How to Evolve as a Coach

Shaping your coaching style and methods is an art form - the way an artist develops, evolves and creates a painting; or a composer creates music.  In an article in Psychology Today, Douglas LeBier says one way to do this is to stretch towards new challenges. When you challenge yourself to stretch towards a higher level of your abilities, you also increase your overall well-being. 

Research indicates that the capacity for self-evolution -- of your personality, mental capacities, relationships and actions in the world -- is based on conscious intent. So how do you shape your intent and what are the ways a coach can stretch himself? The Pasteur's Quadrant can help shape plans. 

Ways of Research

In the Pasteur's Quadrant, author Douglas Stokes describes a classification for research projects that, simultaneously, are fundamental for the advancement of knowledge (finding meaning) and are relevant for immediate applications (utility). Each of the scientific quadrants identified by Stokes can be important to a coach as focus areas of intent. Let's see what these quadrants are.

The Pasteur Quadrant

The Niels Bohr Quadrant: The work of the theoretical physicist, Niels Bohr, is an example of the quadrant in which researchers search for fundamental knowledge or meaning, with little concern for application. 

The Pasteur Quadrant: The research of Louis Pasteur, whose studies of bacteriology were carried out at the behest of the French wine industry, characterizes the work of scientists who select their questions and methods based on potential relevance to real world problems. 

The Edison Quadrant: The work of Thomas Edison, whose practical inventions define the 20th century, exemplifies the work of scientists whose stock and trade is problem solution. They cannibalize whatever basic and craft knowledge is available, and conduct fundamental research when necessary, with choices of action and investment driven by the goal of solving the problem at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A Coach's Evolution Paths

The Pasteur Quadrant is of special significance to coaches, as it helps them decide the paths to tread for their evolution as coach - should the quest be for meaning or for utility? Which direction should a coach's stretch for new challenges and when? A second graphic I found here can act as a useful compass. 

Coaches are mostly solopreneurs and as such, left to their own devices to inspire themselves toward new goals and objectives. They need to find ways to refuel with new knowledge, new abilities and skills, and get inspiration from somewhere. They need to insert some goals into their “mind-drive” to fuel motivation. Learning something can enable coaches do one of the most fulfilling things in the world - contribute in new and exciting ways to help their clients achieve their goals. By seeking new ways and abilities of working, a coach can feel energized and recharged - all of which can have a direct impact on their coaching outcomes, if not on their incomes.  

With the Pasteur Quadrant serving as inspiration, here are some ways you can evolve as a coach.

• Search for Novel and Creative Solutions:

Objectives: Explore new as well as utilitarian coaching solutions. Invent new technology and discover knowledge that will benefit the types of clients you service. For experienced and senior coaches this means use of the bold, novel, and unconventional approaches to the core practices and technology challenges in this area.

Applications: To Coach and Produce better and better results. Success in practice Inspires more success and fulfillment.

Benefits: Refueled with new knowledge, new abilities and skills, 

• Explore Applications of Immediate Relevance: 

The Objective: Research projects that are highly complementary to the immediate needs of your current clients.
Applications: To find tools and techniques to coach and produce results for ongoing assignments..  
Benefits: Sharpened existing abilities and skills

• Work on Projects of Potential Economic Impact: 

The Objective: Direct impact on your coaching revenues and which has the potential of sustainability beyond the current needs of your current coaching niche.


Applications: To produce coaching products and delivery with an eye on the future.


Benefits: Inserting  goals into your “mind-drive”. 

• Research Areas for Dissemination and Communication:

The Objective: Write articles, blogs and academic papers for the development of the coach community at large. 


Applications: To share and/or teach to increase one's knowledge and build credibility as coach.


Benefits: One of the most meaningful things in the world - share and teach others

• Design Products/Tools/Techniques for Pilot Deployment: 

The Objective: To advance the state of the art of coaching technologies through field testing on a pilot scale.


Applications: To keep oneself inspired and motivated by creating and testing experimental coaching  tools. These Pilot deployments may have direct impact on your potential revenues and for dissemination and communication. 


Benefits: Validation of new knowledge, abilities and skills, 

These are all paths I have personally tried and tested over the years as a coach. Do tell me whether they work for you too.

References:

http://openeducationresearch.org/2009/01/pasteurs-and-edisons-quadrants/

http://www.shmula.com/how-to-add-value/1813/

http://www.nevermindthemanager.com/2009/08/how-do-you-provide-value-at-work/

Journey to a Coaching Insight

Innovation was a term which had aroused my curiosity, and also bothered me  for a long time. The word was commonly understood as standing for something new or something novel - an understanding that did not satisfy my curiosity and therefore added to my bother.. For instance, I have always believed that my approach to any work I do, whether it is fixing things around the house, creating  new marketing strategies in my corporate career, or the tools and methods I use in my coaching have been uh, creative. I dreaded to use the word 'innovative' as a description of my methods, even to myself! This was because, in my mind the word stood for something radically different, and at the same time it also meant something incremental, creative or better. As you can see, the two were poles apart and just not reconcilable! Peter Drucker's definition of innovation as "Change that creates a new dimension of performance" was no help either.

