Creating Coaching Cultures

The Atlas Complex

One of the first lessons that coaches need to learn is that they can’t carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.  Often, with their deep desire to make a difference, coaches will take on responsibilities that rightfully belong to their clients.  When clients don’t take the actions they committed to take, coaches may feel like their coaching “weren’t good enough.”  Rather than calling the client on the broken commitment, they may feel guilty or inadequate as a coach.  And then they try even harder.  This doesn’t serve the client or the coach.  

The same dynamic shows up for imaginal cells -- people who are guiding organizations to evolve to coaching cultures. (See the 09.09.09 blog entry, Invitation for more information on imaginal cells.)  People who are guiding these large change efforts can burn out quickly if they are not effectively engaging their organizations in the transformation process.

Here are some signs that you may have an “Atlas complex” – the desire to carry the weight of the entire change effort on your back:

• You find yourself cajoling people to take any kind of action – and then picking up the pieces when they don’t, rather than having a deeper conversation about their commitment to create meaningful change
• You feel overwhelmed by all of the activities you’ve got going and underwhelmed by the response from the organization
• You seem to care about creating change a whole lot more than almost anyone else, and at times, this may make you feel upset, misunderstood and / or unappreciated

Linking Coaching-Based Leadership to the Business

When I am in initial conversations with an organization about starting an initiative to integrate coaching-based leadership into the DNA of the organization, one of the first questions I ask is “How do you envision coaching-based leadership adding value to the business?”  If the answer sounds something like “Well, we just need coaching skills” that’s a huge red flag for me.

In my experience, if the people spearheading a coaching initiative can’t articulate the value to the business one of two outcomes is likely:

The initiative won’t get off the ground, usually because there’s insufficient support (read, insufficient budget.)

OR

The initiative will be sputter out under its own weight, since no one is quite sure why they are investing in something with no clear expected return.

“Just because” isn’t a good enough reason to engage in coaching-based leadership. 

Show and Tell To Create Engagement in Coaching-Based Leadership

I recently took a writing class called “Show and Tell” where we explored the differences between “showing” the reader how something was happening – through dialogue and description – versus “telling," which entails simply explaining what happened. Both are valuable ways of sharing a story.   It’s how and when you choose to do one versus another that shapes how the story evolves.

I think the same is true when you are trying to engage an organization to embrace a coaching-based approach to leadership.  You are, in effect, weaving a story about a possibility.  And in doing so, you need to both show people what coaching-based leadership is all about as well as telling them how this new style of leadership can make a positive difference for the organization.

I think we’re all pretty familiar with what telling looks like.  We give presentations, we explain, we cajole, we lecture, we write emails, and more often than not, we discover that, despite our best efforts, people often don’t seem to fully grasp what we’re talking about.

The Foundation of a Coaching Culture: Coaching-Based Leadership

Recently I’ve been hearing more about coaching cultures and personally, I think many people are missing the point.  There seems to be an assumption that creating a culture of coaching implies that all leaders and managers should essentially open up their own mini-coaching practices, conducting lengthy coaching sessions with all of their employees on a regular basis.  This of course, on top of ALL the other things they have to do.  It makes me tired just thinking about it!

It takes a lot of training and practice to be able to conduct successful ongoing coaching engagements.  A well training professional coach will often have hundreds of hours of specific coach training, in addition to working with a mentor coach (or coaches).

I think we need to learn to walk before we run.  To me that means helping leaders learn how to use basic coaching skills in day-to-day conversations. That’s what we call coaching-based leadership.

What is coaching-based leadership?

Coaching-based leadership occurs when people integrate basic coaching approaches into their day-to-day conversations.  Coaching approaches such as asking questions to gain insight instead of just gathering information, listening to understand what’s stuck, and appreciating how the other person views the situation are a few of these approaches.

Invitation

As the CEO of Cylient I often work with people who are keenly interested in evolving the cultures of their organizations to be more flexible, collaborative, responsive and vital.  Places where people feel valued and inspired to contribute their creative energy towards achieving something that makes a difference. 

I call these people who seek to create cultural change “imaginal cells.”  Imaginal cells are the cells that begin the “rewiring” process that changes the DNA of the caterpillar to transform into a butterfly.  The first imaginal cells begin to find each other and clump together, creating a threshold for change.  See this link for a more detailed explanation of the role of the imaginal cell in the transformation process:  http://www.cadi.ph/Editorials/Editorial_Butterfly_Effect.htm

Imaginal cells can reside in many different places in organizations.  They are not necessarily the most senior people or the recognized thought leaders, although they may play those roles.  They are the people who see that how we’re working isn’t always working.  And they want to do something about it.