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Developing directors through personal coaching
Developing Directors Through Personal Coaching Des Gould
W
HO, IF ANYONE, TAKES responsibility for developing directors and, indeed, who should take responsibility? Many companies have not yet seen the need to develop their most senior people, so we should examine why this is and also look at how directors may be developed. The approach presented here is practical, based on my experience as a consultant over many years and with different types of organizations. The ideas have evolved through observation, debate and practical application. An ironical title for this article could be “How to sub-optimize your corporate performance”.
The Pressures
on the Board
The fundamental problem for directors is that they face turbulent changes in the business environment. This is one of the cliches of the 1990s. It is also one of the few things that all directors seem to agree upon. They also believe that the pace of change is increasing. Although they accept this as an idea, there are not many organizations which have adapted their boards to take account of the changes. If they had, we should see more director development and ‘learning boards’. Our boards should be monitoring the changes and learning from their experiences rather than following less established policies and rules. But is this reflected in the development of new board structures and new processes? Figure 1 describes how executive and director development should be part of an organization’s response to changes in the business environment. It suggests that the driving forces are usually moving faster than companies are responding. The development of our organizations’ strategies and business processes is often too slow to match the changes in markets and technologies. The gap seems to be getting bigger. Organizational development
requires an initiative by the CEO and the board. It is usually born out of the vision of one person or small group within the organization. Two difficulties often arise: 2. The CEO or chairman sees the ‘what’-what must be done-but not ‘how’ the necessary changes might be implemented. 2. Because no recognized change process for the board is to hand he cannot offer his colleagues a programme to work with. He sees the ‘promised land’ but has no map to guide him. More fundamentally, the development of the company’s key executives and directors is rarely seen as a critical problem for the board, and yet they are the ones who carry the ultimate responsibility for Long Range
Pergamon
Planning,
PII: SOO24-6301(96)00093-3 Printed
Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 29 to 37,1997 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0024-6301/97 $17.00+0.00
producing a better, more competitive, more profitable business. These key individuals are often the directors and senior executives who do not seem to get training and coaching in the management of organizational change. In a recent paper Bob Garratt’ quoted a survey carried out by the Institute of Directors’ in the UK which reported that “92% of company directors said that they had received no training or development for their directorial role”. Garratt’s own work in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong shows a similar percentage. Direction needs to be distinguished from management (see Figure 2 ). There are marketing professionals who are appointed managing director and cannot let go
Developing Directors Through Personal Coaching
of marketing; there are production and operational managers who cannot let go of their specialities; engineers who make CEO and cannot resist the temptation of playing with the latest piece of equipment. Sometimes this inability to move on is a result of a lack of trust in the technical skills of the people who take over from them. Sometimes their inability to grow is in their own character. They have enjoyed being an engineer for the last 20 years, or a marketing expert. Also there is rarely an induction course to help them make the jump from manager to director, from marketing director or engineering director to Being human, when they feel managing director. uncomfortable they tend to revert to doing the work they understand and which they do best. In the coaching process it is possible to analyse the work of directors and senior managers in great detail. In one recent assignment involving a board and 20 senior managers it became clear that the senior people were spending much of their time working with old-fashioned methods, some of which were set up over 4Oyears ago. This organization is at present being moved from the public sector to the private sector and simultaneously becoming a subsidiary of another large company. The directors cannot see the wood for the trees. One of the benefits of coaching is that it is helping them to identify how their organization will need to develop. This will involve determining which business processes are ineffective and working with the appropriate executives to invent new more up-to-date procedures. Before the intervention everyone was busy; running the business, working through the consequences of the privatization, carrying out the due diligence process for the sale of the company. Trying to deal with the symptoms of today’s problems without really addressing their causes.
It is possible for a managing director to take a new director under his wing and a chairman with available time and people skills might give advice to a new managing director. But this is not as common as one might expect. Also, at best this would be mentoring which is not the same thing as coaching and does not have the same impact as a well-applied coaching programme. Very often even this basic mentoring does not occur owing to pressures on time from other priorities. Let us examine the simple notion of allowing directors to direct and letting managers manage. Figure 3 provides a framework for examining the process of director development.