Enlightenment Happens

Then, I happened to read an interesting article by Brianna Sylver in Businessweek, What does "Innovation" really mean. And enlightenment dawned! I understood just WHY the word innovation had bugged me so much. The word, Sylvers pointed out, had been used to describe everything from the Apple iPhone a new template in Microsoft word (or our very own jugaad)! How could one term be used to describe such vastly different things? The problem, Sylvers explained, lay in the lack of qualifiers. The term was used to mean 'ground-breaking  or world shattering' (iPhone) as well as a situation where the object of change became 'better than what it was before' (MS Word). Ah, so there it was, the cause of my discomfort and lingering dissatisfaction was  all because of the lack of qualifiers! This was Step1 in my journey of understanding of innovation. 

At about the same time, I came upon two definitions of innovation that helped me take a few more steps forward in my understanding.

The first was its description by Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Chairman  of the Innovations Foundation of India as "moving from best practices to next practices." The other was it's description as a "solution designed to address a particular pain point." by Navi Adjou of the University of Cambridge. While Adjou described 'pain points'  as the improvements made in technology, poor skills or processes, I was not quite sure what Next practices meant. On doing some research, I found Best practices were those that only allow you to do what you are currently doing a little better. On the other hand, Next Practices called for imagining what the future would look like; identify the big opportunities; and build capabilities to capitalize on them. In other words, Next practices were about creating your own future rather than relying on the innovation of others.

After churning this understanding of innovation in my mind's blender, I came with the following two definitions (in my coaching context):
Best Practices: Means solutions to the client's pain points uncovered through discussions with clients or assessments. These practices for improving skills and processess may (but not necessarily) be picked up from what competitors or industry leaders have employed successfully. 


Next practices: Means looking beyond typical sorces of information like successful past strategies or even strategies that industry leaders are currently using. It means looking at future challenges and developing a strategy with new solutions and services. Requires coach in helping client imagine the future and look at ways to capitalize on the opportunities. Next practices are innovations meant to address such opportunities that create new dimensions of performance.


To Journey's End
But my understanding was not yet complete. I still had to figure out how exactly all this played out in my coaching practice, which the image below did. 


My coaching practice, I noted,  was directed at 3 levels

1. Individual (Owner/Business head), 
2. Work group (Key Decision-makers and/or executives)
3. Business (Working at both the above levels to impact whole business)

The process innovations co-created by the coach and the client and/or his team were across a continuum from Best practices to Next practices. We traveled the continuum in three ways:  

                             Best Practices....................Next Practices

                                       

1. Streamlining: Understand client's pain points. Look at, and adapt best practices of competition to address the pain points. 
2. Surfacing: Tap into client's vision for his business, or if one does not exist, help to develop one. Visualize opportunities in the context of the vision and co-create ways of capitalizing on them. Give concrete shape to the aspired future through an Action or Project plan..
3. Inventing: Help 'invent' the future. Co-create the next practices to ensure successful outcomes. 

The net result of coaching efforts directed at meeting current needs and/or aspired future are felt at 3 levels of the client's business:  

1. Structure and/or Culture: A Structures and/or Culture in sync with the desired goals.
2. Roles: Better understanding of  Leadership  and Employee roles  in sync with desired goals.
3. Procedures: Tools and techniques for Strategy development, Customer relationship management,  Communication, Collaboration and other critical areas of business success.

End of Journey. Beginning of Another

This leg of my journey - figuring out the what and how of innovation in my coaching practice, was now complete. I had started out by trying to address the discomfort I had felt with the use of the word innovation, and ended up, not only a wonderful understanding of it, but much more! I now had, not only a proper definition of innovation in my mind, but had understood the difference between Best practices and Next practices. Most important of all, I had understood exactly how all this played out in my coaching practice! 

Further Reading: Seeking Out “Next Practices,” the Next Generation of Best Practices

The Theory of Coaching

At the beginning of the last century, two men raced to be the first to make it to the the South Pole - Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott.  While Amundsen used dogs to make his journey, Scott decide to make use of ponies and motorized sleds. What shaped their decisions on how to make it to the South Pole? Their different set of experiences and the ability to learn from them. Authors Sengupta and Heyden in their blog, The Leadership Lessons of the Race to the South Pole,  describe how these differences doomed Scott and handed success to Amundsen.

From his own experience as well as those of others,  Amundsen learnt that successful explorers are cautious. They remain flexible, and are ready to adapt targets and plans in light of conditions. When conditions are not right, it is better to turn back rather than rely on hope and luck. He believed that bad luck is often the result of insufficient preparation. This was his theory. 

