The Integration Of Context In The Coaching Process

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• The Integration Of Context In The Coaching Process

Terri Mandler
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• While the present coaching debate argues for
  ownership in the various disciplines of
  psychology, adult education, business consulting,
  leadership development and many others, our
  clients remain unmoved.
• They talk about connections in the world in
  complete disregard of the disciplinary boundaries
  they may be violating.
• These connections breach the arbitrary lines we
  draw around disciplines (Weick 1996).
• Their frame instead, is that of the immediacy
  and complexity of the environments in which they
  operate.

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Developing Leaders

• In partnership with organizational clients we
  accept the premise that our role is to develop
  managers, to promote organizational development,
  to attain social development. (Mintzberg 2003)

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Mt Eliza Leadership Model
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Applied Development

• In practice, we see our clients repeatedly
  struggling to connect learning to the world in
  which they operate.
• For us, in an applied learning environment,
  developing leaders has evolved as an important
  form of scholarship the scholarship of
  integration, the making of connections and giving
  meaning to facts (Weick 1996 Mintzberg 2003).

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Design And Facilitation
Leadership is established as a strategic
priority, a development context is created from
the top down, the organisation knows what the
leadership challenges are
Establish a succession process, track development
and movements over time, establish key
experiences    
Business Strategy
THE LEADERS YOU NEED

EXPERIENCE

Base recruitment on the ability to learn from
experience, annually assess demonstrated
competencies and derailment potential, assess
learning from assignments      
Ensure line and, HR accountability, build
individual responsibility  
Use existing assignments to prepare people for
challenges, identify role models and coaches to
provide support      
McCall 1998
 
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Design And Facilitation

• Business strategy align key leadership needs
• Identify key challenges and critical leadership
  behaviours
• Identify the extent to which leadership
  behaviours are currently demonstrated what key
  learning experiences will build required
  behaviours to required levels

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Design And Facilitation

• Identify organisational mechanisms and catalysts
  needed to support behaviour development
• Identify specific experiences that will build
  required leadership behaviour
• Establish readiness for specific development
  opportunities who? how?
• Summarise and refer for action

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Positive Organisational Scholarship
Positive Psychological Capacities
Life Experiences
Authentic Leadership
Self Regulation Behaviours
Self Awareness
Positive Organisational Context
Vision Strategy Culture
Trigger Events/ Challenges
Luthans and Avolio 2003
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Leadership and Organisations
Wheatley 1994
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Rational and Non Rational

• For coaching to be optimally successfully I
  contend that it must be cognizant of, attuned to,
  and must integrate, the rational factors of
  business systems, structure, processes along with
  the non rational factors of relationships,
  identity and information.
• Further I contend that it is context that drives
  the non rational.

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Implications for Coaching

• Macro
• a cross disciplinary methodology
• a cross functional team
• Micro
• optimum tailored solution
• coaches matched to context

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Background or Bias?

• Education learning styles, developmental
  psychology, integrated curriculum
• Mediation long term relationship impacts on
  outcomes
• Strategic Planning large scale architecture and
  the need for alignment
• Change management individual value proposition,
  context as critical success factor
• Coaching how it works
• MBA - complexity of context

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Coaching Marketplace

• Numerous individuals from various backgrounds
• Informal, loose associations, networks or micro
  firms
• Limited formal/academic qualifications
• No agreed professional regulation
• Life, business, leadership, executive and career
  coaching

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Trends
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Trends
Operational Efficiency
Customer Intimacy
Product Innovation
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Future
Customer Intimacy
Product Innovation
Operational Efficiency
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Coaching in Organisations
Unstructured Structured
Systematic strategic Well managed
structured Linked to org goals Written
protocols Open feedback systems
Ad hoc Laissez faire Little control Hit and
miss Disconnected from the organisation
Anthony M. Grant Sydney University
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A Cross Disciplinary Coaching Team

• 23 CCL feedback givers (1988)
• 5 in house leadership program coaches (20 years)
• 17 executive coaches (2000)
• Specialist coaches (2003)
• 21 new coaches nationally (2005)
• approximately 50 coaches in total

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Coaches by Discipline

• Functional specialists finance, marketing, IT,
  HR/OD
• Consultants strategic planning, change
  management, communication, marketing,
• Leadership development specialists
• Adult educators
• Psychologists

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Coaches by Roles

• Senior executives
• Senior line management
• Functional specialists
• Technical professionals
• Adult educators, facilitators,
• Entrepreneurs
• Consultants
• Organisational and clinical psychologists

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Client A
Business Model
Business Plans
Area Manager
Area Manager
Area Manager
Leadership Challenges linked to Business
Plan Personal effectiveness linked to
Leadership Teaching Teams to achieve results 6
reports
Leadership Challenges linked to Business
Plan Personal effectiveness linked to
Leadership Teaching Teams to achieve results 6
reports
Leadership Challenges linked to Business
Plan Personal effectiveness linked to
Leadership Teaching Teams to achieve results 6
reports
Review / Reporting / Feedback / Measurement
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Client B

• Private organisation
• Recently merged multiple smaller organisations
• Hold period of 12 months
• Key challenges cultural issues, limited
  leadership development history

