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Executive Coaching: An Integrative Approach To Executive DevelopmentAuthor:Susan Bloch, Global Head of Executive Coaching,
Hay Group When Robert Walker moved into the role of CEO in an international financial institution he realised that his new job was much more complex than he originally believed. He was struggling not only with the diverse views on strategy and objectives, but also with the strong political undertones in the executive team. He was trying to think of all the things he had learnt both on the job and in courses and programmes over the past few years, but found it difficult to pull all the pieces together. It was after a particularly difficult board meeting that the HR director, who was a member of the top team, suggested that he might like to do some work with an executive coach. At first, Robert felt that he was being criticised and was annoyed by the suggestion. After all it was "tough going" at the top and everyone knew that. He also remembered a friend in his previous organisation who had been working with a coach and was then re-deployed, so he associated coaching with failure. This is mainly because that as a distinct intervention, executive coaching often remains poorly defined. Over a drink later in the evening with Mike (the HR director), Robert began to understand what executive coaching was and how this process could help him pull together and embed some of his key learnings from the past few years. He saw how he might link his personal development with his own performance and results. He also began to recognise how this process could help him understand how he might get the best out of himself and his team. Mike explained the process, methodology of coaching, and the confidentiality aspects. He suggested that after he had met with his coach, Robert should share some of the aspects of his meeting with his team. This would build up values of trust and transparency. Robert was surprised to learn that many of the top team had indeed worked with coaches in the past and that ten other executives were still actively engaged in coaching throughout Europe. This had been initiated alongside the executive development programme that the company had run with INSEAD four years ago. Robert expressed his concerns to Mike about "how much time this would all take" given he already seemed rushed off his feet. He questioned as to whether he would be able to schedule in regular meetings given he was already working an 48 hour week. Mike helped him to understand that the coach would help him review his diary and priorities, and to focus on only those activities where he was really adding value. Robert is not the only senior executive who has felt anxious about moving into a new job. In a survey on Leadership "Moving into new roles" - carried out by the Hay Group, only 55% of managers who had moved up the ladder felt adequately prepared. Robert, also recognised that he should have taken the time to understand the politics at the top of the organisation, especially in view of the fact he had relocated from Chicago to Manchester. Like many of the respondents in the survey, Robert missed some of his friends and colleagues whom he had seen regularly. His wife Shelley, and children seemed to be settling down well, but they too were missing their cousins and other close family members. Christmas seemed like a long time away. His mentor had retired, and he found that he actually had no-one to talk to. In the survey, only 58% of new leaders felt clear about their job and only 19% felt that were very satisfied with what they had been able to achieve. Many felt stressed, and believed that in order to be successful they would need to display some defined leadership skills and behaviours. When Robert read the survey which included influencing across organisation boundaries, top team development, plus creating and articulating a vision, some alarm bells began ringing in his head. He realised, like many other executives, that he would need to spend more time reflecting on his new role and take more time to understand the complexities of the organisation, the structure and culture from a helicopter view point. Importantly, he had also begun to understand that, due to a hiccup in the financial reporting systems, the business was not doing as well as he had initially thought. Robert was initially skeptical about what to expect from coaching. "What on earth could anyone who has not been a CEO teach him about running a business?" he confided to his wife the evening before his first meeting. In fact he was almost tempted to re-schedule the meeting given he had so much on. Shelley persuaded him to at least meet the coach. "What if I don't like the guy? He responded. "Well, maybe you can talk to Mike and ask to meet with another coach" she replied. "But at least give it a try!" To his surprise when he met with his coach the following day he was impressed by his strong track record. Challenging questions had helped him to articulate some of his concerns in a surprisingly short time. He realized that coaching was quite different from telling someone what to do. In fact the fact that his coach had worked with a wide variety of people in different organizations seemed to give him a refreshing perspective on things. He also found his coach incredibly insightful. The safe house environment where he was asked questions, given advice and even given wise counsel was already starting to be valuable. He saw how, in partnership with his coach, he could identify a set of goals which would improve both his professional performance and personal satisfaction. Once he had made the link between his own coaching and that of other high performance individuals, such as Tiger Woods and David Beckham as well as other star performers who had all used coaching to improve their performance, he felt more like a star himself. Why, he wondered, had he associated coaching with failure and poor performers? Despite his initial skepticism and concerns about the cost of coaching, Robert was engaged by the process. He was surprised by how focused and measured his coaching was. He had imagined that it would be a series of nice cosy chats and not all that helpful. By his second meeting, he and his coach agreed on how they would gather feedback data from people about his leadership style. Initially, 180º feedback from his team and focused interviews with his team and boss, helped Robert understand how he was perceived. He reviewed his six leadership styles;
and was upset that his team saw him as being apprehensive about delegating, expecting immediate compliance. He had assumed that his strong democratic style, which had been his strong trademark as director of operations, had prevailed. What his coach helped him to understand was that, when he felt under pressure or lacking in confidence, he tended to become a pacesetter with little sympathy for poor performance. He recognised that this was beginning to demoralise not only some of the members of the board but their teams as well. He and his coach followed a definite process in their coaching. They both agreed that he had to raise his self-awareness, so that he would recognise how people actually felt about him. He needed to learn to listen to people's opinions, feelings and value statements, as well as "facts and figures". Importantly, he began to learn about how an American might be viewed in corporate HQ in the UK, and to stop comparing Chicago to Manchester. In reviewing the feedback about the climate he was creating, Robert agreed with his coach that he needed to articulate a clear vision for the team as well as the business. He had neglected to create a culture of clarity, accountability and team commitment. In addition, people with initiative were often