Step l-Induction Induction courses for directors are rare. Moving from being a senior manager to being a director is seen as nothing more than being a more senior manager with a bigger office and more equipment. This step is not just different in degree-it is different in kind. But this fact has yet to be recognized by most organizations and, as we noted, more than 92% of British directors have received no training in direction. In the UK alone, there are more than 2 70 pieces of legislation which refer to the responsibilities, duties and obligations of directors. It is not our purpose here to define the role of management except perhaps to distinguish it from that of a director. The role of the board could be best and succinctly defined as ‘corporate renewal’, certainly different in kind from the role of management. The IOD publication “Good Practice for Directors” states that “the Board of Directors is the principal agent of risk taking, enterprise and commercial judgment. The key purpose of the
Board is to ensure the company’s prosperity directing its affairs and meeting the legitimate shareholders and other interested parties.“3
by collectively interests of its
and managers manage processes Broadly, implement policy. They do not carry the same legal burdens as directors. They are not usually involved in setting strategy and policy and they are not responsible for corporate governance. Directors somehow struggle through induction to reach inclusion. We will not be taken seriously by any social group (and a board is a social group) unless we are included in it. Often we hesitate to put forward our ideas in a new situation until we are sure that we have been fully accepted. The skilful coach using the coaching process seeks to elicit the answer to the question “how do you know that you are included?” and therefore fully able to participate and exercise influence. Once the director is included he or she can then become competent, but even if we are competent we are not necessarily allowed to perform our roles fully. This section could have been entitled “How to suboptimize your performance”. An example will illustrate the point. Two years ago, a client in the USA was appointed CEO of a business turning over approximately $150 million. This was in an industry where he had a good track record. He was dynamic, creative and was an excellent choice for the position. A year later he was shown the model in Figure 3 and he identified with it immediately. He had just resigned his post as CEO because he had not been allowed to make the step to ‘performance’. He explained that the previous CEO had been made chairman but he would not let go of the CEO’s role. So the company had a chairman Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February
1997
acting as the CEO, and a CEO acting as a powerful supernumerary general manager. As he could not exercise his powers as CEO he was taking away responsibility and authority from the general managers, who were in turn making up their role by taking responsibility away from their direct reports. Note that in this company there is no real chairman, no-one is really working full-time in that role. The organization was sub-optimizing its performance and people were not fully able to express themselves in their roles. ‘Competence’ comes about when we are confident that we are making our contribution. Competence implies sufficiency. ‘Performance’ calls for more than mere sufficiency and is seen as the fulfilment of the role. After performing in a role for a period of time, the director reaches a plateau and from this plateau there is often a transition. The plateau gives rise to the question, “Do I stay where I am or do I move on?” The director can move up within the organization or he may move out of it. Frequently the director moves out of the company because the organization has not recognized that he has reached a plateau. This is a
good way to lose talent. It is impossible to ‘train’ executives to move through this major development stage from being a senior manager to being a director. The stages shown in Figure 3 imply that there is a template, a blueprint from which we can work and a right and a wrong way. But in the turbulent environment that we are all facing, as soon as we have a blueprint ready the requirements seem to change. Training tells us what to do-the coach draws out processes and helps the director to discover how he will do it. Coaching is an area in which the author has worked for the last 10 years, specializing in helping managers to become directors. During that time the coaching process has evolved and developed.
The Case for Coaching It is precisely because coaching does not work from a template or blueprint that it is so valuable in the new and emerging situations that directors now face. As no two organizations nor two individuals are ever the same, so no two coaching programmes are ever the same. They have to be tailored to the needs of the directors concerned. The ‘top’ of an organization is always a good place to start as directors seem to get less development than other employees. Also, once you have the attention and support of the directors, it helps to legitimize the use of the process throughout the organization. Also, the directors can send some very strong messages through the organization. If members of a board are being coached, it tells people throughout the business Developing Directors Through Personal Coaching
that development is a high priority for the whole of the organization and that no-one should be complacent with his or her current levels of skills and abilities. The role-modelling aspect of coaching is very powerful. Organizations need good role models. A true learning organization will only evolve once there is a ‘learning board’. Also, it is not a question of having either a topdown or a bottom-up process. You actually need both. You have to start somewhere. When you start at the top you start with strategy and move on to operations. Then information comes back from operating units with good quality feedback to influence the strategy. Coaching increases awareness of the potential for learning within the organization. The coach will help the client to identify what does not work and to explore together what would work. Coaching entails a close, confidential, one-to-one relationship which is on-going for about a year. It is a relationship which should leave the client stronger, more competent and more able at the end of the process than at the beginning. It would be a mistake to believe that coaching is always warm and cosy.
Coaching at Different Change Process
Stages of the
The approach taken should be dependent upon where the client is in the change process (see Figure 4). This is the model of the change process which we have been using in our coaching for the last 10 years. It works as follows:
1. Denial:
response for it.
when first confronted with change, our first as human beings is to deny the necessity
2. Resistance:
the next phase of the process is when we have come to terms with the necessity of it but we do not like it, therefore our reaction to it is to resist.
3. Exploration: exploration means that we are willing to explore the new ways of doing things in the new regime, new culture or new situation in which we find ourselves. 4. Commitment: finally commitment the new circumstances.
is acceptance
of
Coaching people in denial is about confronting them with the new reality. In the resistance phase the best approach is to do far more listening than talking so that people have the opportunity to come to their own conclusions that things are indeed changing whether they like it or not. In exploration it is often best to keep a narrow focus with lots of short steps as some people are inclined to explore too widely and try too many different options before coming through to their version of commitment. Others may feel that a wider perspective should be taken in the exploration phase, but we have found that in taking such an approach clients in their new enthusiasm have a tendency to start many projects which they fail to complete. This may eventually result in a drop in self-esteem, the conclusion that ‘this is not working’ and a return to resistance. A person’s reaction to change is not always predictable. People can move from denial to resistance and back again, Given our different attitudes and situations, unless change is handled professionally it is by no means guaranteed that all people will move through the cycle to commitment. The coach’s job in working with the board is to make sure they all get through to commitment as quickly as possible, and then in turn they can help others to move through the process with them. The change process tends to move at the speed of the slowest critical person.
