 per cent billable hours target.) They might be sent for a week to Harvard or Oxford, and the enlightened firms are now trying to equip their high fliers with the skills they will need, but many still go into their management role with much less training than, for example, the average accountant received through the same career stages. No wonder they turn to coaching – but in fact coaching is not enough of the answer: there are often simple skill gaps that need to be plugged for intrinsic motivation to grow.

The case of lawyers is particularly stark, as their training is almost unique in remaining so largely technically focused, but it is also a general problem of seniority. Until recently incoming British Cabinet Ministers received no training at all for the vast responsibility they were about to assume; the same applies to some non-executive directors of major businesses. (The Institute of Directors’ courses, right up to its Chartered Director programme, are not a mandatory requirement to be a UK company director.)

Once there, above a certain level of august seniority, no one dares suggest training, neither do the incumbents dare admit to wanting or needing it. Coaches must dare. Many times I have punctured a client’s ballooning anxiety by asking outright what precisely they needed to know to tackle the issue at hand. Once clarified, the solution is rarely for the individual to go off and do a PhD on the subject themselves but rather to ensure someone in their team can cover it. I have, for example, seen senior lawyers bridge the gap very effectively, and fast, by working closely with specialists in business development, finance and personnel.

Relatedness

This is self-explanatory: humans have been herd animals for millions of years, and even the introverts among us feel more at ease if others are doing something similar, and/or if we are being supported and encouraged by our colleagues. Or put the other way, it’s not easy to fight a lonely battle. Again, coaching can help by simply raising this legitimate human need and seeing what can be put in place. A newly appointed division head, for example, may find a mentor helpful.

How do I use Ryan and Deci’s mantra of ‘Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness’ in everyday business coaching? Usually, in a very simple way: if a client is experiencing personal demotivation, or a leader has to plan how to motivate their team, I outline the model, and we work through each of its parts. Are there any A, C or R factors missing in the environment, and if so what has to be done to build it in? Or is something blocking one of the three? If so, how could it be removed, or minimised? For example, making that sales contact is much more likely if the team gets refresher training on how exactly it should be handled (C); sets aside time to have a sales blitz together (R); and some element of choice is acknowledged (A). (‘I know this isn’t really your scene Jo, but would you like to join us?’)

Of course, the Ryan and Deci tool isn’t going to solve everything: we must avoid the Fundamental Attribution Error and remember all the forces in the context that are at play too. Plus the other research from Positive Psychology, including on the motivating value of playing to strengths. But the Ryan and Deci three points I find in practice to be a very useful start.

And fascinatingly, there is emerging research to support the view that Big Five coaching of itself may raise levels of intrinsic motivation. The research, by Daniel Burke and Alex Linley, was interesting for a number of reasons: it involved coaching senior executives, it measured the complex links between goals and motivation and, most importantly of all, as we shall see in the next chapter, it yielded results that were statistically significant.³ We can expect to see more research looking at Big Five coaching and intrinsic motivation in the future.

Advanced demotivation – ‘I quit!’

There is a special problem if things have got so bad that demotivation has reached the point where clients want to quit. Or when it’s really bad, to leave the industry altogether and go off and grow carrots. In theory, this seems like a difficult ethical challenge for the coach: we can’t take the organisational client’s money in order to help a key individual leave the firm.

In reality, I find it is rarely a problem. First, sensible corporate buyers know this is always a potential risk, and sensible coaches explicitly cover it when contracting. Second, if it does come up, decent clients know themselves they’re straying near a boundary. I state my rules clearly: I can’t of course help them leave, but what I do think is valid and indeed useful is to give them some space to air the issue. They may get to the point where they do want to explore external options further, and at that stage the coaching must obviously cease. But in the vast majority of cases, I find they take a deep breath, spill it all out, and then having got it off their chest, after a while reconnect with the original choice they made to be there.

Change

I was aware of the Ryan and Deci tool, and had been using it happily for years, but the change one is a more recent discovery. I was talking with my coaching supervisor about a piece of work that wasn’t going as well as I thought it should, when she asked, not entirely innocently, ‘Hmm, I wonder what stage of change he is in?’ In a single flash I got it – there could be different stages of change! And presumably different readiness for action, and hence the coach would have different expectations, and ask different questions . . .

This was my introduction to the work by Prochaska et. al, a group of scientists who worked for many decades on the tough task of helping people give up smoking – where all the usual challenges of behaviour change are made worse by physical nicotine addiction.⁴ They found successful change is not an off–on switch but a series of stages as we build our level of preparedness. And visible ‘action’ comes pretty late on in the process.

Prochaska sets out five stages of change:

• ●Precontemplation: where change is not yet on the radar.
• ●Contemplation: where there is ambivalence: they may have seen the need for change but equally want things to stay as they are.
• ●Preparation: where they have made the decision to change, but are still uncertain.
• ●Action: where they’re actually taking steps to change.
• ●Maintenance: which may need to continue for life (or Exit, which is job done!).
• ●Plus a loop of Relapse: which can occur at any point, is normal, and indeed to be expected.

This throws a whole new light on the GROW Model. It still works as well as ever – but the coach needs to appreciate that the G and the W might be very different, depending on which stage the client is in. And the questions need to be adjusted, too. For suggestions of helpful coaching questions in each stage, see the box below.

The stage concept stops us from leaping to the assumption that a person coming to coaching is ready to act. They may well not be – so we’re thrown back into Big Five coaching: listening, probing, checking, without prior expectation, to test out where the client is at. Once that is established, it also gives us some pointers for going forward. You might argue, it is a deepening, or a sub-component, of the R of the GROW Model.

So, two simple, but soundly evidence-based tools, for two crucial issues in coaching. (Like much else in this new field, however, while both have been tried and found useful by practising coaches, neither has yet been tested scientifically for senior executive coaching. The field awaits the results from several generations of Master’s and PhD projects.)

In the next two chapters, we switch to totally different topics. Coming up next, why coaching works: you may not care, but if like me you take pleasure in finding out why things work – of no practical value at all, but oh so fascinating! – then you may enjoy Chapter 12. If on the other hand your remaining query is how to earn a living through coaching, you may prefer to turn to Chapter 13.