8
PHASE 4—DEBRIEFING Define a Learning Focus
Executives usually spend their work lives racing from activity to activity. They long to have time for reflection but rarely take it due to the demands of the job. Consequently executive coaches need to insist early on that the sequence of coaching activities include time for evaluation.
For best results, the coach should build debriefing time right into the coaching contract. Agree on times that the two of you will sit down and debrief the client’s experience. Particularly following a live-action coaching event, it can be challenging to get the time with the client to debrief. She is already charging off to her next commitment. To make it easier for her and me, I explain up front that the debriefing event is a seamless part of the time commitment to live-action coaching. For example, a client’s team coaching time commitment is not over when the team leaves the room. The client and I have already scheduled a session immediately afterward that lasts between twenty and sixty minutes. We evaluate her effectiveness during that session and make plans for any next steps. The method outlined here shows how to use debriefing time effectively.
This chapter covers the following debriefing tasks:
1. Evaluation of the client’s effectiveness:
• Assess the client’s strengths and challenges.
• Review the client’s skill in management competencies.
• Customize your debriefing to each client.
• Debrief tough clients.
• Debrief at the end of a coaching engagement.
2. Evaluation of the coach’s effectiveness, including building a mutual feedback loop into the coaching relationship
A thorough evaluation of the client’s effectiveness provides him with a kind of biofeedback mechanism. He can compare his own experience to the feedback he gets from his coach. During the debriefing phase, the client can be open to learning and thus improve how he manages.
Sometimes you may encounter a client who resists developing his leadership ability. In the debriefing stage, you need to plot a course for working with the client or in some cases, determine whether to continue to work with him at all. A section in the chapter addresses this challenge.
The last phase of debriefing, evaluating the coach’s effectiveness, builds mutuality into the coaching contract. It is an opportunity to get feedback from your client and share your own assessment of your coaching in a way that serves as a model of self-assessment for the client.
Evaluate the Client’s Effectiveness
The process of debriefing is fairly straightforward. You start by asking your client to self-assess her effectiveness before you give her your feedback. If you give your feedback first, she is more likely either to swallow it whole or become defensive without thinking through her own evaluation of herself.
Assess the Client’s Strengths and Challenges
Usually clients focus on what they did wrong and what needs improvement. You can insist that they speak to both areas: to what they did well, identifying their strengths, and to the challenges they experienced in their performance. Keep your client’s business goal front and center. Ask her if she achieved her business goal and to what extent, and ask her to reflect on what, if anything, was missing. One resource that provides useful questions for generating greater awareness in clients is Whitmore (1996). Whitmore helps clients see their actual behaviors in a more objective light, thus encouraging them to self-correct.
After the client gives her self-assessment, you can follow with your own feedback. To what extent do you believe she attained her goal? What are the challenges she continues to face? How effective was her leadership, and what blind spots might she be missing? The debriefing session most often falls into four categories:
• Celebrate achievements.
• Identify recurring patterns that were either successfully broken or that remain ingrained.
• Assess the alignment of roles.
• Develop a plan for the client’s next step.
Celebrate Achievements. It is important to emphasize the client’s successes. Clients spend very little time concentrating on their strengths and instead tend to look at the gaps. While that can be a strength in itself, they need to remain mindful of the assets that help them succeed. For example, when I debriefed with Miriam, she noted these positive aspects: there were two ways she clearly defined her expectations of Sam, and she also induced Sam to commit to two specific action steps.
Debriefing the successes with a client also cements that successful behavior into her repertoire, and she is more likely to apply those skills when the situation calls for it the next time. Her brain is literally building a new neural pathway that recognizes the opportunities to replicate the sequence that worked before (not unlike the building of neural highways in the toddler’s brain). The more the client succeeds and enjoys the emerging competence that comes from this new set of behaviors, the more these behaviors will become habitual and increase the client’s effectiveness. Debriefing captures the moment of success and the taste of satisfaction that the client experiences and helps her transfer that moment into long-term memory. Your job as a coach is to ensure that these transferring and reinforcing opportunities happen so that the client benefits from the full arc of her learning.
Your job as a coach is to ensure that these transferring and reinforcing opportunities happen so that the client benefits from the full arc of her learning.