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Client B

• Coaching focused on
• 65 senior managers identified as high potential
  including all the reports of the executive team
• Personal leadership development objectives
• Action learning projects
• Both aligned to organisational and business
  outcomes

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Client B
Executive Team
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Parameters

• A 2 tier relationship
• A cohesive and integrated philosophy and
  methodology
• An agreed managed process
• Reporting processes
• Measurement of outcomes

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The Design

• Link organisational business objectives, to
  cultural change enablers and leadership
  capability needs
• Provide a shared experience of, and language for,
  coaching
• Support and embed learning for each individual
  aligned to agreed organisational outcomes
• Coalesce ideas for action learning projects

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Coaching Team

• Director of Coaching restructures, change and
  transition, OD, education plus coaching
• Lead coach mergers and acquisitions, change and
  transition, OD, org psych plus coaching
• Both had familiarity with
• The theory and practical experience of leading
  large scale change initiatives
• Complexities of transition issues for leaders and
  staff
• Leadership development theory practice
• Multiple self awareness instruments being
  employed
• Action research projects and their demands
• Implementing business strategy for results

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Client B
Executive Team
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Extension Coaching 1

• Introductions
• Process, expectations, confidentiality
• Debrief -Module 1
• Feedback instruments
• Self awareness

• Coaching objectives
• Action Project
• Feedback
• Action Planning
• Session review
• Check out

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Extension Coaching 2

• Coaching objectives restated and then prioritised
• Debrief -Module 2
• Review actions taken
• Explore learning, insights from session 1

• Instruments acceptance, changes made, planned
• Models for specific objectives
• Action Project
• Action Planning
• Session review
• Check out

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Extension Coaching 3

• Coaching objectives restated and then prioritised
• Debrief -Module 3
• Review actions taken
• Explore learning, insights for program

• Person specific objectives reviewed
• Introduce tools, models, ideas
• Action Project
• Action Planning
• Review overall feedback
• Check out

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Reporting OD Change Focus

• By cohort confidential and non
• At the end of each of the three rounds
• Summarised for the organisation
• Permission given by coaching clients
• Enablers and barriers to success
• Key leadership development indicators for senior
  managers
• Implications for executive development

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Measurement

• Coaching Questionnaire a brief questionnaire
  distributed to all senior managers in the pilot
  program. It covered the skills of the coach, the
  value of the coaching process, the employment of
  conceptual frameworks, models, tools and
  strategies used by the coach.
• Individual Change Statements individual
  statements on the relevance and usability of
  introduced learning, concepts, frameworks and
  models, and incorporation of new ways of working
  (behaviours) employed as a response to the
  program and the coaching.
• An aggregate coaching report focused on the
  observable organisational themes, trends and
  patterns, including systems, processes and
  behaviours that both enable and limit the success
  of the strategic business objectives.

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Themes - Feedback

• Significant and ongoing sense of loss
• Change exhaustion
• Lack of certainty/confidence in the future
• Trust diminished

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Observable Changes to Behaviour

• Increased accountability ownership
• New networks, relationships links
• Cross functional bridges
• Acceptance of EQ feedback as valued
• Applying learning daily to the workplace
• Comfortable confident in leader roles
• Planned steps to make a difference
• Significantly increased self awareness

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Our Learning

• Coaches needed to be familiar with the content
  and intent of the leadership learning modules
  this included the conceptual frameworks, tools
  and strategies being introduced - as coaching
  clients were attempting to incorporate them as
  new behaviours
• The principles of adult learning were critical to
  being able to feed the ongoing modification of
  modules and coaching session structure
• There was a need to understand deeply the
  instruments being employed - to enable coaches to
  aggregate data for trends and patterns indicative
  of the need for change

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Our Learning

• A knowledge of organizational development
  principles, enablers and constraints, made the
  recommendations for change critical
• To hold informed discussions with the
  organizational client, an understanding of the
  implications of context in a post merger
  implementation phase made recommendations valued
  and relevant to both client tiers
• Robust communication processes were required to
  establish ongoing review and feedback mechanisms
• And finally to effectively manage the coaching
  process a deep knowledge of the principles of
  personal change was important

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Limitations of One Discipline

• The current preference for an evidence based
  framework and a clear orientation to the rigour
  of psychology is perhaps limiting.
• As Mintzberg has noted, even more important than
  any particular discipline is the discipline of
  good thinking, and that can come from a serious
  grounding in any serious field of enquiry
  (Mintzberg 2003).

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Iterative Process

• For us the discipline of coaching is emergent
• A single worldview that recognises only one field
  of learning is self limiting by definition
• There are many ways of knowing and learning
• Action learning and action research take place
  during any coaching intervention
• We have the opportunity to build on this as
  legitimate research
• We can acknowledge the contribution of the
  multiple disciplines and develop our practice by
  incorporating these many worldviews

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Four stages of acceptance

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• i)   this is worthless nonsense,  ii)  this
  is an interesting, but perverse, point of view
   iii) this is true, but quite unimportant.
   iv)  I always said so.
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• John Haldane (1892-1964), English geneticist