How to make yourself suitable for coaching

Sometimes it takes a crisis to stimulate the demand for help. FILE PHOTO | NMG

By MIKE ELDON
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I recently wrote a column on the coaching style of leadership, and today I return to my favourite current topic by looking at what it takes to be “coaching ready.”

Ironically it is often those most in need of such help that are least likely to want it or to benefit from
it. Such people, for whatever reason, are simply not suitable candidates for coaching.

It may be that they suffer from excessive yet misplaced confidence, as they go through life with an “I’m OK, You’re not OK” mindset. It could stem from a sense of such gnawing insecurity – a deep down “I’m not OK” ego state – that they couldn’t handle their inadequacies being revealed to a coach. Or it could simply be that they have reached their peak and that therefore they and those around them must simply live with them as they are.

So leaving aside the uncoachables, how can we assess someone’s openness to benefit from linking up with a coach? The first challenge is that everyone is simply so busy these days that making time for it is far from easy. Even many who get going with a coach and find they are enjoying major benefits can fade out just due to being swamped with work.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to stimulate the demand for help, or perhaps a looming opportunity that risks being missed. Either way, are you up for confronting what you need to be doing more of and less of to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be? Are you relaxed and confident enough to learn and to grow, to expand your comfort zone?

Vital to the process is being completely open with your coach, not hiding any awkward truths that could impede how you benefit from your relationship with them. Equally necessary is following up time spent with the coach by putting into practice what you have committed to doing – including not allowing yourself to succumb to having “got too busy”, or to lacking the courage to have a go.

It is by experimenting boldly and by mitigating downside risks through behaving with emotional intelligence that you will reap the benefits of being stimulated into action by a coach. Doing so will allow you to celebrate breakthrough successes with them; to mourn together over initiatives that fell flat; and with the latter to regroup and relaunch.

Now let me move to the organisational level. For even if an individual is coaching-ready, if the leadership of the organisation is not then coaching is unlikely to deliver on its potential. I cannot stress strongly enough the need for those in board and senior management positions not only to be the sponsors and champions of coaching but also to consider engaging coaches themselves. After all, it’s for good reason that people say “it’s lonely at the top”, with no one with whom to share one’s inner hopes and fears, one’s aspirations and preferences.

For leaders to embrace a coaching culture they must first believe in the need and the possibility of developing their people. This in turn requires that employees are trusted and empowered, and that they are engaged and ambitious, innovative and responsive. It also supposes that coaching is but a component in a learning and development strategy; that rewards and recognition come through merit; and that those selected for coaching are neither merely the stars nor just the underperformers.

Next, does your organisation do well with its performance management? Most do not, and in particular they suffer from ineffective appraisal systems and inadequately thought through performance indicators – including in relation to the effectiveness of development initiatives such as coaching.

So time and effort devoted to coaching will be infinitely more effective in the context of robust performance management environments. Not to mention that coaching can play an important role in nurturing exactly such cultures.

My parting shot is that more so in the fast-paced relentless contemporary world we must step back and find time to reflect – at both the individual and the organisational levels. And there’s no one better placed with whom to indulge in such exploration than a coach.