Identify a Key Pattern. Pattern recognition develops the client’s ability to take a more objective look at himself in order to see the big picture and how he fits into it. Again, this activity is business focused. Rather than identifying all patterns that were played out in the situation, you encourage the client to identify the one pattern that most affected his results. He may notice it right away and recognize where he repeated the same old pattern. Or he may not see it at all and resist your description of it. The more he invests energy in ignoring his reactive patterns, the longer he will remain in them. A little “there I go again” view of his own defensiveness can help him move beyond it. Your ability to specifically describe his behavior and its subsequent consequences can help him to view himself more objectively.
It helps if the client can develop a healthy dose of humor about his foibles. You can convey that all is not lost because he tripped and fell into the same hole. Your debriefing conversation can contain these questions: How can he put a neon sign around this pattern so he notices it earlier the next time? How can he detect his own internal clues more quickly? This develops a more neutral stance toward internally ingrained positions.
In a debriefing conversation, Miriam was able to see, feel, and articulate the difference in herself and in Sam’s actions when she changed her habitual pattern with him. She was able to stop midstream, notice an opportunity to do something different, and self-correct. This is a powerful skill for a leader to acquire.
Assess the Alignment of Roles. During the planning phase, you spent a lot of time talking to your client about how her plan can support the best alignment of roles in her work world. During the debriefing phase, you return to this important topic and help the client assess how effective she was in aligning her role and her colleagues’ roles relative to their specific issues. Here are some questions you can ask your client when you debrief alignment issues: Did she follow the mandate in her role as a sponsor, implementer, advocate, or agent? Did she ensure that the other party, whether it was the team or boss or a subordinate, successfully worked within his own role in the conversation? What loose ends, if any, such as authority, decision making, the goal itself, and participation, still need to be clarified? In a debriefing session, Miriam realized the importance of her sponsor’s agreement and alignment regarding switching Sam from firefighting to prevention. Thus, she was able to enjoy a much more successful session with Sam.
Develop a Plan for the Next Step. Now is the time to identify a learning focus. Sometimes increasing awareness of her challenges can cause the client to get bogged down and feel immobilized. Planning for the next action step prioritizes and breaks down these global challenges into manageable steps, all the while keeping coach and client focused on the goal. For example, after her session with Sam, Miriam and I talked about her next step, which was to set a date to follow up with Sam around his action plan.
Review the Client’s Skill in Management Competencies
During debriefing sessions, you may discover the client’s strengths and weaknesses in a number of typical management arenas. You might find that he concentrates on only a few and neglects the rest. For example, he may excel in the areas that require global thinking but fall short in facilitating discussions that uncover important information.
The following list of management competencies can help you scan for the areas in which the client needs to become more effective in order to produce organizational results. Look over these skills, and assess your client’s ability and confidence to perform these leader activities. You can examine the list with the client and set a developmental agenda as you continue to coach him.
Management Competencies
| Strategic thinking | • | Understands the whole picture. |
| Sees complex functions from the perspective of the whole. | ||
| • | Can weigh external and internal variables that affect the organization’s productivity and results. | |
| • | Comprehends business issues, how an organization works, and can develop ideas to maximize the organization’s effectiveness. | |
| Vision | • | Develops a clear vision for the organization and self. |
| • | Identifies specific and measurable goals (which are challenging) to achieve the vision, and effectively communicates the vision and goals. | |
| • | Engages constituents in conversations to further the vision, gain greater clarity, and increase collective commitment. | |
| Understanding customer relations | • | Perceives the customer, vendor, internal customer (employee), and larger community (civic context) relationships as mutually reinforcing. |
| Works to streamline processes to aid these relationships. | ||
| Cultivating external relations | • | Promotes a significant presence in the larger community of shareholders, customers, vendors, civic leaders, and others to increase partnership and influence in these areas. |
| • | External to one’s division, influences all cross-functional groups to coordinate their efforts for maximum productivity. | |
| Meeting facilitation | • | Develops an agenda and prioritizes items for the optimal use of time. |
| • | Facilitates discussion to gain maximum participation. | |
| • | Helps group members identify key needs, ideas, and plans for action. | |
| • | Uses a variety of group process methods to achieve effective engagement, leading to synergistic results and productive outcomes. | |
| Promoting conversations | • | Clarifies the parameters of discussions to maximize their effectiveness. |
| • | Helps all constituents to be heard and to speak to each other directly. | |
| • | Seeks to unearth new information and break habitual thinking. | |
| • | Addresses underlying issues. Talks about the tough issues. | |
