Coaching and Skills Improvement

by Seth Sinclair

In our recent post on “Expanding Leadership Capacity,” we cited a number of ways in which great coaches help their clients.  One of the most important of these is skills improvement.

Improving a client’s job skills, strictly speaking, is not a function of coaching.  Sometimes, while assessing how he or she can help a client, a coach finds the reason a client is not performing up to capacity is because he or she doesn’t have the skills to do his or her job properly.  In that case, what is called for is not coaching, but training—and training programs are usually thought of as the responsibility of trainers and teachers, not coaches.

Training programs, however, have significant limitations.  For one thing, they don’t fit everyone’s different learning styles.  They don’t take into account the learning goals of each individual, and their lessons are often not applied once the student returns to the workplace.

Coaches can’t substitute for the kinds of best practices and techniques that are learned in training programs.  Instead, they help create new ways of thinking that make coachees aware of what they need to do to move forward, including determining areas in which their skills need to be developed. 

After a coachee receives training in a specific area, the coach and coachee can collaborate to identify pertinent “take-aways”; identify plans for implementing the behaviors and skills that have been learned; and then assess, over time, whether the skills learned in the training are having their intended effect.

Coaches encourage coachees to learn for themselves on a continuous basis.  This, in turn, helps coachees develop better learning skills, and makes them capable of learning, not only from formal training courses, but also from almost any experience they encounter.   According to Herb Stevenson of the Cleveland Consulting group, the more individuals are involved in identifying problems, working out their own solutions, and reviewing results, the more complete and long lasting the learning is. 

In one of Sinclair Associates’ current projects, we are holding group training sessions every month on topics including how to conduct “crucial conversations” (conversations that occur when the stakes are high) and “managing execution.”  To ensure that the lessons of these sessions have been thoroughly understood, we follow up with each participant in subsequent-one-on-one sessions to discuss what the topic means to them—and how they can apply the lessons they are learning in their lives and work.

In the end, coaching is not a substitute for training, but a tool that increases the effectiveness of training, and improves the ability of coachees to implement what they have learned.  Having a good coach can make a significant difference in whether the skills learned in a training program can take root and lead to permanent changes and improvements in skills and performance.

Can people truly change?

by Seth Sinclair

“How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?” goes the old joke.  “Only one,” is the answer.  “But the light bulb has to want to change!”

Light bulbs can’t change themselves, of course.  But on April 11, 2014, Jack Zenger, an expert in the field of leadership development and an executive coach himself, published an article on Forbes magazine’s blog addressing the issue of whether it’s possible for human beings to change.  The article, titled “Are people changeable, or are they cast in cement?” can be found here.

Zenger trots out the old clichés, “a leopard can’t change his spots,” and “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” to demonstrate the common belief that people basically are who they are.  Then he reminds his readers that there are libraries full of self-help books, and an entire adult education and development industry, predicated on the belief that not only is change possible in adults, there are no limits to the abilities of people to grow and learn at all stages of their lives.

As any good researcher would, Zenger accepts neither position as fact, but uses data to cast some light on the subject.  His company (Zenger Folkman, a consulting firm that provides consulting and leadership development programs for clients) has digitized more than half a million 360-degree feedback instruments written about 50,000 managers and executives.

(A 360-degree feedback evaluation involves obtaining different sources of information, including supervisors, peers, direct reports, and sometimes customers, about a manager’s performance, in order to help that manager become a better leader.)

By mining that data, he learned that forty-eight percent of those who received 360-degree feedback more than once had feedback scores that either stayed the same or declined over time—but fifty-two percent improved, many of whom had received “shockingly” low scores in particular leadership competencies in their first evaluation.

These “shockingly” low scores, Zenger believes, had the effect of “a whack on the head”—a strong message that change is needed if the leader is to continue in his or her position.  That group significantly improved their scores between evaluations—and their ratings overall were two and a half times better in the second rating than the first.

From this, Zenger concludes that those who receive strong messages are the most motivated to change, especially to change behaviors that significantly detract from their overall performance. 

Many people, however, don’t want to change, and if there’s no compelling reason to do the hard work involved in changing behaviors, they don’t.  Leaders can help that process along by taking an interest in the development of their employees and getting involved with their career development.  If they believe their employees can change, they will.  If they don’t, they won’t.  According to Zenger, it’s a self-fulfilling process.

As a coach, I’ve seen many dramatic instances where people have changed behaviors that were keeping them from reaching their full leadership potential.  Usually, but not always, those people needed a trigger, whether from a 360-degree assessment, a supervisor’s comment, or even their own acknowledgement of prohibitive behaviors or ways of thinking, that made them understand change was essential. 

A good coach will enthusiastically partner with those clients, providing a framework to learn the behaviors they need to make them more mindful and successful.

It turns out, therefore, that the old light bulb joke holds true about employees.  It takes only one executive coach to improve an employee’s leadership skills—but the leader, like the light bulb, must want to change.

Thanks to Kaveh Naficy, Program Director of Leadership Coaching for Organizational Performance at George Mason, and a founding partner of Philosophy IB, for sharing the Zenger article with me.