Time was, not so long ago that managers and executives would not want it known that they had seen a Coach. Coaching was commonly perceived as remedial. The term coaching was even applied as a euphemism for chastisement in some command-and-control cultures. In the early 1990s, when the use of coaching in the workplace was in its infancy, a frequent focus would be improvement of performance, although most often directed to raising poor performance to acceptable levels. An adequate or excellent performer would not usually be someone in need of coaching. In early training workshops for team leaders, their most frequently chosen practice topics were how to coach their least able or problem team members. When we, the trainers would propose that every Olympic athlete, golf or tennis champion would work with a Coach to help raise them to peak performance, team leaders and managers did not find it natural to transfer that idea to the workplace.
“Managers interacting and working with their reporting colleagues in order to improve performance and change performance in line with principal results and objectives.”
This was a definition created almost verbatim by several groups of quite senior managers and leaders in those early workshops. We, the Trainers were offering the definition by Timothy Gallwey (Harvard Professor and Tennis Coach who wrote The Inner Game of Tennis, an influential work in the developing field of Coaching at the time) which was,
“Unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them”
And notice, the Coach deliberately looks for ways to avoid teaching or offering answers or solutions, and instead invents or poses tasks, actions or situations that provoke the client into experiences that require working it out. Learning happens as the learner, often by trial and error, finds out what works and what doesn’t, and comes to new conclusions that become knowledge and expertise. Offering advice or mentoring systematically robs people of experience and the opportunity to own what they learn.
Coaching as we know it has evolved (very little) from the therapeutic or psychological encounter, an in-person, often one-hour meeting, where the subject is taken step-by-step through identifying or agreeing the “problem,” establishing goals or outcomes, exploring what currently keeps them apart from their outcome, and devising ways to make the journey and taking action to travel there. In the workplace, ignoring for a moment the remote working forced on us by safety and health measures during the pandemic, the chances for team leaders or managers to hold one-hour encounters with team members in busy working days are zero – not going to happen! So, how can advantage be taken to unlock a person’s potential to maximise their own performance and to help them to learn? Generally, sheer expediency tends to force leaders into giving orders or instructions, telling what to do and maybe even how to do it. To be fair to them, their responsibility for getting the job done can be a strong driver.
Most conversations between team members and their managers are relatively short and are related in some way to problem solving, asking for support, seeking permission or proposing action or ideas. And for team leaders they may be giving directions, feedback or monitoring progress.
Sir John Whitmore in 1992 first published his GROW model in his book, Coaching For Performance. One of the most useful things about it is that it forms a simple mental checklist, helping the Coach keep track of where they are in the process of Goal, Reality, Options and Will (to take action). Although there is a presupposed progression through these stages, the real coaching conversation or relationship will often demand skipping back and forth between them and the simplicity of the model aids the Coach in recognizing, “ah, this is a Reality stage conversation,” or “We’re focusing on revising a goal here.”
This is a feature that enables coaching activity to happen “on-the-move” in those limited, quick exchanges of a working day. The leader trained and experienced in coaching with the GROW model is capable of recognizing where a request from a colleague presents a chance to ask great questions, and give that colleague a gift of working something out for themselves and learning from it.
The addition of NLP skills expands exponentially the effectiveness of the GROW model. The quality of attention enabled by calibrating and rapport, the power of precision questioning, the intelligent use of presupposing and influential language, and the ability to change perspectives and states in the face of challenges are skills beyond those usually included in coach training. These expand people’s boundaries and dissolve resistances, creating freedom to think, create and speak their minds.
Coaching is much better understood and appreciated at work than it was in the 1990s. It is clearly better recognized that effective performers benefit from coaching, when it is done well, at least as much as people needing more support. Coaching is becoming appreciated as a powerful and effective route to employee engagement when distributed widely in a business. And trained internal people can keep the energy going, rather than the sporadic inputs from external (expensive) coaching specialists. These are strong arguments for training leaders and managers to think and act as Coaches, having intelligent conversations, building trust and psychological safety in the workplace.