| • | Takes a learning stance in conversations, that is, can expand one’s position based on others’ input. | |
| Decision making | • | Takes responsibility for clarity around who makes decisions. |
| • | Uses several decision styles effectively; for example, consultation, delegation, majority vote. | |
| • | Can firmly say yes or no and remain connected with constituents. | |
| Gaining commitment | • | Articulates behavioral expectations as specifically as possible. |
| • | Ensures that the employee understands expectations. | |
| • | Discerns the differences in employee resistance, everything from the legitimate raising of obstacles to an unproductive pattern between the leader and the employee. Deals with the resistance effectively. | |
| • | Ensures commitment to the expectations. | |
| • | Encourages employee initiatives toward the goals and expectations. | |
| Sponsoring project teams | • | Gives direction effectively. Specifically, identifies key roles, responsibilities, and time frames of projects. Allocates the people to provide expertise and support for the projects and identifies decision makers. Clarifies the single point agent for each project. Sponsors the kickoff. |
| • | Ensures monitoring processes are in place and works to strengthen cross-functional sponsorship. | |
| • | Uses staff in change agent roles. | |
| • | Directs staff agents to high-priority business issues. | |
| • | Ensures sustaining sponsors are using their agents well. | |
| • | Insists that agents remain in agent role without overstepping bounds. | |
| Team coherence | • | Looks for signs of group cohesiveness or breakdown. |
| • Takes action to build group identity, values, and synergistic work relationships. | ||
| • Promotes the team’s presence and contributions to the larger organization. | ||
| • | Ensures the team has the necessary resources to fulfill their mandates. Helps the team keep a whole- system view of their work. | |
| Performance management | • | Sets clear expectations and standards of performance for others. |
| • | Gains commitment to those expectations. | |
| • | Gives behaviorally specific feedback. | |
| • | Actively holds people accountable to those standards: asks for updates, solves problems with participants, and links consequences (praise or discipline) to people’s performance in a direct way. | |
| Coaching | • | Coaches only after performance expectations are clear and committed to. |
| • | Promotes leadership and initiative in people in all organizational roles. | |
| • | Gives specific feedback of others’ strengths and challenges, thus building competence and commitment in others. | |
| • | Is able to train others in discrete tasks and skills relevant to their performance, or delegates training resources for their development. | |
| Systems functioning | • | Expands awareness of the presenting issues to include (1) the effectiveness of the organization’s infrastructure, (2) the systems patterns at play, (3) the emotional tugs and pulls lying underneath organizational issues, and (4) the larger communities that support the organization. |
| • | Includes oneself as an important player in co-creating the patterns at work in the system. | |
| • | Works to increase the resilience of leaders and subordinates within the system. | |
| Advocacy | • | Effectively advocates for ideas and for one’s role in the organization in order to achieve the goals. |
| • | Communicates understanding and commitment to the larger goals when advocating. |
This management competencies list is by no means comprehensive. Its purpose is to stimulate your thinking regarding your client’s breadth of competence. There may be whole arenas that he and you overlook because of the intense scrutiny you are giving other areas. I advocate that you take an occasional pause to scan for other ways your client can develop to become a more comprehensive leader of his organization. You can also spend time with him and his boss looking at the areas that your client needs to ascend to the next layer of management.
For other resources, another way to sort leadership competencies is to use the framework of Lencioni (2002, 2005), which requires both backbone and heart skills from the executive while he is creating a strong “first team” of direct reports. Kouzes and Posner (2002, 2003) identify five practices and ten commitments of exemplary leadership that you can use with your client to assess his strength and challenge areas.
Customize the Debriefing of Each Client
As you and the client assess her skill and confidence levels in the management competencies, you will profit from using a situational leadership approach. Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi (1985) present variables (competence and/or confidence; required direction and/or support) applicable to clients’ capacities and motivations around management competencies. (For a fuller explanation of this approach, see Chapter Eleven.) Blanchard developed this approach for managers working with direct reports, but I find his methods useful for coaching clients as well.
Your clients face the same fluctuating set of variables as their employees regarding skills or motivation in leading and managing tasks. Your clients have unique developmental needs that require customized attention. Depending on the level of attainment and commitment that clients have for the preceding leadership competencies, you can become more or less directive and supportive regarding their next steps. One example is the client from the previous chapter, Len, who needed a lot of direction but not much moral support from me regarding his ability to facilitate his team meetings. He had no idea what he could do to improve and wanted all the direction I could offer in the coaching session and during the debriefing times. He needed very little coaching support in terms of motivation because he was so committed to improving his facilitation leadership.
