Coaching for Performance

Coaching is gaining the attention of managers, trainers and consultants as a tool that can greatly enhance the performance and effectiveness of managers and other professionals. However, coaching is a young and evolving discipline, and quite what it is or how it is done is open to a range of interpretations. This paper will present one model of coaching, its purpose, and the skills required for it.

A person may use a coach for many purposes - improved work performance, career transitions, and personal and spiritual development, among others. We will focus on coaching for work performance. Within this framework, we will define coaching as a one-on-one process by which one person, the coach, works with a client to help that person become more effective at accomplishing and exceeding desired outcomes. While the focus is on goal achievement, the coach does not engage simply with the client=s competencies and skills and the tasks at hand. The coach works with the whole person - much as a basketball coach deals with a player's attitudes and confidence as well as his ability to put the ball through the hoop.

Basic Assumptions on Coaching

A first step is to clarify assumptions about the roles of coach and client and about structures for coaching. These assumptions and structures will have a powerful influence on outcomes. For instance, a supervisor may assume that she holds the important knowledge about how a job should be done, and her role is to help her subordinate learn how to do it accordingly. Coaching based on these assumptions, becomes an arena to hand down knowledge. As a consequence, roles may become locked into teacher/pupil dynamics that maintain the subordinate in a dependent position - a safe place for both coach and client to remain, but not especially good for either person=s growth. In another instance, if coaching is ad hoc and used when problems arise, it carries the message that it is a quick fix rather than a broad strategy for improving outcomes. In both cases, the coach avoids the difficult task of dealing with the development of the whole person.

Who is the Coach? Who is the Client?

The role of coach has components of mentoring, teaching, and counseling. A mentor is someone with experience in an area in which a person wants to develop. This experience may be specific work experience that the person wants to learn, or it may be a particular life experience, such as that of a woman who has successfully made her way up the corporate ladder. The mentor acts as a role model, advisor, friend, and advocate for the person. A teacher passes on knowledge and skills to a student. She encourages learning by providing information and a structure of projects and assignments. She sets tests and other assessments that help the student evaluate his learning. A counselor helps a person explore his wishes and his fears and learn how the fears interfere with attainment of his wishes. She helps him uncover and understand personal patterns and perceptions that hinder or help him. All need to develop a certain quality of relationship in which there is trust, concern and respect to work effectively.

In contrast to a mentor, a coach brings skills and information that supplement, rather than directly relate to job content. Like a teacher, a coach provides structure, knowledge, and evaluative processes, but is guided more by internal than external standards. A coach uses counseling skills to help the help the client examine aspirations, disabling patterns, and progress; however, the focus is always on effective action.

We have already drawn parallels with sports coaching, but there are differences. A basketball or football coach works with a team, and is concerned not only with the individual development of a person, but also with building a team. In many cases, consultants are called in to help teams become more effective; however, within the context that we are defining coaching, the focus is on individual development. The coach may spend time with an individual to help him solve team issues or explore his own blocks to effective team involvement, but the focus is on the individual, not the team.

Another difference is that a sports coach will have a powerful vested interest in the players= performance. The coach=s job is on the line if the team does not do well. Sports coaches often do a lot of instructing, directing, and gearing the team up emotionally for the immediate win. As we define a coach, she will be indirectly affected if the client does not do well - more so if she is also a supervisor of the person. However, in this context, the purpose of coaching is not to win the game, but for the client to improve his own effectiveness at achieving his and his company=s goals. If the coach becomes overly invested in outcomes for the client, then her work will be counter-productive.

A basic assumption of this paper about coaching is that it is an alliance between two people with different sets of skills and experience. The coach provides a framework and the tools for the client to do his work and helps him stay on task. Her main expertise is not in having the right answers, but in asking the right questions. The client=s task is to move through an evolving cycle of reflection, analysis, decision-making and evaluation in relation to his work.