The Conceptual
FIGURE 5, The caarrhing of directors.
expounded by Peter Senge et a1.4 Figure 6 helps us to look at this in another way. This model works not only for individuals, but also for teams and whole organizations. What underlies
Framework
In developing our own style of coaching we have created, borrowed and developed many models which we use diagnostically and interpretatively. Underlying all of this is the premise that attitude is paramount. Figure 5 suggests that in coaching directors’ attitude, skills and knowledge are all important. If a director has a positive attitude, the skills and knowledge he requires will be assimilated and practised quicker and better than in the case of a director with This idea is eloquently attitude. a negative
FIWRE 6. Remember-beliefs into us.
are programmed
Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February 1997
the model
is that beliefs are neither true nor false, quite often they are just beliefs and they are supported by the evidence that we wish to find in order to support our position. As an 8-year-old boy at school my teachers told me (the programme) that I was not good at arithmetic. I took that on as a belief and it affected my attitude. For the rest of my academic life I avoided maths and sciences; my feelings around these subjects were negative, which affected my behaviour (further avoidance) with the result that the ‘programme’ was reinforced. It was only 25 years later, during a takeover when I was involved heavily in the financial aspects of an acquisition, that the CEO said to me “I thought that you were not good at maths”. My automatic response to that was “I’m not”. The CEO simply said that the evidence was otherwise. There are similar examples for all of us. In our practice we rarely encounter a coaching client who does not discover one or more ‘limiting beliefs’. A useful way to distinguish coaching from counselling is in its focus. This is illustrated in Figure 7. On the whole counselling goes back into the past to deal with problems, exorcising them so that clients or patients can act and behave differently now. Coaching is focused more on helping clients to exploit their opportunities in the future. Coaching, although wider in its scope than mentoring, does include some mentoring techniques.
The Practical Our coaching sessions over
Developing
Framework
programme the course
is a series of 10 2-hour of approximately 1 year.
Directors Through Personal Coaching
Initially the sessions are 2 weeks apart, and once it gains momentum the interval increases to 1 month. The approach is broadly focused. As with any other consultancy undertaking it starts with a ‘current reality statement’ which is prepared by the individual client. Where a client is in transition, moving from the position of a manager to that of a director, an input from the managing director is often valuable. ‘Success measures’ are agreed by client and the appropriate director. At the end of each session an ‘action list’ is created. On this are items upon which the client wishes to make progress before the next session. The next session usually starts with an analysis of the action list. One of the benefits comes in the analysis of what worked and what did not, what got done and what did not rather than a judgement upon those issues. Using the analysis the coach and the client can start to look at both the individual’s processes and the corporate processes which are not helping to achieve the corporate strategy. This brings us back to Figure 2. Once the relationship is established and gains momentum, the client drives the agenda completely. Where these processes are absent, there are consequences which the next model illustrates. As Figure 8 indicates, when there is neither personal development nor organizational development for our senior people, this is a recipe for disaster. When personal development is high and there is no on-going organizational development, people outgrow their organization and leave. When the organizational development is high but the investment in the senior people on whom the organization depends to carry out these changes is low, this causes stress and frequently productivity goes down.
The top, right-hand box is the only appropriate goal. The development of the organization is driven by the personal development of its leaders in the context of the strategy of the organization. Coaching aims to achieve this. Coaching the leaders is intended to bring about relevant and focused organizational development. In our experience it is the most effective way of closing the gap between the rate of change occurring in the business environment and the speed of change in organization and executive development (see Figure 1). Some examples will serve to support the ideas. It was mentioned earlier that the approach is broad and an actual case will illustrate why this is necessary. Our client John Jackson was a senior manager in a peripheral part of a company. Due to technological and market changes this small ‘backwater’became the most important single department within the business. Before the change the department never originated or delivered more than one strategically important project each year. Now it became the place where the majority of strategic initiatives originated and were implemented with great success. At the end of the year John Jackson received an excellent appraisal, enlarged responsibility’and was more confident and less stressed than he was at the beginning. He was asked what was the single most important event during the coaching process. The answer was surprising from someone who had accomplished so much. He said the most important item was an almost throw-away comment made by his coach regarding fitness and stamina. He had bought himself a mountain bike for two reasons: to increase his general fitness and to spend some time on Saturday mornings
