Why engage a coach? (by Tania Fowler)
Eyes and Ears That Aren’t Your Own
Posted on October 3, 2012
1
Eyes, ears, and listening with curiosity: these are some key ingredients that business coaches bring to their clients. It may sound easy but it’s not. Coaching requires patience, highly attuned listening skills, and an ability to ask thought provoking questions that help people find more creative and sustainable solutions.
In my role as a business coach, I love my work with my clients and find it fascinating. Conversely, in my role as a business coach I do not love the marketing aspect of my work and find it challenging. And now, happily, I have discovered a perfect article to aid me in my quest to better state the case of why coaching can be so beneficial to a leader or team. The article was written by my new favorite author, Daniel Pink who wrote the terrific book, “Drive”; this latest piece is really worth a look. His findings show that people, when asked to solve another person’s problem, become more creative and innovative in their thinking and solutions than when thinking about their own problems. His research dovetails perfectly into why it is so important to invite coaches into your offices to flip over ideas with you. Take a minute to read it here.
Coaching collaboration is invaluable. How many times have I sat with people when the “obvious answer” was sitting right across from them; comfortably relaxing in a chair, legs crossed reading a magazine while softly whistling a tune, just waiting to be noticed. Not until clients are asked a question that refocuses their thinking do they look up and see the “obvious answer” sitting there right across from them. It happens all the time. I do it too. Because we humans get emotionally involved in the decisions and situations in our lives, another set of eyes and ears, properly trained, can help lead people out of the emotion of what they’re working on and take them to a place where they can begin to solve issues with a more distanced and objective perspective. Just like in the experiment Pink talks about, business leaders can be more creative in solving business issues with the help of someone who brings another set of eyes and ears, another way of looking at and hearing the world, armed with a toolkit of dedication to the leader’s cause. When leaders are asked to look at issues from another perspective, listening skills begin to sharpen, new ideas form, and unintended consequences can be more thoroughly vetted. It works.
Additionally, well intentioned organizations often make the mistake of providing a one or two day training for a team that can be very valuable, but then, remarkably, that same organization has no plan for what to do with all that new knowledge once the workshop is over. This happens all the time; the assumption being that people love change, will embrace it, and do whatever it takes. But voluntarily? Unfortunately the newly acquired learning often vanishes into a ‘knowledge vacuum’, spinning hopelessly in a training galaxy of unincorporated information. Then the problem, accidently generated, is a workforce who is not engaged in the latest training because they do not see it living and breathing in their day to day work. Training then gets labeled as the ‘flavor of the month’ and instead people go on doing what they always did. The money and time spent was largely wasted and the organization has inadvertently created resistance to more training, hence change. Hire coaches! Coaches, bringing a fresh set of eyes and ears, can help embed the newly learned strategies into the daily efforts at work and keep the conversation going, building a bigger keychain to success.
But, the only way any of this works best is for the leader, who brings a coach in, to be truly open to change; to being asked challenging questions and trying something different. Without the earnest will and perseverance of an organization’s leader, new initiatives die. Leaders can do a better job of listening to others and most importantly, the people who work for them. Bringing in another set of eyes and ears can help leaders see what they are missing while help them improve their business efforts and communication. And in doing that hard work themselves, leaders can inspire employees to come with them down a more effective path within the organization. Employees watch what goes on at the top and behave correspondingly. Eyes and ears that aren’t your own can be a powerful tool to propelling you on the journey of not only making you the best leader you can be but helping your organization be better too.
Posted on October 3, 2012
1
Eyes, ears, and listening with curiosity: these are some key ingredients that business coaches bring to their clients. It may sound easy but it’s not. Coaching requires patience, highly attuned listening skills, and an ability to ask thought provoking questions that help people find more creative and sustainable solutions.
In my role as a business coach, I love my work with my clients and find it fascinating. Conversely, in my role as a business coach I do not love the marketing aspect of my work and find it challenging. And now, happily, I have discovered a perfect article to aid me in my quest to better state the case of why coaching can be so beneficial to a leader or team. The article was written by my new favorite author, Daniel Pink who wrote the terrific book, “Drive”; this latest piece is really worth a look. His findings show that people, when asked to solve another person’s problem, become more creative and innovative in their thinking and solutions than when thinking about their own problems. His research dovetails perfectly into why it is so important to invite coaches into your offices to flip over ideas with you. Take a minute to read it here.
Coaching collaboration is invaluable. How many times have I sat with people when the “obvious answer” was sitting right across from them; comfortably relaxing in a chair, legs crossed reading a magazine while softly whistling a tune, just waiting to be noticed. Not until clients are asked a question that refocuses their thinking do they look up and see the “obvious answer” sitting there right across from them. It happens all the time. I do it too. Because we humans get emotionally involved in the decisions and situations in our lives, another set of eyes and ears, properly trained, can help lead people out of the emotion of what they’re working on and take them to a place where they can begin to solve issues with a more distanced and objective perspective. Just like in the experiment Pink talks about, business leaders can be more creative in solving business issues with the help of someone who brings another set of eyes and ears, another way of looking at and hearing the world, armed with a toolkit of dedication to the leader’s cause. When leaders are asked to look at issues from another perspective, listening skills begin to sharpen, new ideas form, and unintended consequences can be more thoroughly vetted. It works.
Additionally, well intentioned organizations often make the mistake of providing a one or two day training for a team that can be very valuable, but then, remarkably, that same organization has no plan for what to do with all that new knowledge once the workshop is over. This happens all the time; the assumption being that people love change, will embrace it, and do whatever it takes. But voluntarily? Unfortunately the newly acquired learning often vanishes into a ‘knowledge vacuum’, spinning hopelessly in a training galaxy of unincorporated information. Then the problem, accidently generated, is a workforce who is not engaged in the latest training because they do not see it living and breathing in their day to day work. Training then gets labeled as the ‘flavor of the month’ and instead people go on doing what they always did. The money and time spent was largely wasted and the organization has inadvertently created resistance to more training, hence change. Hire coaches! Coaches, bringing a fresh set of eyes and ears, can help embed the newly learned strategies into the daily efforts at work and keep the conversation going, building a bigger keychain to success.
But, the only way any of this works best is for the leader, who brings a coach in, to be truly open to change; to being asked challenging questions and trying something different. Without the earnest will and perseverance of an organization’s leader, new initiatives die. Leaders can do a better job of listening to others and most importantly, the people who work for them. Bringing in another set of eyes and ears can help leaders see what they are missing while help them improve their business efforts and communication. And in doing that hard work themselves, leaders can inspire employees to come with them down a more effective path within the organization. Employees watch what goes on at the top and behave correspondingly. Eyes and ears that aren’t your own can be a powerful tool to propelling you on the journey of not only making you the best leader you can be but helping your organization be better too.
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