On the other hand, Scott was a naval officer most of his life. Although he was to become synonymous with the Antarctic, his ill-fated 1911 venture was only his second polar expedition. However, despite the lack of experience of such climates, Scott was disinclined to rely others who knew similar terrain. Among the decisions which were to prove fatal for him, was the one not to use dogs for sledges, despite advice from both Amundsen and the pioneering polar explorer Fritjof Nansen. Instead, he relied on two options that had not been tested in polar conditions: ponies and motorized sledges. Neither proved well adapted. Scott's military background also played its part. Like all military men he was competitive. Since he was engaged in a race, he pressed on, despite worsening weather conditions.Scott compounded these decisions by making logistical and organizational mistakes that reflected a failure to appreciate from his previous experience just how unforgiving polar conditions are. 

When people face uncertainty, say Sengupta and Heyden, experience, the ability to learn from it, obsessive planning, and a willingness to alter course will trump determination and courage every time.

Shaping Theories from Experiences

Growth, as an American entrepreneur once famously said, means change and involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. In The Growth Imperative, author Clay Christensen a professor at Harvard, writes of how we often admire the intuition that successful entrepreneurs seem to have stepping from the known to the unknown, and build growth businesses. When they exercise their intuition about what actions will lead to the desired results, they  really  are  employing  theories  that  give  them  a  sense  of  the  right  thing  to  do  in  various circumstances.  These  theories  were  not  there  at  birth:  They  were  learned  through  a  set  of experiences and mentors earlier in life, as did Amundsen. 

According to Christensen, what brings predictability  to  any  field  is  a  body  of  well-researched  theory—contingent  statements  of  what causes what and why. Executives often discount the value of management theory because it is associated with the word theoretical, which connotes impractical. But theory is consummately practical. The law of gravity, for example, actually is a theory—and it is useful. It allows us to predict that if we step off a cliff, we will fall. 

Even  though  most  managers  don’t  think  of  themselves  as  being  theory  driven,  they  are  in reality  voracious  consumers  of  theory.  Every  time  managers  make  plans  or  take  action,  it  is based  on  a  mental  model  in  the  back  of  their  heads  that  leads  them  to  believe  that  the  action being       taken       will       lead       to       the       desired       result. Amundsen's mental model was dogs and skis should speed his journey to the South Pole. Scott's was different - which led to his decision to use motorized sleds and ponies.  

The       problem, writes Christensen, is  managers  are  rarely  aware  of  the  theories  they  are  using—and  they  often  use  the  wrong theories  for  the  situation  they  are  in.  It  is the absence of conscious, trustworthy theories of cause and effect that makes success in building new businesses seem random. No  matter  how  well  articulated  a  concept  or  insight  might  be,  it  must  be shaped and modified, often significantly, as it gets fleshed out into a winning business plan.

Rarely  does  an  idea  for  a  new-growth  business  emerge  fully  formed  from  a manager's head. And this is where a business coach comes in. He helps clients to shape and modify his theories and construct well formed mental models.  

                                                                                         Source: Quantum Leap

Unlike the Therapist, Consultant and the Trainer, who use prescriptive processes, a Coach (both Life and Business) helps his client clarify, construct and validate theories through a 3-stage generative process.

1. Co-create descriptions, or characterizations of the phenomenon client wishes to understand.
2. Co-create classifications of the phenomenon into categories in order to highlight the most meaningful differences.
3. Co-create articulation of a theory of what causes the phenomenon to occur and why

Through this generative process, the coach helps clients avoid forming both life and management theories. The result - minimal chances of client observing one or two successes, assuming they have seen enough and proceeding impatiently to implement them.


And perhaps, end up committing mistakes such as those of Robert Scott.

Links

1. A Chapter from Christensen's The Growth Imperative
2. The Leadership Lessons of the Race to the South Pole
3. The Difference Between Coaching and Consulting. 
4. How the Coach Helped the Keen to Grow Butterfly.

Leaders as Role Models

One of the most important components of leadership is to be ambassadors of the values the organization stands for. In these day of a powerful media, where everything that prominent leaders do, gets either flashed on TV, or splashed in print, leaders have an especial responsibilty to symbolize the values of the organization they lead. Three prominent leaders, who, according to me,  manage to do this most effectively are; Vijay Mallya of the UB group, Rahul Bhatia of Indigo Airlines and the Dalai Lama, who needs no introduction.

Vijay Mallya, calls himself the King of Good Times and he symbolizes this image to the hilt! He owns - among other things -  a luxury yatch, a personal aircraft which boasts of a Picasso as part of it's beige and cream interiors, and a fleet of classic and antique cars. Wine, Women (his Kingfisher calendar featuring a bevy of beauties is well known) and Wealth sums Vijay Mallya's lifestyle. It also aptly reflects his moniker as the King of Good Times and pay huge dividends to his companies - liquor company UB, Kigfisher airlines (now in dire staits, financially) and FI and IPL teams, among others.

