MPowerment Matters

Who Needs a Coach?

September 2007

Organizational leaders typically do not lack confidence. They have used their skills, talents, instincts and competencies to work their way to the top of their organizations. Once there, most feel that they can handle anything that comes their way. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case.

The President of the United States has a huge staff full of advisers on every aspect of substance, style, procedure and protocol. They are there to provide expertise that one person cannot possibly attain, but also to offer opinions and feedback. While most positions are not as complex as that of the President, those holding leadership posts still need expertise, opinions and feedback from others.

Despite the number and difficulty of many decisions that must be made, it is not unusual for even complex organizations to be extremely limited in their use of outside advisors. Many rely on their lawyer and their accountant only. Hopefully, these professionals offer good solid advice in their fields, but there are huge gaps between the expertise they typically offer and what an organizational leader needs.

It is truly lonely at the top. When big decisions need to be made, self-doubt often creeps in. Leaders need someone with whom they can bounce ideas around. They need someone to tell them they are not thinking clearly; or to question their motives or thought process. This person typically does not exist within the organization. It is rare to find an employee who will tell the Emperor that he is not wearing any clothes.

Some leaders have discovered the value of having an outside executive coach or trusted advisor. They derive the benefit of learning more about themselves in an objective way, so as to better understand their core values, how they think and how they act. They can then begin to see where their true strengths lie and where they could use some improvement.

The well-known sports author W. Timothy Gallwey says “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” Most of us do not achieve our potential, usually due to fear of failure, self-doubt or lack of confidence. In Coaching for Performance, author John Whitmore says “Coaching is an intervention that has as its underlying and ever-present goal the building of others self-belief, regardless of the content of the task or issue.”

It is interesting that for years now, a number of Fortune 500 companies have seen fit to provide their executives, both C-level and below, with coaches. Potential is meaningless unless it comes to fruition. It is time for the smaller companies and organizations to understand that and to use coaches/advisors as tools to bring greater success to key individuals and thus to the organization.

Coaching relationships can take many different forms. They can focus on a specific issue requiring a short term fix or can go on for years. They can be established to work on gaps in competencies or to enhance strengths. Coaches can help clients with emotional intelligence, critical thinking, intuition, decision-making and dozens of other competencies.

As trust is built, integrity and credibility established, and increasing value perceived, coaches can be seen as more and more valuable by individual clients.
A coach can rise to the level of “trusted advisor.” With a trusted advisor, virtually all issues, personal and professional, are open to discussion and exploration. The trusted advisor is the person the client turns to when an issue first arises, often in times of great urgency. As David Maister states in his book, The Trusted Advisor, the trusted advisor acts variously as a mirror, a sounding board, a confessor and a mentor. Maister goes on to list some key traits of such a person, including:

• Consistency
• Dependability
• Gives reasoning, not conclusions
• Gives options, increases our understanding of those options, gives recommendations and lets us choose
• Helps put issues in context
• Separates facts and emotions
• Focuses on the client rather than himself
• Listens without pre-judging
• Has enough ego strength to subordinate his own ego

Saj-nicole A. Joni, in her book, The Third Opinion, calls trusted advisors “inner-circle thinking partners.” She says they should have:

• The ability to see all sides of a complex issue
• A reputation for integrity
• Unique perspective
• An intuitive understanding of the client’s strengths and weaknesses and meshes well with them
• The ability to ask great questions and listen closely-including for what isn’t said.

Marshall Goldsmith, in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, talks of the “success delusion”, which describes how, when we get positive reinforcement from our past successes, in a mental leap that is easy to justify, we think that our past success is predictive of great things in our future. This becomes a serious liability when we need to change. Flaws may not be evident at certain levels in a leader’s career, and it can appear as if he or she is “the real deal”, moving up quickly straight toward the top, without the need for any aid or assistance. But all of a sudden, certain minor annoyances stand out more, certain behaviors noticeably de-motivate direct reports and peers, and the road to the top is all of a sudden less certain.

So, again, who needs a coach?

• Those who have gaps, flaws or blind spots that will keep them from achieving their potential
• Those with a strong desire to improve and become as good as they can be
• Those who have nobody else to turn to for honest feedback on their thoughts and actions
• Those who need a sounding board
• Those who recognize they need focused time with at least one expert and experienced individual to brainstorm and gain insight

For those few who may still mentally reside in the early twentieth century and compare having a coach to seeing a psychiatrist, it is time to get current. The right coach or advisor can make a huge difference. To succeed in this fast-changing, ever more complex world, executives need to use every tool and resource available to them. Being mediocre isn’t much of an epitaph, and not doing better due to refusal to take advantage of available resources is only an excuse for mediocrity.

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