with his sons. He said “It was the start of a fitness programme which eventually gave me an extra hour of peak performance a day so that I could stay on top of all the changes going on and feel that I was staying in control of the situation.” John Brown was a senior executive in a national bank. His responsibilities were in a key operational area where morale was low. This department’s credibility with the rest of the business was very poor. There had been three executives in his position during the last two years. Downsizing and restructuring had occurred. The future was far from certain. After discussion and an analysis of his situation, we decided to start with a one-to-one coaching programme. The first processes that were examined were leadership and the successful implementation of the operations. As a result there was an improvement in the morale, effectiveness and efficiency of the department. With the increase in confidence the employees started putting ideas forward, and initiatives were started from this part of the organization which affected the whole bank. With this success, the credibility of the department increased. Now John Brown is a director of the bank and he chairs some of the indusThe client’s personal influtry’s key committees. encing skills have developed. The unit is now seen as one of the best in the banking industry. A key success measure from both the client’s and the coach’s point of view is whether the client has the confidence in the coach and the coaching process to allow for recommendations and repeat work. In this case there was both. John Smith was, and still is, the managing director of a sportswear company that needed to be successfully turned around in a very short period. Before becoming managing director, he was marketing director. Using the process outlined in this article, we helped the client to make the transition from marketing director to managing director-the overall leader of the business. The company had to be completely restructured and the strategy revised during a 6-month period to prevent it going bankrupt. The business focus was changed from manufacturing to sales and marketing. The manufacturing operation was successfully sold. Distribution and warehousing were outsourced. The new season’s designs were created and a new sourcing strategy was implemented. Of course there was a price to pay in terms of redundancy and downsizing, and although one can never be happy or proud of this, the process was handled fairly and professionally without recourse to industrial tribunals. In the end we coached three of the key directors. It was not the coach’s ideas which turned the business around, it was the creative thoughts which were skilfully drawn out of the directors and fully explored. Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February 1997
They know more about their business than anyone else and the turnaround was successful. There have been many such success stories. However, the real impact has been made when there have been opportunities to coach groups or teams at the top. Coaching can help the directors to make a significant extra impact on the business, especially when it is focused upon improving board level effectiveness, and helps them to concentrate upon corporate renewal. Sometimes the point of coaching is to get directors to direct and managers to manage. Often the benefit comes from the coach being willing to ask the stupid questions that cut through the previous assumptions. Boards are rarely teams. They are often groups of individuals who have shown real ability in competing, yet when they get to the top of the organization they are required to collaborate. Having an effective board need not mean that it is all warm and cosy and that the directors do not challenge each other. It does not have to mean that they even like each other. However, the more cohesive a board can work together as a unit, the more it will be able to bring back into its strategies and policies the operational learning from other parts of the organization. To quote Arie de Guis, as mentioned in Peter Senge’s book,5 “the ability to learn faster than the competition may be the only sustainable competitive advantage”, and without learning boards we are not likely to have learning organizations. Work carried out in the area of coaching and developing boards helps to make the link between organizational and strategic learning, increases the effectiveness of individuals and the efficiency and effectiveness of boards of directors.
Conclusions Paradoxically there are no real conclusions as there is no finishing line. Development is, and has to be, on-going for all involved in business, especially at the senior levels. Learning needs to be legitimized and validated throughout an organization, and a good coach with a tried and tested coaching process cannot only do this but can turn development from an aca-
Developing Directors Through
Personal
Coaching
demic pursuit of ideas to a practical and implementable series of actions which affect results. Coaching is not remedial. It means operating as a catalyst with good people to make them even better. The coaching process has been used successfully to help the induction of directors and allow them to rise above their operational responsibilities. Coaches have been used as major catalysts in change programmes and to identify and improve business processes that sub-optimize performance. The board should be the business brain-a key area for learning and development to take place. Although you can give directors skills training, where are the courses that train people for the unforeseeable? Coaching can do this, and do it well. Given the need for on-going development and learning in our organizations, as business is forced on by the changes in technologies, markets and government regulations, coaching can be part of the answer. I have argued here that there is a need for coaching-a need for a professionally applied process which develops the directors and boards so that they can develop their organizations from the inside. Some of the successful processes already in use have also been mentioned. Now we must ask “Who is responsible for developing the directors?” This is a difficult area in Britain bearing in mind the impact of the Cadbury Report’ and the Greenbury Report7 regarding the use of non-executive directors and also the significant changes that are going on at the moment in relation to the psychological contract between employer and employee. It is not within the scope of this article to discuss the consequences of the significant changes in the psychological contract, but there is good evidence to suggest that most of those consequences have not been thought through. Suggesting that people should take responsibility for their own development is all well and good but in what context? Figure 8 suggests that there can be positive results for both individuals and companies if joint responsibility is taken for the development of people. Yes, directors should take responsibility for their own development but managing directors and chairmen should provide the context for the development of their directors which must be in line with the overall strategy of the business.
References 1. B. Garratt, Direction giving and the learning board, Executive Development6 (1993). 2. Institute of Directors and Henley Management Standards for the Board (1995).
(3), 21-27
College Good Practice for Directors:
3. Ibid. 4. P. Senge et al., The Fifth Discipline Field Book, pp. 16-17, Brealey, London (1994). 5. P. Senge, The Fifh Discipline,
Century Business, London (1990).
6. The Cadbury Report, Gee Publishing 7. The Greenbury
Ltd (1992).
Report, Gee Publishing
Ltd (1995).
Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February 1997
W
HO, IF ANYONE, TAKES responsibility for developing directors and, indeed, who should take responsibility? Many companies have not yet seen the need to develop their most senior people, so we should examine why this is and also look at how directors may be developed. The approach presented here is practical, based on my experience as a consultant over many years and with different types of organizations. The ideas have evolved through observation, debate and practical application. An ironical title for this article could be “How to sub-optimize your corporate performance”.
The Pressures
on the Board
The fundamental problem for directors is that they face turbulent changes in the business environment. This is one of the cliches of the 1990s. It is also one of the few things that all directors seem to agree upon. They also believe that the pace of change is increasing. Although they accept this as an idea, there are not many organizations which have adapted their boards to take account of the changes. If they had, we should see more director development and ‘learning boards’. Our boards should be monitoring the changes and learning from their experiences rather than following less established policies and rules. But is this reflected in the development of new board structures and new processes? Figure 1 describes how executive and director development should be part of an organization’s response to changes in the business environment. It suggests that the driving forces are usually moving faster than companies are responding. The development of our organizations’ strategies and business processes is often too slow to match the changes in markets and technologies. The gap seems to be getting bigger. Organizational development
requires an initiative by the CEO and the board. It is usually born out of the vision of one person or small group within the organization. Two difficulties often arise: 2. The CEO or chairman sees the ‘what’-what must be done-but not ‘how’ the necessary changes might be implemented. 2. Because no recognized change process for the board is to hand he cannot offer his colleagues a programme to work with. He sees the ‘promised land’ but has no map to guide him. More fundamentally, the development of the company’s key executives and directors is rarely seen as a critical problem for the board, and yet they are the ones who carry the ultimate responsibility for Long Range
Pergamon
Planning,
PII: SOO24-6301(96)00093-3 Printed
Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 29 to 37,1997 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0024-6301/97 $17.00+0.00
producing a better, more competitive, more profitable business. These key individuals are often the directors and senior executives who do not seem to get training and coaching in the management of organizational change. In a recent paper Bob Garratt’ quoted a survey carried out by the Institute of Directors’ in the UK which reported that “92% of company directors said that they had received no training or development for their directorial role”. Garratt’s own work in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong shows a similar percentage. Direction needs to be distinguished from management (see Figure 2 ). There are marketing professionals who are appointed managing director and cannot let go
Developing Directors Through Personal Coaching
of marketing; there are production and operational managers who cannot let go of their specialities; engineers who make CEO and cannot resist the temptation of playing with the latest piece of equipment. Sometimes this inability to move on is a result of a lack of trust in the technical skills of the people who take over from them. Sometimes their inability to grow is in their own character. They have enjoyed being an engineer for the last 20 years, or a marketing expert. Also there is rarely an induction course to help them make the jump from manager to director, from marketing director or engineering director to Being human, when they feel managing director. uncomfortable they tend to revert to doing the work they understand and which they do best. In the coaching process it is possible to analyse the work of directors and senior managers in great detail. In one recent assignment involving a board and 20 senior managers it became clear that the senior people were spending much of their time working with old-fashioned methods, some of which were set up over 4Oyears ago. This organization is at present being moved from the public sector to the private sector and simultaneously becoming a subsidiary of another large company. The directors cannot see the wood for the trees. One of the benefits of coaching is that it is helping them to identify how their organization will need to develop. This will involve determining which business processes are ineffective and working with the appropriate executives to invent new more up-to-date procedures. Before the intervention everyone was busy; running the business, working through the consequences of the privatization, carrying out the due diligence process for the sale of the company. Trying to deal with the symptoms of today’s problems without really addressing their causes.
It is possible for a managing director to take a new director under his wing and a chairman with available time and people skills might give advice to a new managing director. But this is not as common as one might expect. Also, at best this would be mentoring which is not the same thing as coaching and does not have the same impact as a well-applied coaching programme. Very often even this basic mentoring does not occur owing to pressures on time from other priorities. Let us examine the simple notion of allowing directors to direct and letting managers manage. Figure 3 provides a framework for examining the process of director development.