Len had this profile in three management areas:
• Facilitating team meetings: low competence with high motivation
• Creating budgets: high competence and high motivation
• Managing performance: low competence and fluctuating motivation
As Len’s coach, I needed to approach my work with him very differently for each of these management tasks. My coaching style had to shift as his ability and motivation shifted with each management task:
• I gave him high direction with little support in conversations regarding leading his team meetings.
• I spent very little time directing or supporting regarding creating budgets other than ensuring that he understood the parameters he had to work within for his budget.
• I offered both high direction and high support on the topic of managing employee performance.
You cannot expect to use the habitual style of coaching that falls within your own comfort zone with every client you work with or even consistently with any one client. Leaders are as individualistic and quirky in their development needs as their employees are. You have to match your coaching style of direction and support to your clients’ needs at the time.
You have to match your coaching style of direction and support to your clients’ needs at the time.
Debrief Tough Clients
The majority of clients progress well on the path to greater skill development during coaching in both their work relationships and their pursuit of business goals. There are occasions, however, when a client does not put her plans into action. When this happens, it is typically discovered in the debriefing phase unless you discover it during live-action coaching. When the coach and client reconvene, the coach realizes that the client is not following through and has resistance to implementing her action plan.
It is important to probe the client’s lack of action to discover whether you have a tough client or whether the real issue is that she lacks confidence or feels threatened by change. Many times seemingly tough clients are really clients who are fearful, skeptical, awkward, or anxious or possess any number of attitudes that may accompany the learning process. Only if these issues have been surfaced, worked on, and therefore ruled out should you determine whether you have a tough client.
Another definition of tough might describe clients who are cantankerous, argumentative, or dominating, but these traits can be dealt with as long as the client is working along the learning curve and knows that she is the key to necessary changes. It is important not to confuse the personal style of a client with her deeper intentions and aspirations for learning about herself.
I define a tough client as someone who does not learn from her experiences. For any number of reasons, she does not take input well, cannot actively listen to alternatives, never takes action on action plans, or does not take ownership for her part in work dilemmas.
The truly tough clients say they want change but do not make it happen. They never get around to it or never get beyond resistance to taking action in the first place. A case in point is Rich, the CEO in Chapter Six, who never took action but just liked to talk about his situation.
The really difficult cases are the clients who say they are committed to changes they need to make in their management, but their automatic knee-jerk responses to stressful situations prevent them from forging a new, more effective pattern. They stay in their reactive mode all the time and remain defensive about their reactions. Then the coaching sessions cease to be productive.
Okay, you may be thinking. You’ve named my coaching nightmare. But what do I do if I discover my client isn’t committed? What if I have a client who persistently does not follow through on her plan and is not in a learning mode? The first thing you must do is realize that you are living your worst nightmare. Sometimes when you get reactive to this kind of client, you can get into a loop of either placating or blaming her. To realize you are entering an unproductive pattern with your client is the first step out of a dance that is not working. This was the realization I made when I worked with Chris.
Chris
Chris was a can-do kind of person: smart, decisive, opinionated, and impulsive. As executive vice president in a service industry company, he juggled a lot of stores, executives, and headaches. He needed a turnaround in one of his underperforming stores and was quite critical of Jason, the general manager who ran it. When I asked him what Jason was doing that slowed the store’s progress, Chris gave me a blank stare. After some thought, he said, “I suppose I’ve been too tolerant.” That led to a conversation of what he needed to do differently, including being clearer about his expectations and staying connected and tuned into his relationship to Jason. We outlined a process that Chris could use to engage with Jason and Jason’s executive team to increase productivity.
It became clear in the process that the relationship between Chris and Jason was cool and distant. Jason and his team had no consistent understanding of Chris’s expectations of them. A month went by, and Chris continued to avoid Jason. Apparently this behavior was typical of Chris. When he became disappointed with someone, he distanced himself from that person. We continued to meet and talk about his plan to address Jason and his reticence to do so. Another month went by, and nothing had changed between Jason and Chris. But Chris’s complaints about Jason were just as strong and critical.
Before my next meeting with Chris, I found myself making all kinds of judgments about him. I was irritated that he hadn’t followed through. How did he expect things to change? My anxiety was unusually high because it seemed that this was an entrenched pattern, and things were not likely to change. So what leverage did I have? Chris was impulsive too. If I confronted him with this, he might write me off as well. “Oh great,” I thought. “And I’ve got a meeting with him tomorrow morning.”
Then the light bulb went on. “Wait a minute. I’m getting sucked into the system,” I thought. I was on the brink of distancing myself from Chris just as he distanced himself from others. And my anxiety was keeping me from more calmly sifting through the information I had in order to provide constructive feedback to him.