pushed "back into their boxes", ensuring that bureaucracy was rife. New and innovative thinking was clearly not rewarded. It had taken a while for him to realise that people still clung to their functional silos, and valued pleasing their bosses as more important than pleasing their customers. "Why was it" he questioned "that the finance and sales departments found it so hard to work together? And why did Chicago and Manchester feel so critical of one another? Clearly, his ambition to be a great CEO would require, more than anything else, changes in values, practices and relationships throughout the company. People had to learn to collaborate and to develop a team sense of responsibility for the performance of the business. Clearly that "silo mentality" was an issue that had to be addressed. Robert began to think about what his strengths were and how he could identify other areas where they might be applied. This began to build his self-confidence, especially when he acknowledged his credentials and achievements. He used his ability to think strategically and conceptually, not only in operations, but also in aligning operations more powerfully with marketing. Marketing and operations were beginning to speak together in a different way and operations staff were beginning to focus on the customer. He also looked at ways that he might become more effective and how he needed to change some of his behaviours. He knew he had to "let go" and really develop and empower others. Why then did he still continue to check up on his managers, and why did he often cut others off in mid-conversation? His coach also helped him think about how some of his values were stopping him from changing. Why did he still think that "hard" work was still the only way to the top? No wonder others though he was a workaholic and his wife and kids complained that they never saw him. Also he had to stop evaluating the performance of the senior management population by the number of hours they worked. After two meetings, Robert and his coach had engaged in a clear partnership. Their contract was clear and they had agreed measures and outcomes. Robert not only began to think differently about himself and his role, but people noticed that he listened better and was clearer about his expectations of the performance of others. Importantly, by listening for others' concerns and views, he took people with him, rather that leaving them abandoned at the "bottom of the hill". The process that they were following in the coaching programme was clear. There had been a first phase of "Review". Now they were in the second phase of "Re-shaping" and would soon be moving into the phase of "Re-learning" then embedding these learnings. He examined some of his values and assumptions and how some of these were making life difficult for him and his team. He had always firmly believed that if you wanted things to be done well "you had to do them yourself". Now he realised how this was stopping him empowering and trusting others. He suddenly saw how the team in Brussels had felt when he had started re-doing things they had done. Their frustration with his behaviour had seemingly "sucked the oxygen out of the room". No wonder they seemed to have no energy when they were in meetings. It became clear to him how he needed to stay engaged yet "back-off". Between meetings, Robert's coach tasked him with a number of exercises to work on. This was to help some of the new behaviours stick. He began to be able to evaluate his own behaviour in meetings and really look for evidence that what he was doing was successful. He thought about how he had upset Ruth, the FD, only three weeks after she had returned from maternity leave, by going on about her commitment to the business. It was obvious she could no longer work weekends and evenings, yet that was what he had come to expect her to do before her son was born. In fact, could he expect it from anyone on a regular basis? It goes without saying that the lives of executives are frequently overwhelming, complex and difficult. There are daily opportunities for significant failures in their job performance and personal situations. Most muddle through with little or no external assistance except that which is available from colleagues, family or friends. Coaching, as Robert learnt, provided him with an additional safety net. He and his coach had embarked on an intensive and complex commitment to the path of growth. They had built up a relationship of trust, mutual respect and authenticity. Importantly, during the Re-learning phase, Robert began to make sense of the six weeks programme he had attended at Stamford the summer before he moved into the top job. He made real links between business strategy, market focus, and revenue growth with his own leadership capability. He analysed the capability of the global teams to deliver this growth. It became clearer, through the challenging discussions with his coach, what he needed to continue to do to be successful. He saw how the collection of evaluation data from instruments and interviews had raised his self awareness. Being forced to reflect on the data and methods of inquiry used by his coach supported his understanding of his behaviour impacted on business performance. The application of such techniques as role playing, reframing, simulations, confrontations, and interpretations in a timely and sensitive way had constituted the foundation of his leadership journey. He saw how he had made steady progress towards the goals he and his coach had established in phase one. Coaching was beginning to pay off. As well as addressing the specific goals and potential long-term barriers in his leadership journey, Robert became dedicated to the idea of continuous learning for all aspiring managers in the business. He realised how being aware of his own skills, his strengths and weaknesses, and having a plan as to how to enhance his performance was benefiting the business. He saw how keeping pace with changes meant re-inventing some parts of himself. Benchmarking and updating his own skills, as well as those of the senior team, meant that they were not only beginning to respond to change, but also to anticipate it. He saw how people were beginning to move across regional and functional boundaries and that they were becoming much less defensive. He realised that the systematic process of taking stock of those attributes that influenced his own effectiveness, success and happiness had reduced his own anxieties. Coaching had given him a shot of reality and set things in perspective. Having come up through an operations route, Robert had been skeptical about coaching from the start. He had not realised that the assessment data would provide such a solid basis for setting stretch goals and measures for his leadership journey. He was engaged by the contracting process because he always needed concrete evidence and measures to 'prove' things were going in the right direction. He managed his time differently to make sure he had time to think through and prepare himself for most meetings, and to integrate his "intellectual" management learning with the "emotional" management learning. Role-plays and "challenges" from his coach had enabled him to review things from different perspectives; to take risks and be himself. His team felt more relaxed in his presence and more energised by his ideas. Working with an executive coach had helped Robert to learn that he could not be expected to know all the answers, bear all the load and do all the work. Investing his time and soul in trying to understand what true leadership was all about enabled him to develop a dedicated learning strategy. The positive impact on the business was visible for all to see. Susan Bloch
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