Rahul Bhatia is the founder of low cost Indigo Airlines.  While Mallya personifies a high flying lifestyle of luxury, Bhatia does the opposite  - he lives up to his companies values of a low-cost functional airline. At a recent meeting of owners of airlines and their CEO's with the Prime Minister of India, he drove down in a Santro driven with his CEO at the wheel. All the others came in expensive chauffeur driven cars. At the recent Economic Times awards for Corporate Excellence (he got the Entrepreneur of the Year Award), in a sea of suits, he was the only one dressed in a waist coat.

The Dalai Lama, the much respected Buddhist leader says his religion is 'kindness'. His ready laughter and child like quality help to reinforce the image of a benign soul. Both in his actions and utterances, he comes across as a simple person and the very epitome of kindness. He was the recipient of the1989 Nobel Peace Prize and his acceptance speech clearly reflected his values. "Although I have found my own Buddhist religion helpful in generating love and compassion, even for those we consider our enemies", he said, "I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion."

Being a Role Model to Your Organization's Employees

By the very nature of their high profile roles, leaders such as Mallya, Bhatia and the Dalai Lama have the overarching responsibility of living up to their image more to their external customers. But how about leaders whose compulsions to role model are different? What can leaders whose responsibility lies primarily with their own people and organizations do to fulfill their responsibilities? They can reflect their own and their organizations desirable values with actions such as: 

1. The goals and performance standards they establish.
2. The values they establish for the organization.
3. The business and people concepts they establish.

Successful organizations have leaders who set high standards and goals across the entire spectrum, such as strategies, market leadership, plans, meetings and presentations, productivity, quality, and reliability.

Values reflect the concern the organization has for its employees, customers, investors, vendors, and surrounding community. These values define the manner in how business will be conducted.

Concepts define what products or services the organization will offer and the methods and processes for conducting business.

These goals, values, and concepts make up the organization's personality or how the organization is observed by both outsiders and insiders. And it is this personality which defines the roles, relationships, rewards, and rites that take place, that the leader has to role model.

Useful resource: Sample chapter from the book The Leader as Role Model http://tinyurl.com/bnv2jz8

How Volkswagen India is Doing it Differently

In the current business context, a critical issue leaders have to grapple with is - how to stay competitive. At a recent conference on innovation, Kumar Mangalam Birla, commented that organizations having "squeezed the lemon" of cost-cutting, improved productivity, cutting the flab etc., "dry," it was now the turn of innovation. 

Navi Adjou, a thought leader and strategy consultant from the University of Cambridge calls innovations "a solution designed to address a particular pain point." Lutz Kothe, the newly appointed head of marketing of Volkswagen India , understood his companies pain points rather painfully! Wanting to check into a hotel, he identified himself from VW and was in for rude shock. The name failed to ring a bell for the front office staff!  That's when Kothe realized the pain point he had to address - make Europe's largest carmaker a better known entity in India.  

So how could Kothe's company go about the task of establishing the VW brand in the highly competitive Indian market? They decided to focus on innovations as a strategy - spend time collecting insights unique to the Indian consumer. They came up with several!  They noted that Indian car-owners do not remove the factory fitted plastic covers after buying their cars. This became a cue to focus on providing more durable upholstery. They noted that many Indians kept idols of gods or their mobile phones on the dashboards. This was cue for making larger dashboards so that cars could accommodate both. The hot weather demanded a stronger airconditioning while the Indian penchant for honking louder horns!

Pain points in organizations can range from improvements in technology to poor skills and processes. Or as in the case of VW, poor brand recall. In a market where car makers have announced the launch of 60 new models for 2012, only innovations such as VW's sharp consumer insights can help them succeed. It should also go some way to make VW live up to it's tagline - "Das Auto" or "The Car" of Indian consumers. And a long way to make Lutz Kothe a happy man!

How to Attain Mastery in Coaching

I have often reflected on this - is there one, and only one true model of coaching that really, really works? Especially so because, in nearly all my client interventions over my last eight years as a coach, I have believed in experimenting with a wide variety of tools and approaches to enable client's to successfully achieve their goals. I have debated on the merits of this approach with other coaches in several coaching forums and I have realized that opinions seems fairly divided between two schools - the Fundamentalists and the Evolutionists. The Fundamentalists are usually graduates of coaching schools who believe that only the model or the approach they have been trained in, is the best. In the case of Business coaches, Fundamentalist come from particular specialization who believe that only their expertise area is the one that will work for a business client. For instance, somebody coming from a finance background would tend to believe that a business coach’s job is to increase the cash flow of the business from operations and nothing more. While profits are the lifeblood of every successful business, the success of strategic planning systems such as the Balanced Scorecard suggests that financial goals are achieved from a seamless integration of several other perspectives as well. On the other hand, there are the Evolutionists - liberals and experienced (self-taught) coaches who believe that one's coaching model needs to evolve and develop with the individual coach's experience. Diane Lennard, author of Coaching Models: A Cultural Perspective supports this Evolutionist school of thought. She believes that in coaching, just as no two clients are the same, no two coaches or coaching approaches can be exactly the same. She is a proponent of the belief  that coaches apply their cultural backgrounds, interests, and experiences to their coaching and factor in their own insights, experiences, successes and learning to support the client. This, says Lennard, can result in stronger and more authentic coaching interventions.

