A question frequently asked by managers on coaching skills courses is ‘When should I coach and when should I be directive?’ A short coaching course may create a conflict which can reduce a manager to silence when faced with a perceived obligation to ask instead of tell, in the struggle to lead in a coaching style.
This is addressed in my ‘Coaching-Mentoring-Managing Continuum’ which represents the different aspects that an effective manager needs to be able to move between smoothly. Whereas Ken Blanchard’s famous Situational Leadership model describes these as different styles of leadership, I believe they can all be done in a coaching style, delivered with respect and with the intention of building the confidence in reports rather than limiting it:
Coaches in training to deliver formal sessions sometimes experience a similar conflict, experiencing an overwhelming urge to ‘help’ by providing a solution instead of asking the type of questions which will facilitate the coachee’s own ideas. There are many different opinions and approaches to this issue, not least what exactly is meant by ‘directive coaching’ and whether the two words together constitute an oxymoron.
I have noticed, while acting as an assessor for the Association for Coaching and other organisations, that someone who calls him or herself a coach may actually be delivering what I would term ‘mentoring’ – sharing their experience and advice with their clients – although this is not to say that what they deliver is any less valuable than coaching, which will depend on the client’s particular needs at any one time.
Some of my most enjoyable moments as a coach have been when I simply reflect back a client’s words, perhaps ask an open question, and then get out of the way while my client explores the fascinating realm of the self. The insights (and consequent change) which occur during this process are more powerful than any advice I could offer.
Performance Coaching was developed by Sir John Whitmore and his colleagues after John came across the work of Tim Gallwey, a Harvard tennis coach who observed that his students had the ability to teach themselves better than a sports coach could, and who coined the term ‘self-directed learning’, which is a core principle of coaching.
However, people have different reasons to come to coaching, particularly because there are many who still do not understand what it is. In the corporate sector a coachee may be there simply because all managers at his level have been ordered to work with a coach, whether they want it or not; therefore he may be less willing to explore his ‘inner self’ and be keen to glean any useful tips the coach can offer.
Managers might choose to work with me because of my experience as a corporate MD and in particular my work with Sir Richard Branson; the possibility of picking up tips about Branson’s management style may attract a client more than coaching itself. However, I am a coach and I do not believe that solely offering clients solutions from my own experience matches my job description, however beneficial it may be to the manager, and it is not what I want to do.
Three issues come up here:
- Satisfying the client – should he who pays the piper call the tune?
- Satisfying one’s own wishes as a coach about how to spend one’s time – I think that most coaches choose the profession because the fulfillment factor in asking rather than telling is high.
- Being as useful to the client as possible.
So how do we deal with these?
First of all, let us take ‘Satisfying the client’. It is crucial to be clear at the contracting stage about what the client requires and what you as the coach can deliver. The challenge is that it can be difficult for a new client to understand what coaching does without having experienced it.
I was once asked to coach a top-level leader in a large organization whose directive style was on the brink of causing resignations among the team of directors he led. During our first meeting he enthusiastically welcomed coaching by telling me:
‘When I was a child I didn’t do what my father told me but I obeyed my teacher. Now my team won’t listen to me, so you can be the teacher – I’ll tell you what I want them to do, and they will listen to you.’
My instinct was to get straight into the coaching so that he could experience the benefits rather than hearing me try to explain them, but I knew it was essential for us both to be clear on expectations in advance. What I chose to say was:
‘How about if I could help YOU become the person they listen to?’
This got across that what coaching could offer might be even more advantageous to him than what he had requested.
This manager had a brilliant intellect matched with a long and glitteringly successful track record. His stance was that he could give his staff the best solution in a fraction of the time it would take them to reach it during a meeting and, therefore, he was acting in their best interests as well as the firm’s by saving their time and effort. This was a rare case, in that what he said was probably true. However, times have changed and people do not like to be managed in this way, and this is where the problem lay.
I spent roughly half the time in the sessions asking non-directive questions, during which he came to understand the impact that his current style had on the business and his own position, and the other half teaching him skills that would enable him to manage in a coaching style. Once he had grasped this concept intellectually, he absorbed each coaching skill with ease and delivered all of them impeccably, with the result that energy levels at meetings soared and people began to enjoy working with him.
My first experience of the value of this was during my time as a Managing Director at Virgin. One of Sir Richard Branson’s favorite sayings is:
The coaching approach, of asking for people’s ideas, rather than telling them, works because it makes people feel valued, raises their energy, and gives them a sense of satisfaction in their achievements.