We propose that coaching sessions are regularly scheduled meetings with an agenda. They are private and free of distractions. In this context, coach and client can more easily develop trust; they can work in greater depth in a more balanced way with the client=s strengths and weaknesses. Coaching sessions can be face to face or over the phone. Face to face is richer because body language can be part of the communication, and rapport can be developed more easily with physical presence. However, in today=s busy world the phone can facilitate coaching that may not have been possible otherwise. Some coaches contend that they can pick up things more easily because they are less distracted by visual information.

One point needs to be clarified before we go further. Sometimes coaches work within the organization, and managers coach their own staff. In other cases, the coach is an external contractor who works with clients on a fee basis. This paper deals with generic coaching processes. Internal coaches must deal with additional dynamics of power, and issues specific to them are covered separately.

The Coaching Contract

Because coaching requires the client to explore areas of incompetence at times, coaching can be a difficult and painful process, and a natural tendency is to avoid such situations. A clear contract between the coach and client can help by providing a structure to contain and carry you through these times. To return to the basketball analogy, a player who is experiencing a plateau may well become discouraged and want to give up. If he has made a commitment to a team and to regular practice sessions, he is more likely to continue to work on his game than if he played informal Saturday afternoon games.
A coaching contract is an agreement set up at the beginning of the coaching relationship that provides a common understanding between coach and client as to what the process is, what it aims to achieve and how it is to be conducted. As such it provides the foundation and the framework for subsequent coaching.

In developing the contract, the coach and client clarify their expectations of one another. As a coach, you will want to know what the client wants from you in the way of help and how he expects you to work with him. You will also want to talk about what you can offer and whether the way you work will fit his expectations. You will need to discuss confidentiality - what information arising in sessions may be shared by either person with a third party, under what circumstances and with whom. More will be said about supervision of your coaching later, but suffice it to say at this point that to do a professional job of coaching you will need to have your own coach to help you review your work with clients, and that will include presenting material from coaching sessions.

Practical details need to be addressed. Coaches usually ask for a minimum of three months initial time commitment. This gives the client time to settle into the process, develop a basis of trust with the coach, and gain benefit from the process. You will also want to agree upon how often and for how long will you meet, how payment is made, and how sessions are canceled.

Finally, you will need to discuss how you will work. Several models and processes for coaching will be presented below. If you use these or any other models, they can be explained in the contracting period. You will want to discuss how you will work in relation to the person=s job description or performance indicators and other expectations of the organization.

Finally, you will want to determine internal processes such as agenda setting and record keeping. Usually, setting agenda items is a joint activity with both contributing, but the major part should come from the client. You will most likely build a file on each of your clients that will include information from any questionnaires you use and notes from sessions. You will also want to build in periodic reviews of the coaching process - a time of taking stock to see how you are progressing.

The Coaching Map

The figure below maps out a model to guide the coach. 1.

The model represents the world of concerns that the client brings into a session. It is comprised of three interlocking circles. Each circle identifies the main areas in which the client will have the most interest and will want to explore.

Organization: In relation to the organization, the person is concerned about the tasks and levels of performance required to fulfill the job. These may be embodied in a job description and performance indicators. The job may demand technical work, teamwork, planning, decision-making, leadership, writing, public speaking, or a range of other activities. The job will fit into an organizational structure in which a variety of internal customers need to be satisfied.

Customer: The person is concerned with the needs and demands of the external customer. A person paying for goods or services is one kind of external customer, but there are others. Some clients may have to answer demands of governmental or other regulatory bodies. A corporate communications person may be concerned with environmental groups or the media.

Individual: The person is concerned with his goals, aspirations, skills, and competencies. He has development needs and support needs. He will also have home and family concerns.

