Recently, a client expressed her frustration to me during a coaching session about her leadership team. Several members of the team were resisting her vision and strategy, and my client’s naturally participative style was not working to get them “on board”.
Her frustration left me with a decision regarding how to respond. On the one hand, the situation offered an opportunity for the leader to gain greater awareness regarding the reasons for her participative style. Was her choice of style a result of a misdiagnosis of the situation? Perhaps, it resulted from a fear of being too forceful and shutting down input from others. Maybe she was uncertain about how to deal with the conflict that could arise if she confronted her resistant colleagues.
On the other hand, the situation was urgent. Perhaps the most helpful response would be for me to offer a specific recommendation regarding how to work with the team to overcome their resistance and move forward.
During challenging economic times, organizations often consider executive coaching to be a luxury. Cutting off funding for coaching seems like an easy way to reduce expenses. And, if an executive coach has not done an effective job of linking coaching to strategy, the cost may indeed be a luxury that can be done without. But the problems my client is having won’t go away by themselves. In truth, she needed both short term consulting to solve the urgent problem and coaching to overcome her fear of being too forceful.
Ideally an executive coach is not a luxury, but instead a key member of a leader’s “inner circle”, acting as a resource to support the client to lead more effectively and to find new solutions to difficult people leadership challenges. By doing so, the coach becomes an investment in achieving organizational results.
Consider the situation described in the opening paragraphs. Some exploration of the issue helped the client see that her self esteem was too closely tied to whether her team saw her as competent. As a result, she was fearful of being wrong and hesitant to take a firm stance on issues. This created problems not only when leading change, but also when she needed to confront a direct report about his poor performance. It turned out to be an issue with her adolescent children as well.
Armed with this insight, the client and I worked together to create an agenda and communication strategy for the next meeting with her senior team. We also spent time “rehearsing” her delivery to make certain she was clear about her expectations and unambiguous in her message that it was time to move forward on execution. The team responded favorably to her more forceful approach.
Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. Good coaches help leaders to approach their problems with new ways of seeing and thinking, and provide practical tools and advice to assist the leader to take more effective action. In these times, are innovative and effective solutions to problems a luxury or a strategic investment? What do you think?
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Executive Coaching: Luxury or Strategic Investment?
Recently, a client expressed her frustration to me during a coaching session about her leadership team. Several members of the team were resisting her vision and strategy, and my client’s naturally participative style was not working to get them “on board”.
Her frustration left me with a decision regarding how to respond. On the one hand, the situation offered an opportunity for the leader to gain greater awareness regarding the reasons for her participative style. Was her choice of style a result of a misdiagnosis of the situation? Perhaps, it resulted from a fear of being too forceful and shutting down input from others. Maybe she was uncertain about how to deal with the conflict that could arise if she confronted her resistant colleagues.
On the other hand, the situation was urgent. Perhaps the most helpful response would be for me to offer a specific recommendation regarding how to work with the team to overcome their resistance and move forward.
During challenging economic times, organizations often consider executive coaching to be a luxury. Cutting off funding for coaching seems like an easy way to reduce expenses. And, if an executive coach has not done an effective job of linking coaching to strategy, the cost may indeed be a luxury that can be done without. But the problems my client is having won’t go away by themselves. In truth, she needed both short term consulting to solve the urgent problem and coaching to overcome her fear of being too forceful.
Ideally an executive coach is not a luxury, but instead a key member of a leader’s “inner circle”, acting as a resource to support the client to lead more effectively and to find new solutions to difficult people leadership challenges. By doing so, the coach becomes an investment in achieving organizational results.
Consider the situation described in the opening paragraphs. Some exploration of the issue helped the client see that her self esteem was too closely tied to whether her team saw her as competent. As a result, she was fearful of being wrong and hesitant to take a firm stance on issues. This created problems not only when leading change, but also when she needed to confront a direct report about his poor performance. It turned out to be an issue with her adolescent children as well.
Armed with this insight, the client and I worked together to create an agenda and communication strategy for the next meeting with her senior team. We also spent time “rehearsing” her delivery to make certain she was clear about her expectations and unambiguous in her message that it was time to move forward on execution. The team responded favorably to her more forceful approach.
Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. Good coaches help leaders to approach their problems with new ways of seeing and thinking, and provide practical tools and advice to assist the leader to take more effective action. In these times, are innovative and effective solutions to problems a luxury or a strategic investment? What do you think?