Although such a realization can be deflating, it is actually the beginning point to taking more decisive action. That is the beauty of systemic realizations: when you know a system’s pattern has caught you, that change in perspective can lead to a way out.
One way out is to ask yourself, “What would I do if I weren’t triggered by all this and my client was one of my most motivated clients?” In other words, if you were at your best and this client was ascending the learning curve, what would you be doing? These questions help to clear your thinking from your knee-jerk, fightor-flight reactions. A challenging situation like this needs you at your best because your client is responding automatically and is currently unable to create a new outcome.
This is not Pollyanna thinking. It is challenging yourself to meet the demands of being an executive coach, which in this moment requires giving straightforward feedback to this client rather than blaming or avoiding him.
What has often been helpful to me in these situations is to think of the central pattern at play and call it to the client’s attention. I then present my position relative to that theme. In other words, I give the client my best thinking on what is happening and what is required in this situation.
In the case of someone like Chris, I avoid distancing myself from him, even as we are going through some rough water. I continue to partner with him by offering him creative approaches to the issue. I also need to identify my bottom line and ask myself what I am willing or not willing to do with this client, including perhaps terminating the contract if he does not show enough movement toward change. Ending the contract should not be regarded as a punishment or an emotional cutoff. It is a regretful but respectful termination rather than a harsh one. It comes from a realization that we cannot do any further fruitful work without a significant change in the client’s behavior.
In summary, when dealing with a tough client who is not ready to change, a coach should:
• Identify the central pattern and share it with your client.
• Give the client your best thinking on the situation.
• Identify and communicate your personal bottom line regarding involvement with the client.
Here is how these tasks played out with Chris:
Chris, continued
In my next meeting with Chris, I asked him for an update—whether he had anything different or more to report. He had no additions and was not forthcoming in committing to do anything differently. He seemed to be waiting for me to come up with interesting thoughts about Jason’s deficiencies and discuss what Jason would have to do to change.
“Chris,” I said, “you are continuing to keep a safe distance from Jason [name the pattern]. And you are setting him up to fail. It’s like you’re at a gunslingers’ standoff. You’re facing him from a careful distance, and neither of you is making a move. What usually happens in these situations [give best thinking] is that it continues until one of you can’t stand it any longer, and then you blow each other’s head off. No communication, then blasto! Obviously that doesn’t lead to increased productivity. One or both of you will be casualties for not engaging with each other. Ultimately Jason’s productivity is affecting your productivity. Do you really want to go down with him over this? Unless you decide to take action, I don’t see a reason for us to keep working together. If you are not going to work on changing your work relationship with Jason, I can no longer be useful to you” [personal bottom line].
Chris hadn’t considered his own vulnerability in the situation. That perspective actually motivated him to address the issue with Jason. His new awareness of his self-interest raised his energy to push against his own resistance to change.
This tough client turned around enough to enter a learning mode and change his behavior, but the story does not always end this way. Even when you do what I suggest with tough clients, some clients do not take the action they need to take. Then you need to activate your bottom line and respectfully end the contract.
Evaluate the Coach’s Effectiveness
At some point in the client-coach relationship, you should solicit feedback from your client regarding your effectiveness as a coach. A natural time for that to happen is during the debriefing phase. This builds a feedback loop in the working relationship and ensures that you are serving the client well. A side benefit is that you serve as a powerful model of someone who initiates and receives feedback. You can show that someone can maintain a professional presence while in learning mode.
When you receive feedback on your effectiveness, it is important for the client to give feedback to you first. This ensures that she gives you her unedited list, and you see what it is that she pays attention to in your sessions. You have the opportunity to ask questions to clarify what she says about your work with her. You can show what a nondefensive stance looks like when someone receives feedback.
Listening to your client’s assessment of your sessions places you on the receiving end of the client’s feedback, an experience you now share with others in the client’s workplace. You learn how skilled your client is at giving feedback. You can then give her feedback on her feedback. Kind of clever, no? Actually, clients could use help giving better feedback. Generally clients need to be more specific in their feedback and more balanced both in noting strengths and giving suggestions.
Next, you evaluate your own performance and thus tutor your client on the fine art of self-assessment.
The degree of your candor with your client about your strengths and weaknesses depends on the strength of your working relationship. Not surprisingly, with new clients, it is important to establish credibility about your effectiveness before launching into a litany of your weaknesses. Clients turn skittish if you self-assess too thoroughly before they know you well. The session is, after all, supposed to be about them, not you.
