Executive Coaching: Its Underlying Principles — Part I
Recently, a business associate emailed me a question: How do you do what you do? He was referring to that part of my business called “coaching,” a generic phrase encompassing many aspects of improving communication, leadership, and presentation of self.
This question was harder to answer than I thought because I do so much of it intuitively. But it was good to be asked the question and force myself to consciously think through the principles guiding my ability to coach people to self realization and self transformation.
What follows is Part I of my answer to him. The answer seemed both so obvious and so complex. Here are some of my intuitive abilities translated into conscious principles.
- Make no assumptions. Well, DUH! But some of the biggest “duhs” in life are the hardest to abide by. Usually managers will send me a summary of what needs to be “fixed.” It would be easy to assume the manager is correct in her/his assumptions; after all, they are the manager.
But these perceptions (and they are, after all, perceptions, even though they are managers) must be held in the back of my mind, not the front. I think of them as background, context, parts of the entire puzzle which I must then piece together by discovering all the parts.
The manager’s perceptions may prove to be entirely correct, mostly accurate, slanted, or misguided. People’s roles in the company do affect my perception (yes, I have perceptions, too) of other people’s views of what people have wrong or right about them, but they are not the guiding force behind my interaction.
- Armed with perceptions, feedback, and facts from others, now I must listen with my ears, eyes, intuition, heart, and gut to find the patterns in the conversation which will help me find the most reliable, accurate picture of the puzzle. What words, phrases, references are used often enough to form a pattern creating a point of view (military language? nurturing language? passive vs. active use of verbs? reference to parents’ expectations?–(even middle aged people still carry around those parental “voices” in their heads/psyches)–indirect language?, defensive language and posture? listening skills?
Coaching is more than a skill; it is an art, perhaps an innate one. It is what Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer, calls the ability to ”surrender.” A really good coach surrenders to the person across from her without remaining disengaged or becoming ego centric.
Part II, which will address the “calm, assertive energy” (again, Cesar Milan) needed to create an atmosphere wherein change can occur will be next in my Executive Coaching blog entry.