Step l-Induction Induction courses for directors are rare. Moving from being a senior manager to being a director is seen as nothing more than being a more senior manager with a bigger office and more equipment. This step is not just different in degree-it is different in kind. But this fact has yet to be recognized by most organizations and, as we noted, more than 92% of British directors have received no training in direction. In the UK alone, there are more than 2 70 pieces of legislation which refer to the responsibilities, duties and obligations of directors. It is not our purpose here to define the role of management except perhaps to distinguish it from that of a director. The role of the board could be best and succinctly defined as ‘corporate renewal’, certainly different in kind from the role of management. The IOD publication “Good Practice for Directors” states that “the Board of Directors is the principal agent of risk taking, enterprise and commercial judgment. The key purpose of the
Board is to ensure the company’s prosperity directing its affairs and meeting the legitimate shareholders and other interested parties.“3
by collectively interests of its
and managers manage processes Broadly, implement policy. They do not carry the same legal burdens as directors. They are not usually involved in setting strategy and policy and they are not responsible for corporate governance. Directors somehow struggle through induction to reach inclusion. We will not be taken seriously by any social group (and a board is a social group) unless we are included in it. Often we hesitate to put forward our ideas in a new situation until we are sure that we have been fully accepted. The skilful coach using the coaching process seeks to elicit the answer to the question “how do you know that you are included?” and therefore fully able to participate and exercise influence. Once the director is included he or she can then become competent, but even if we are competent we are not necessarily allowed to perform our roles fully. This section could have been entitled “How to suboptimize your performance”. An example will illustrate the point. Two years ago, a client in the USA was appointed CEO of a business turning over approximately $150 million. This was in an industry where he had a good track record. He was dynamic, creative and was an excellent choice for the position. A year later he was shown the model in Figure 3 and he identified with it immediately. He had just resigned his post as CEO because he had not been allowed to make the step to ‘performance’. He explained that the previous CEO had been made chairman but he would not let go of the CEO’s role. So the company had a chairman Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February
1997
acting as the CEO, and a CEO acting as a powerful supernumerary general manager. As he could not exercise his powers as CEO he was taking away responsibility and authority from the general managers, who were in turn making up their role by taking responsibility away from their direct reports. Note that in this company there is no real chairman, no-one is really working full-time in that role. The organization was sub-optimizing its performance and people were not fully able to express themselves in their roles. ‘Competence’ comes about when we are confident that we are making our contribution. Competence implies sufficiency. ‘Performance’ calls for more than mere sufficiency and is seen as the fulfilment of the role. After performing in a role for a period of time, the director reaches a plateau and from this plateau there is often a transition. The plateau gives rise to the question, “Do I stay where I am or do I move on?” The director can move up within the organization or he may move out of it. Frequently the director moves out of the company because the organization has not recognized that he has reached a plateau. This is a
good way to lose talent. It is impossible to ‘train’ executives to move through this major development stage from being a senior manager to being a director. The stages shown in Figure 3 imply that there is a template, a blueprint from which we can work and a right and a wrong way. But in the turbulent environment that we are all facing, as soon as we have a blueprint ready the requirements seem to change. Training tells us what to do-the coach draws out processes and helps the director to discover how he will do it. Coaching is an area in which the author has worked for the last 10 years, specializing in helping managers to become directors. During that time the coaching process has evolved and developed.
The Case for Coaching It is precisely because coaching does not work from a template or blueprint that it is so valuable in the new and emerging situations that directors now face. As no two organizations nor two individuals are ever the same, so no two coaching programmes are ever the same. They have to be tailored to the needs of the directors concerned. The ‘top’ of an organization is always a good place to start as directors seem to get less development than other employees. Also, once you have the attention and support of the directors, it helps to legitimize the use of the process throughout the organization. Also, the directors can send some very strong messages through the organization. If members of a board are being coached, it tells people throughout the business Developing Directors Through Personal Coaching
that development is a high priority for the whole of the organization and that no-one should be complacent with his or her current levels of skills and abilities. The role-modelling aspect of coaching is very powerful. Organizations need good role models. A true learning organization will only evolve once there is a ‘learning board’. Also, it is not a question of having either a topdown or a bottom-up process. You actually need both. You have to start somewhere. When you start at the top you start with strategy and move on to operations. Then information comes back from operating units with good quality feedback to influence the strategy. Coaching increases awareness of the potential for learning within the organization. The coach will help the client to identify what does not work and to explore together what would work. Coaching entails a close, confidential, one-to-one relationship which is on-going for about a year. It is a relationship which should leave the client stronger, more competent and more able at the end of the process than at the beginning. It would be a mistake to believe that coaching is always warm and cosy.
Coaching at Different Change Process
Stages of the
The approach taken should be dependent upon where the client is in the change process (see Figure 4). This is the model of the change process which we have been using in our coaching for the last 10 years. It works as follows:
1. Denial:
response for it.
when first confronted with change, our first as human beings is to deny the necessity
2. Resistance:
the next phase of the process is when we have come to terms with the necessity of it but we do not like it, therefore our reaction to it is to resist.
3. Exploration: exploration means that we are willing to explore the new ways of doing things in the new regime, new culture or new situation in which we find ourselves. 4. Commitment: finally commitment the new circumstances.
is acceptance
of
Coaching people in denial is about confronting them with the new reality. In the resistance phase the best approach is to do far more listening than talking so that people have the opportunity to come to their own conclusions that things are indeed changing whether they like it or not. In exploration it is often best to keep a narrow focus with lots of short steps as some people are inclined to explore too widely and try too many different options before coming through to their version of commitment. Others may feel that a wider perspective should be taken in the exploration phase, but we have found that in taking such an approach clients in their new enthusiasm have a tendency to start many projects which they fail to complete. This may eventually result in a drop in self-esteem, the conclusion that ‘this is not working’ and a return to resistance. A person’s reaction to change is not always predictable. People can move from denial to resistance and back again, Given our different attitudes and situations, unless change is handled professionally it is by no means guaranteed that all people will move through the cycle to commitment. The coach’s job in working with the board is to make sure they all get through to commitment as quickly as possible, and then in turn they can help others to move through the process with them. The change process tends to move at the speed of the slowest critical person.