As an Evolutionist, I have always believed that a coach needs to continuously improve on his coaching approaches by experimenting with different models. I have personally constructed several models based on various behavioural, cognitive and management (both business and self) theories and incorporated them into my coaching in the light of my personal experiences. In addition, I have a whole bunch of assessments and graphic aids, all designed to help clients achieve their goals in a manner suited their needs, expectations and capabilities. I am therefore of the view that coaching is a craft, which requires to be worked on constantly to attain mastery.

So, how can we raise what we do as coaches from a mere mechanical process, to the level of a craft? To do this, we must first understand what exactly constitutes craftwork.

 What defines Craftwork?

Howard Becker , an American sociologist known for his studies on occupations, identified three criteria for an occupation to be termed as craftwork:

1. Craftwork should produce a useful product or service.
2. Craftwork should be done for, or on behalf of someone else to fulfil that person's need for a useful product or service
3. Craftwork in addition to function and focus on the end user, should involve innovation 

Let us explore each of these criteria individually;

1. Craftwork should produce a useful product or service: Becker defines this dimension as a "body of knowledge and skill that can be used to produce useful objects." For practitioners, examples of craftwork could be of park construction to provide aesthetic experiences and opportunities for physical activity and supplying clean drinking water efficiently.

For coaches to elevate their coaching to a craft would require acquiring and perfecting a body of knowledge and skill which can be used to produce successful client interventions.

         

2. Craftwork is done for, or on behalf of someone else to fulfil that person's need for a useful   product or service: Becker describes this as consisting of the ability to perform in a useful way to suit individual needs..

In coaching, the clients are diverse and the perception of usefulness of the coaching intervention depends on the coachees'  goals and different notions of how to achieve their goals. A coach is required to make a diverse set of  people and groups identify a not the, strategic goal and move them toward, and implement it successfully.
Secondly, according to Becker, for an activity to be called craftwork, requires it's usefulness to  be          evaluated externally - by     individuals and groups of people.

For coaches to raise their work to a craft would require them to explore different ways and means to successfully guide their clients toward achievement of their goals. Positive client feedback should be the only measure of the coach's success.

3. In addition to function and focus on the end user the work should involve innovation: Many years are required to master the physical skills and mental discipline of a first-class practitioner. An expert, or one who has mastered the skills is one who:

• has great control over the crafts material, can do anything with them,
• can work with speed and agility,
• can do with ease the things that ordinary, less expert craftsmen find difficult or impossible.

To elevate their coaching to a craft, coaches have to acquire an extraordinary control of material and techniques and be able not only to do things better than most others, but also to do more things.

Now that we have understood what a coach requires to do to raise the level of his coaching to a craft, let us see how he can go about doing it.

The Road to Coaching Mastery 
The following is a suggested 3 step process to transform your coaching approach from a mechanical process into a craft, and attain mastery of it.

Three Steps to Coaching Mastery 

Step 1

Follow the Rules:  Begin by choosing a coaching model - either the one you have been trained in by your coaching school, or one of your choice. Follow and practice this model thoughtfully and rigorously. After each coaching intervention, check with clients on the benefits they have derived from the session and reflect on the  clients' as well as your own experience. Study the method in the light of this new found understanding and factor the knowledge into your subsequent coaching interventions.

Step 2
Break the Rules: Over a period of time with rigorous use and observation of the results of the practice of the chosen coaching model, you will begin to build up a body of understanding of what works and what needs to be improved further. Factor the insights and experiences into your subsequent coaching interventions and carefully monitor the success of your improved model of coaching. Keep a close watch on the impact made on clients by constantly taking their feedback.

Step 3
Ignore the Rules: To recap, you began with your chosen coaching model, progressed to factoring your insights and experiences into your modified version of the coaching model, and continulusly validated its impact. You have have now arrived at a point where you can start ignoring the rules. So rather than relying on someone else's method, you can now confidently begin to incorporate your individual perspectives, skills, knowledge, experiences into devloping your own coaching model/s. You could also start to explore ways of incorporating the knowledge and understanding of your culture to influence your coaching orientation.

For instance, the Indian cultural dynamics are quite different from that of the the West (see my blogpiece Decoding the Desi Dynamics). You can begin to examine how you can factor these into your own coaching model. As an Indian, it would be also be useful to look at using Krishna as a useful model of a coach, mentor and facilitator.

Apart from using your model with your client, you could also use it as a personalized tool for reflecting on your coaching process and practice. This should facilitate continuous learning and improvement of your coaching effectiveness.

Any Time Is Good Time For Change!

Navratilova was arguably the best tennis player ever to step on the court, amassing an unmatched number of professional records over the course of a career that spanned an amazing four decades. She won 59 Grand Slam crowns, a record 9 Wimbledon singles champions, and overcame the odds to become both one of the most successful tennis players ever and an equally successful leader. In her life, both on and off the court, the secret of her super success has been - never be afraid of change. And she has practiced this all her life.