What is essential is your tone in evaluating your work with your client. You must be an equal partner with your client. When you mention anything that you did not do well, it is important that you stay on that equal footing and not demote yourself with selfflagellation, guilt, or diminishing your position with your client. When you can maintain your emotional equality, you are doing your client a great favor. She can see what it looks like to take responsibility for imperfections while maintaining confidence in her ability to move on and improve, all without getting defensive or placating. Clients need to develop the ability to self-assess with this same emotional tone. Often they have never seen how it is done. If more leaders had this ability, organizations would be less politically charged places.
Clients need to develop the ability to self-assess with this same emotional tone. Often they have never seen how it is done.
During your self-assessment of your own coaching, you identify your strengths and weaknesses in this particular coaching partnership. This includes reviewing the ways you may have become stuck in patterns that were not useful to the client. You could have fallen into the same dance patterns of the system or contributed to an ineffective pattern between the client and yourself. Some examples of a self-assessment review may include the following:
Strengths
“I helped you get crisper in articulating your goals.”
“I stayed on top of your dominant pattern with you and your team and thus helped you catch yourself in two critical moments.”
Weaknesses
“I backed off from pushing you on the issue of measures, which left you vulnerable in the meeting with your boss.”
“I underestimated the degree of challenge you experienced in managing yourself with Steve during the meeting. We could have created a specific strategy for that.”
Besides serving as a good model, your self-assessment also helps the client sift through and prioritize what she may want to further improve. For example, after listening to your self-report about how you did or did not help her manage herself, she may decide to put more effort into managing herself the next time she faces her coworker.
The last part of debriefing therefore is recontracting. Since this is a continuing relationship, it is useful to recycle through the four phases. This can mean shifting the contract to fit the client’s new or continuing goals rather than assuming that what she needs now is the same as before. It is the time to revisit the measures for the goals of the initial contract, see to what extent the outcomes have been attained, and course-correct if necessary.
Debrief at the End of a Coaching Engagement
Debriefing with the coach can help the client build a capacity to continue these planning and debriefing phases on her own once the contract is completed. When you approach the end of your coaching work with the client, it is time to enter into a more formal debriefing session. Essentially you accomplish two items: (1) give and receive feedback regarding the whole arc of the coaching contract, and (2) calculate the return on investment (ROI) on the coaching work (see Chapter Nine). In terms of a final feedback session, you can use the same debriefing framework outlined in this chapter: self-assessment by the client and then feedback to you as the coach.
The client sees with new appreciation where he has grown, and you see the impact of your work. Giving your client a summary of his growth, with a litany of specific ways he has developed new strengths, can be very satisfying. I ask the client to give this summary first. The more he can see for himself, the better. Then your summary becomes, at best, an expansion on his self-assessment. For a detailed agenda for this kind of meeting, see Pomerantz (2007). Pomerantz outlines a “lessons-learned meeting” that not only covers this kind of feedback but incorporates a natural way to encourage the client to help market your services to others.
A concluding debriefing process with your client should also include the calculation of the ROI for the organization for the coaching contract. Chapter Nine outlines such a process. When the client tells you what impact you have had on his leadership development, it becomes part of the inquiry into the ROI. As you will see in Chapter Nine, all the specifics you worked on during the initial contracting phase, the Three Key Factors and identifying the internal and external variables that influence the outcomes, now help you to determine the ROI of your work with the client.
Chapter Eight Highlights
Evaluate the Client’s Effectiveness
1. Encourage the client to self-assess first.
2. Discuss the client’s strengths and challenges.
3. Identify a key recurring pattern.
4. Assess the alignment of roles.
5. Plan the client’s next step.
Review the Client’s Skill in Management Competencies
1. Scan for management skills that the client needs to strengthen.
2. Build a development plan for the client that addresses these areas.
Customize Your Debriefing of Each Client
1. Recognize the unique development needs of the executive you coach.
2. Match your coaching style to the client’s level of competence and motivation.
Debrief Tough Clients
1. Identify the central pattern at play, and share it with your client.
2. Give the client your best thinking on the situation.
3. Communicate your personal bottom line regarding involvement with the client.
Evaluate Coach Effectiveness
1. Ask for feedback from the client first, and follow with your own self-assessment.
2. Identify your strengths and challenges when you coached the client.
3. Identify patterns you participated in.
4. Recontract for further coaching.
Debrief at the End of a Coaching Engagement
1. Give and receive feedback regarding the whole arc of the coaching contract.
2. Calculate the return on investment of the coaching work.
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