The Conceptual
FIGURE 5, The caarrhing of directors.
expounded by Peter Senge et a1.4 Figure 6 helps us to look at this in another way. This model works not only for individuals, but also for teams and whole organizations. What underlies
Framework
In developing our own style of coaching we have created, borrowed and developed many models which we use diagnostically and interpretatively. Underlying all of this is the premise that attitude is paramount. Figure 5 suggests that in coaching directors’ attitude, skills and knowledge are all important. If a director has a positive attitude, the skills and knowledge he requires will be assimilated and practised quicker and better than in the case of a director with This idea is eloquently attitude. a negative
FIWRE 6. Remember-beliefs into us.
are programmed
Long Range Planning Vol. 30
February 1997
the model
is that beliefs are neither true nor false, quite often they are just beliefs and they are supported by the evidence that we wish to find in order to support our position. As an 8-year-old boy at school my teachers told me (the programme) that I was not good at arithmetic. I took that on as a belief and it affected my attitude. For the rest of my academic life I avoided maths and sciences; my feelings around these subjects were negative, which affected my behaviour (further avoidance) with the result that the ‘programme’ was reinforced. It was only 25 years later, during a takeover when I was involved heavily in the financial aspects of an acquisition, that the CEO said to me “I thought that you were not good at maths”. My automatic response to that was “I’m not”. The CEO simply said that the evidence was otherwise. There are similar examples for all of us. In our practice we rarely encounter a coaching client who does not discover one or more ‘limiting beliefs’. A useful way to distinguish coaching from counselling is in its focus. This is illustrated in Figure 7. On the whole counselling goes back into the past to deal with problems, exorcising them so that clients or patients can act and behave differently now. Coaching is focused more on helping clients to exploit their opportunities in the future. Coaching, although wider in its scope than mentoring, does include some mentoring techniques.
The Practical Our coaching sessions over
Developing
Framework
programme the course
is a series of 10 2-hour of approximately 1 year.
Directors Through Personal Coaching
Initially the sessions are 2 weeks apart, and once it gains momentum the interval increases to 1 month. The approach is broadly focused. As with any other consultancy undertaking it starts with a ‘current reality statement’ which is prepared by the individual client. Where a client is in transition, moving from the position of a manager to that of a director, an input from the managing director is often valuable. ‘Success measures’ are agreed by client and the appropriate director. At the end of each session an ‘action list’ is created. On this are items upon which the client wishes to make progress before the next session. The next session usually starts with an analysis of the action list. One of the benefits comes in the analysis of what worked and what did not, what got done and what did not rather than a judgement upon those issues. Using the analysis the coach and the client can start to look at both the individual’s processes and the corporate processes which are not helping to achieve the corporate strategy. This brings us back to Figure 2. Once the relationship is established and gains momentum, the client drives the agenda completely. Where these processes are absent, there are consequences which the next model illustrates. As Figure 8 indicates, when there is neither personal development nor organizational development for our senior people, this is a recipe for disaster. When personal development is high and there is no on-going organizational development, people outgrow their organization and leave. When the organizational development is high but the investment in the senior people on whom the organization depends to carry out these changes is low, this causes stress and frequently productivity goes down.
The top, right-hand box is the only appropriate goal. The development of the organization is driven by the personal development of its leaders in the context of the strategy of the organization. Coaching aims to achieve this. Coaching the leaders is intended to bring about relevant and focused organizational development. In our experience it is the most effective way of closing the gap between the rate of change occurring in the business environment and the speed of change in organization and executive development (see Figure 1). Some examples will serve to support the ideas. It was mentioned earlier that the approach is broad and an actual case will illustrate why this is necessary. Our client John Jackson was a senior manager in a peripheral part of a company. Due to technological and market changes this small ‘backwater’became the most important single department within the business. Before the change the department never originated or delivered more than one strategically important project each year. Now it became the place where the majority of strategic initiatives originated and were implemented with great success. At the end of the year John Jackson received an excellent appraisal, enlarged responsibility’and was more confident and less stressed than he was at the beginning. He was asked what was the single most important event during the coaching process. The answer was surprising from someone who had accomplished so much. He said the most important item was an almost throw-away comment made by his coach regarding fitness and stamina. He had bought himself a mountain bike for two reasons: to increase his general fitness and to spend some time on Saturday mornings