In 1982, Navratilova was in the middle of a winning streak and unbeaten going to the French Open, when she discovered the metal racket. "Why change when you're winning?" someone asked her. "That's not the point, this is a much better racket," she replied. She won the French Open.

Another important lesson Navratilova points to - the responsibility for change rests with oneself. Like for instance, responsibility of changing the strategy that doesn't work for you. "The mark of a champion is how good you are at your worst" she says, and she speaks from experience. Navratilova was 32 when Steffi Graf defeated her in 1988 and 1989 in Wimbledon. Watching the tapes later, Navratilova realized something wasn't quite right. Her footwork was the old-fashioned cross-step and she needed to change it to a different outside step. "After 26 years, I had to learn to do it a different way...completely rewire my brain. I had to adapt."

So how does one rewire and adapt? Here are the four steps to change:

1. Awareness of the need for change: This is critical, as without awareness, no change can happen. For Navratilova, it was her shock defeats in succession by Steffi Graf which brought about this awareness. Once awareness has been created and our intention to change has gathered strength, the next step is...

2. Knowledge on how of change: For Navratilova, the knowledge on what and how to change came from watching her game videos. This made her realize that she needed to change her footwork. Business leaders can begin by asking themselves, "which habits keep me from achieving my goals effectively?" This calls for a lot of reflection and even asking people for feedback and help.

3. Ability to implement required skills and behaviors: Very often, what keeps us from developing our ability to implement required skills and behaviours is a sense of being overwhelmed by the difficulty of doing it. For this Navratilova has a piece of advice, "You don't get to the top automatically. You take one step at a time. Each daily goal is a rung on a step ladder", she says. Every day, little by little, is manageable and you don't get overwhelmed by the big goal.

4. Reinforcement to sustain the change: Once our goal of change has been achieved, it needs to be reinforced. Remember, change is an ongoing process, so you need to monitor, assess and reflect continuously in order to sustain the improvement.

Call to Action

Personally dealing with change is one thing. As a business leader helping your people deal with change is another. Ask yourself:

  -What are you doing as a leader to anticipate change?
  -What are you doing to stay current with new market trends?
  -What are you doing to encourage and help your employees  upgrade their skill\s and knowledge?

Use the same four steps above to arrive at your answers.

A Coachee's Improvement Log Page #2

Reading through this page from a client's notes, you would be surprised at how obvious and simple some of the points noted are. This then is the power of coaching - bringing the obvious in plain view and most important, creating an awareness about the need for change.

The Continuous Improvement Process

"We should properly train ourselves for professional methods of marketing. Attend the inquiries properly, meet customers queries, educate them about plus points of our products. Follow up in a decent manner and obtain orders from clientele. Involvement of all staff is important. *Introduction of incentives is a good step in this direction.(1) Share the information about progress with staff and let them be partners in the growth.(2)"

"Action steps

1. What: Prepare the cost and price statements with all data on competitors

          Action: 

•   List incoming cost and outgoing prices
•   To change the style of marketing meetings - the results should be important.

         By When: Immediate"

*1,2: My comments: These were the 'eureka'  moments for the the client

1. Client used to give rewards randomly i.e. whenever he felt someone had done his job well. This was good leadership quality, I remarked and related an incident from the life of Alexander to reinforce my point (link http://managementnotes.blogspot.com/2011/07/7-leadership-lessons-from-alexander.html). Then I proceeded to suggest to him that linking the rewards to certain specific actions, targets and objectives would prove more effective.
2. Client was of the opinion that it made no sense to share information on sales achieved and y-on-y or q-on-q growth. I was pleasantly surprised to see he had included this point in his recap 

A Coachee's Improvement Log Page #1

After every coaching session, my coaching clients write a log of the awareness created, clarity, and learning during that session.They also commit to actions they will take as a result of the new knowledge, which serves as an action review template for the next session. Reproduced below, with the client's permission,  is page # 1 from a coachee's session log. His priority was to improve his Customer Service for which I employed the learning methodology of See, Plan, Do, Check and Fix model (see visual). The process was not linear and I went with the flow of the client's thought processes. 

SESSION COACHING OUTCOMES

Session #1                   Date: XX/XX/2011

My Awareness-Action Cycle

• I need to properly encourage staff members and middlemen to find out ways to improve sales and after-sales services. 
• I need to give more attention to incoming inquiries, attend them in an improved manner and do something positive to generate good business.
• There are areas which need my personal attention.
• Marketing should be given more time and attention.