Organizations today tend to require not just that their managers have a coach, but that those managers incorporate the skills into their day-to-day leadership styles. The most efficient way of achieving this is by group training courses, but I find that during one-to-one coaching, the area of expertise where potentially useful advice often comes up is in coaching skills.
This touches on the third element above: ‘Being as useful to the client as possible’. The coach’s advice may relate to coaching skills, banking processes, marketing, or wherever their area of excellence lies, or it may simply be that their intuition offers a way forward which they think the client may have missed. It seems to be expected in corporate coaching that some advice will be offered – and when one has a useful tip to give, where is the benefit in withholding it? So I suggest three guidelines which apply both to formal coaching and manager-as-coach:
- Offer your suggestion only after the coachee has run dry. How far can their minds go before they need yours?
- Ask permission before giving advice, for example: “Could I offer something from my experience/intuition here?” This marks a boundary where the coach is stepping out of coaching and into consulting. It also gives the client permission to reject the coach’s suggestion without fear of causing offense.
- Aim for suggesting no more than 10% of the time.
It is assumed here that ‘suggesting’ is as far as ‘directive’ coaching will go, and I think that advice is usually offered in this way in all schools of coaching today. Coaches never tell their clients what to do.
There is a fourth guideline for managers who seek to lead in a coaching style rather than deliver formal sessions: there are times when your reports just need a straight answer. Learn and practice your coaching skills until they are fully integrated, then trust your intuition about whether to ask or tell. I believe that there is a misconception that coaching is purely about skills like ‘active listening’ and ‘effective questioning’. This assumption ignores the intention behind the words, which is key; if your intention as a manager is to exhibit Emotional Intelligence (as described in Daniel Goleman’s books), with an eye to supporting and developing your teams, then you can probably be an effective coaching manager without learning any coaching skills (and more so if you do). However, if you learn the skills and this intention is not in place, you may well come away saying ‘I’m using Open Questions and my staff still hate me’!
My belief is that both asking and telling can be done in a coaching style as long as they are grounded in Emotional Intelligence rather than, say, bullying, or a desire to appear clever or to ‘help’ by providing a solution.
If we want to get into semantics there is also the question of what we mean by Directive Coaching. I would say that coaching is directive in terms of the process but not the content:
Once the coach is tempted over the line, they are no longer coaching. The caveat to this is that useful content can be offered after asking permission, as I recommended above, which sets a clear boundary between the coach’s agenda and the client’s. The key is to be aware enough to make a choice.
Of course, this is not a question which occurs only in the UK. Management styles vary across the world; for example, Western cultures are said to exhibit more open aggression than Asian ones at work. My experience of delivering coaching skills training to managers from all over the world (including Americans, Malaysians, Chinese, Indians, Australians, Europeans, and Eastern Europeans) is that different cultures experience varying challenges in introducing a coaching style, but that once the managers successfully assimilate the skills, they can communicate with each other more easily regardless of cultural differences. For example, an Indian manager recently said to me “I was afraid that I would lose my authority if I managed by ‘asking’ instead of ‘telling’. However, in practice I find it reinforces my authority”.
Coaching is a fledgling profession, and I am struck by how often a participant on a foundation skills course will come up with a new take on something, thus adding to my own store of knowledge. The real learning takes place out in the field when putting the skills into practice, and I believe that once the foundation principles have been absorbed, every new coach or coaching manager has the possibility of contributing some wisdom to this inspiring and growing profession.
References:
Association for Coaching: “Excellence in Coaching” (2006 Kogan Page)
Gallwey, Tim: “The Inner Game of Tennis” (1986 Pan Books)
Goleman, Daniel: “Emotional Intelligence” (1996 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC)
Whitmore, Sir John: “Coaching For Performance” (2009 Nicholas Brealey Publishing)
Wilson, C. (2014) “Performance Coaching: A Complete Guide to Best Practice Coaching and Training”. London, Kogan Page.
About the author
An international speaker, writer and broadcaster, Carol Wilson is Managing Director of Culture at Work and a Fellow of the ILM, the Professional Speaking Association and the Association for Coaching, where she is a member of the Global Advisory Panel. A cross-cultural expert, she designs and delivers programs to create coaching cultures for corporate and public sector organizations all over the world, and has won numerous awards for coaching and writing. She is the author of “Performance Coaching: A Complete Guide to Best Practice Coaching and Training”, featuring Forewords by Sir Richard Branson and Sir John Whitmore, and translated into three languages; “The Work and Life of David Grove: Clean Language and Emergent Knowledge”; and “The Coaching and Feedback Handbook”, an internal publication for IKEA. She has contributed to several other books and published over 50 articles including a monthly column in Training Journal.
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