with his sons. He said “It was the start of a fitness programme which eventually gave me an extra hour of peak performance a day so that I could stay on top of all the changes going on and feel that I was staying in control of the situation.” John Brown was a senior executive in a national bank. His responsibilities were in a key operational area where morale was low. This department’s credibility with the rest of the business was very poor. There had been three executives in his position during the last two years. Downsizing and restructuring had occurred. The future was far from certain. After discussion and an analysis of his situation, we decided to start with a one-to-one coaching programme. The first processes that were examined were leadership and the successful implementation of the operations. As a result there was an improvement in the morale, effectiveness and efficiency of the department. With the increase in confidence the employees started putting ideas forward, and initiatives were started from this part of the organization which affected the whole bank. With this success, the credibility of the department increased. Now John Brown is a director of the bank and he chairs some of the indusThe client’s personal influtry’s key committees. encing skills have developed. The unit is now seen as one of the best in the banking industry. A key success measure from both the client’s and the coach’s point of view is whether the client has the confidence in the coach and the coaching process to allow for recommendations and repeat work. In this case there was both. John Smith was, and still is, the managing director of a sportswear company that needed to be successfully turned around in a very short period. Before becoming managing director, he was marketing director. Using the process outlined in this article, we helped the client to make the transition from marketing director to managing director-the overall leader of the business. The company had to be completely restructured and the strategy revised during a 6-month period to prevent it going bankrupt. The business focus was changed from manufacturing to sales and marketing. The manufacturing operation was successfully sold. Distribution and warehousing were outsourced. The new season’s designs were created and a new sourcing strategy was implemented. Of course there was a price to pay in terms of redundancy and downsizing, and although one can never be happy or proud of this, the process was handled fairly and professionally without recourse to industrial tribunals. In the end we coached three of the key directors. It was not the coach’s ideas which turned the business around, it was the creative thoughts which were skilfully drawn out of the directors and fully explored. Long Range Planning Vol. 30
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They know more about their business than anyone else and the turnaround was successful. There have been many such success stories. However, the real impact has been made when there have been opportunities to coach groups or teams at the top. Coaching can help the directors to make a significant extra impact on the business, especially when it is focused upon improving board level effectiveness, and helps them to concentrate upon corporate renewal. Sometimes the point of coaching is to get directors to direct and managers to manage. Often the benefit comes from the coach being willing to ask the stupid questions that cut through the previous assumptions. Boards are rarely teams. They are often groups of individuals who have shown real ability in competing, yet when they get to the top of the organization they are required to collaborate. Having an effective board need not mean that it is all warm and cosy and that the directors do not challenge each other. It does not have to mean that they even like each other. However, the more cohesive a board can work together as a unit, the more it will be able to bring back into its strategies and policies the operational learning from other parts of the organization. To quote Arie de Guis, as mentioned in Peter Senge’s book,5 “the ability to learn faster than the competition may be the only sustainable competitive advantage”, and without learning boards we are not likely to have learning organizations. Work carried out in the area of coaching and developing boards helps to make the link between organizational and strategic learning, increases the effectiveness of individuals and the efficiency and effectiveness of boards of directors.
Conclusions Paradoxically there are no real conclusions as there is no finishing line. Development is, and has to be, on-going for all involved in business, especially at the senior levels. Learning needs to be legitimized and validated throughout an organization, and a good coach with a tried and tested coaching process cannot only do this but can turn development from an aca-
Developing Directors Through
Personal
Coaching
demic pursuit of ideas to a practical and implementable series of actions which affect results. Coaching is not remedial. It means operating as a catalyst with good people to make them even better. The coaching process has been used successfully to help the induction of directors and allow them to rise above their operational responsibilities. Coaches have been used as major catalysts in change programmes and to identify and improve business processes that sub-optimize performance. The board should be the business brain-a key area for learning and development to take place. Although you can give directors skills training, where are the courses that train people for the unforeseeable? Coaching can do this, and do it well. Given the need for on-going development and learning in our organizations, as business is forced on by the changes in technologies, markets and government regulations, coaching can be part of the answer. I have argued here that there is a need for coaching-a need for a professionally applied process which develops the directors and boards so that they can develop their organizations from the inside. Some of the successful processes already in use have also been mentioned. Now we must ask “Who is responsible for developing the directors?” This is a difficult area in Britain bearing in mind the impact of the Cadbury Report’ and the Greenbury Report7 regarding the use of non-executive directors and also the significant changes that are going on at the moment in relation to the psychological contract between employer and employee. It is not within the scope of this article to discuss the consequences of the significant changes in the psychological contract, but there is good evidence to suggest that most of those consequences have not been thought through. Suggesting that people should take responsibility for their own development is all well and good but in what context? Figure 8 suggests that there can be positive results for both individuals and companies if joint responsibility is taken for the development of people. Yes, directors should take responsibility for their own development but managing directors and chairmen should provide the context for the development of their directors which must be in line with the overall strategy of the business.
References 1. B. Garratt, Direction giving and the learning board, Executive Development6 (1993). 2. Institute of Directors and Henley Management Standards for the Board (1995).
(3), 21-27
College Good Practice for Directors:
3. Ibid. 4. P. Senge et al., The Fifth Discipline Field Book, pp. 16-17, Brealey, London (1994). 5. P. Senge, The Fifh Discipline,
Century Business, London (1990).
6. The Cadbury Report, Gee Publishing 7. The Greenbury
Ltd (1992).
Report, Gee Publishing
Ltd (1995).
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