Next Steps

1. What : To discuss with staff  

    Action: Ways to improve sales

    By when: This week

2. What: Reports

    Action: Improve management reports and implementation

    By When: Today

3. What: Follow-up personally

    Action: Attend sales inquiries personally

    By When: This week

4. What: TimeManagement

    Action: Find ways to save time

    By When: Immediate

How the Coach Helped the "Keen to Grow" Butterfly

The Monarch butterflies are great performers - every year they travel vast distances of upto 2000 miles! During their migration they cover upto 50 miles per day and they travel at speeds of upto12 miles per hour! Now why do you think the Monarch butterflies perfom this stupendous feat? Beacuse they have been doing so for generations. But there was this one ambitous Monarch who wanted to do more. He had four burning desires;

1. To learn new skills
2. To perform better.
3. To develop himself and
4. To reflect on  what he did.

He wondered who could help him fulfil his heart-felt desires, till one day he read (he was the reading sort, as you can see) about how coaches help people who desire to excel. So he checked out the various coaches featured on Linkedin and landed up at one who he thought could help him the most.  The coach was busy, but noticing the eagerness in the eyes of the Monarch and the determined flutter of his wings, he decided to listen to what the butterfly had to say to him. The Monarch explained the purpose of his visit and began by describing about the annual migratory habits of his species, he told him how they had been doing so for generations, and how he wanted to go about it not by instinct, but in a planned and well thought out fashion. Through all this, the coach had said not word, but the Monarch noticed that he had an encouraging smile on his face as if to say 'Go on, tell me more!" 

And so the Monarch proceeded to ask the coach his first question; "I want to hover in the air like a hummingbird so that I can survey the terrain better!"

The coach smiled, and asked him,

"And how soon would you like to fly like a hummingbird?

"Who could help you with it?"

"What's your action plan?"

"When are you going to start?" 

The coach's questions had the Monarch thinking, he realized he had never really thought about his desires in this way! And so he proceeded to ask his second question, "I want to fly higher, better and more efficiently!"

And the coach responded,

"How high exactly would you like to be flying?'

"What techniques are you using at the moment to achieve that height?"

"What other techniques are there, which you haven't tried yet?"

"And what else could you do to acheive that height even faster?"

"OK. Now show me what your action plan is, how you're going to measure your progress and what you'll do when things get tough." 

With every question the coach asked him, the Monarch was beginning to think of his issues in ways he had never before done! He was starting to get clarity about his priorities! And so the Monarch proceeded to ask the coach the third question. "I want to take the next step."

And the coach said,

"So, you want to be hummingbird? Cool! What can you do now to make that happen?"

"And what else?"

"And how are you going to get those things you say you need?"

"How else?"

"When I look at a hummingbird I see feathers, and when I look at you I don't see any feathers...(silence)...To what extent are feathers neccessary?" And how are you going to solve that?"

The Monarch was now in deep thought, slowly a plan for achieving his desires was beginning to form in his mind, but he still had one more question to ask him and he proceeded to do so, "I wonder," he said, "whether butterfly-ing is all there is, and whether I functions as I should?"

And the coach replied,

"Whether this is all there is" and "Do I function as I should?" are two different questions. Which question would you like to focus on today?

"Suppose you have the answer to that question: how does that feel?

"What is the effect of having answered it?"

"What has changed?"

And finally, the pieces began to fall in place for the Monarch. He had the answers to his questions for the fulfillment of his burning desires - and he had thought all of them himself! The coach had offered him no solutions for fulfilling them, but what he had done was far more invaluable - through his powerful questions, the coach had provided, 

• a higher and deeper perspective to his thinking,
• an objectivity to his assumptions and
• clarity about his priorties for achieving his dream of excelling at all the things which he had up to now, done only by instinct. 

Going to the coach was like going to a mental gym, the ambitous Monarch had come out stronger and well-toned in his thinking and raring to go out in the woods and put his plan into action!

He said a heartfelt thank you to the coach and flitted away with a new flutter to his wings.

This piece has been inspired by the delightfully creative blog article A Butterfly goes to a coach by Sandro DaSilva.

The Difference Between Coaching and Consulting

At various times since I began contemplating and taking up a full-time career as a coach some 8 years ago, I have read, thought about and also had to answer the question, "What is the difference between coaching and consulting?" I got a fresh perspective on this oft-wondered curiosity of mine, and that too in a delightful and creative fashion, in this coaching blog by Sandro da Silva.

A butterfly goes to a coach

By Sandro da Silva

Telling someone exactly what the difference is between coaching and the other four helping professions (consulting, mentoring, counseling and therapy) is one of the many challenges I face as a coach.  Doing that in a clear and accessible way has been one of my constant pursuits.

While reading page 11 of Coaching with Colleagues (de Haan & Burger, 2011) today, I felt inspired to write about butterflies that go to the five helping professionals in order to tackle four questions they face.

The four questions are (Witherspoon & White, 1997):

• the desire to learn new skills,
• the desire to perform better,
• the desire to develop itself,
• the desire to reflect on itself or on what it does.

My attempt to clarify the differences in the approaches of each of these valuable professionals has resulted in a chart with 20 different stereotyped reactions which, in my opinion, exemplify how each professional works and what one could possibly expect from them.

Here they are:

To a butterfly who wants to learn new flying skills, for example hovering in mid-air like a hummingbird,

1. the consultant says: Here’s the program I have designed so that you can learn how to hover in mid-air like a hummingbird. And here’s the bill.
2. the mentor says: Pay close attention to me, and to what I do with my wings so I can hover in mid-air like a hummingbird. Now it’s your turn to give it a try. No, no, no. Not that way. This way. See it? Now you.
3. the counselor says: So, what you’re saying is that you want to learn how to hover in mid-air, just like a hummingbird. Is that what you mean?
4. the coach says: And how soon would you like to be flying like a hummingbird? In what ways could you acquire the necessary skills to do it? Who could help you with it? What’s your action plan? When are you going to start?
5. the therapist says: We’ve concluded that this is a much more efficient way of doing what you want to learn. By following this guideline, you won’t experience those many difficulties. You’ll learn faster and won’t forget it.

To a butterfly who wants to fly higher, better and more efficiently,

1. the consultant says: You can’t fly high enough because you’ve been keeping the angle of your wings at a constant 37,9 degrees. Once you keep it at 42,57 degrees and vary it according to the wind speed, you’ll use less energy and thus fly better, more efficiently and higher. And here’s the bill.
2. the mentor says: I see you’re trying to fly higher but it does not seem to be working. You’re keeping your lower body too straight, and that does not allow you to react quickly enough to the changing wind. Relax and do not put excessive effort to it. Very good! You see how much easier it gets?
3. the counselor says:  I can see you’re not fully satisfied with the height you’re flying, and that you’d like to fly higher….
4. the coach says: How high exactly would you like to be flying? What techniques are you using at the moment to achieve that height? What other techniques are there, which you haven’t tried yet? And what else could you do to achieve that height even faster? OK. Now show me what your action plan is, how you’re going to measure your progress and what you’ll do when things get tough.
5. the therapist says: You can’t fly any higher because of your are afraid of heights. That’s what we call acrophobia. We’ll work on that now and once we’ve treated it, you’ll be able to fly higher.

To a butterfly who wants to take the next step,

1. the consultant says: Our research shows that the next recommendable step for you should be to create a strategic alliance with bees. That’ll reduce the operational costs of your pollination activities and therefore allow you to survive in this ever changing market. By the way, here’s the bill.
2. the mentor says: So. I see you’re ready to take the next step here. I will now introduce you to some guys at the top of our community. Try to be yourself and don’t ask many questions now. Just observe how these guys interact with each other. I’ll tell you more about it while you drive me home tonight.
3. the counselor says: So what you’re saying is that you’re ready to take the next step in butterfly-ing. You have reached a plateau and you feel it’s time to take the next step…
4. the coach says: So, you want to be a humming bird? Cool! What can you do now to make that happen? And what else? And how are you going to get those things you say you need? How else? When I look at a hummingbird I see feathers, and when I look at you I don’t see any feathers….. (silence)……To which extent are feathers necessary? And how are you going to solve that?
5. the therapist says: What exactly feels uncomfortable in being what you are? How come you’re having difficulties in accepting who you are? Why doing what butterflies do doesn’t satisfy your needs anymore? Can you tell me a little about your relationship with your mother? What kind of person was she?

To a butterfly who wonders whether “butterfly-ing” is all there is, and whether it functions as it should,

1. the consultant says: Why don’t you buy me a beer so we can talk about it?
2. the mentor says: Well well….I’ve experienced it myself. But look at how far you have come, how much you have achieved. Look at all those people who depend on you, who look at you for inspiration. There’s no need to be insecure about it. You’re doing great!
3. the counselor says: It must be very uncomfortable to be feeling the way you’re feeling, having done all you’ve done, having achieved all you have archived and not knowing whether you’ve done what you should have, or whether this is all there is…
4. the coach says: “Whether this is all there is” and “Do I function as I should?” are two different questions. Which question would you like to focus on today? Suppose you have the answer to that question: how does that feel? What is the effect of having answered it? What has changed?
5. the therapist says: Since when have you been experiencing those feelings of uncertainty? What has happened to your self-confidence? How come you’re so dissatisfied with yourself? 

If, based on my stereotyped account,  I were to list the characteristics of each helping profession, I would say that:

• Consulting = downloading information, selling expertise, selling solutions;
• Mentoring = downloading information, correcting, protecting. It has a lot to do with parenting and teaching;
• Counseling = accepting and empathizing, recognizing, reflecting;
• Coaching = uploading information, action-orientation. It seems to foster autonomy, learning and taking responsibility.
• Therapy = downloading information, digging, diagnosing, inferring , healing. It seems to be problem-focused.

Here I have borrowed one the best definitions of coaching I have ever seen:

“Coaching is uploading.” (Scoular, Anne 2011)

Writing this post has brought me clarity at last. And taking a stereotyped perspective to write it has made me laugh (a lot). I hope you enjoy the light and the fun.