Linking the Areas of Concern

While these are the major areas of interest to the client, if you concentrate on them in isolation, coaching can become a retreat into familiar and safe roles. For instance, if only the needs of the customer are addressed, then coaching becomes outer-directed, problem-solving sessions that avoid the uncomfortable questions of how well the client is meeting customer needs and how supported he is by his organization in doing so. Likewise, a sole focus on the organization can turn coaching into information-sharing meetings. If attention stays locked on the individual, then coaching turns into personal counseling. Both coach and client may be more comfortable operating in any one of these zones and have a tendency to stay in them.

It is in the interfaces of the areas of interest that the person usually has the most concerns and that hold the greatest potential for growth. From the diagram they are:

A. The Individual/Organization Interface
The client reflects on his relationship with the culture and demands of the organization and to the people working in it. Who are the internal customers that he needs to satisfy? Do his values or beliefs match those of the organization and the style of its management? Do his present skills match the needs of the job? What does he need to do to set performance measures for himself? What does he need to do to achieve and improve outcomes? Is the organization meeting his legitimate expectations? How are mismatches handled? How is he managing work relationships, and what does he need to do about them? How do home and family needs fit with organizational expectations? How are conflicts handled between organization and family needs?

B. The Organizational/Customer Interface
The person looks at how he steers a course between the needs of his internal customers and the needs of his external customers. What does he do when there is conflict between the two? In which direction do his interests and loyalties lie? Who or what is being neglected?

C. The Individual/Customer Interface
The person explores interactions with external customers. Who are his external customers? Does he feel equipped to meet their demands? How does he react to them? Who does he work well with, and who causes him problems? What are some of the internal blocks to his effectiveness? How might different approaches or changes of behavior improve effectiveness?

D. The Overall Picture
Here the client integrates the different aspects of his work, balances them and finds direction. For example, when faced with a demand by an external customer, what does he need from the organization and himself to be more effective? Does he need to develop his skills? Are there internal blocks that hold him back? Is he given adequate authority, resources, and support by the organization to respond to the external customer? Is he backed up by adequate customer relations systems? What does he need to do to address shortfalls in organizational support?

While the interface between areas of interest are the most fruitful for exploration, this is not to say that you should, or indeed can, always stay in these areas. The client will need to move in and out of all areas of the map. Sometimes attention will focus on one of the three main areas; at other times the areas of overlap will be explored. If it becomes apparent that certain aspects are commanding greater attention than others, this may indicate avoidance either on the part of the client or the coach. The coach uses the model as a guide to maintain balance and to challenge the client to look at areas that expand his boundaries of understanding of his work.

Coaching Tasks and Skills

Coaching uses skills that are common to counseling, teaching, and supervision. It is not within the scope of this paper to go into these skills in depth, however, we will attempt to identify and describe the main tasks and skills involved.

Following is a list of key tasks in coaching. The coach aims to help the client:

Identify stakeholders that he has to satisfy.
Identify personal values, skills, and talents.
Identify and explore major issues.
Explore options.
Solve problems.
Make decisions.
Set goals.
Develop action plans.
Evaluate action.
Gain insight into patterns of behavior - both personal and organizational.
Surface and deal with internal resistance.
Surface assumptions.
Correct cognitive distortions.
Identify learning needs.

Some of these tasks are cognitive; others relate to the person=s confidence, self-esteem and defense mechanisms. The first task of the coach is to build trust if the client is to move beyond the safest of cognitive activities. The client will need to know that you have his interests at heart and that you will be honest with him. To develop trust, you need to hear what he is saying, to understand his experience from his perspective, and to empathize with his needs. However, you also need to be separate - to see things he cannot see, and to challenge him while remaining empathetic.

Skills of Listening and Responding

Your aim is to maintain three simultaneous perspectives in relation to the client:

Identification with him and his view of the world.
Awareness of your gut reactions to him.
A more detached, analytical and strategic stance.

To do the first, you need to be able to suspend your own needs, attend to the client, and listen actively. Secondly, your reactions to the client inform you of his effect on others, and they can provide you with the basis of a variety of interventions. You may want to feed back a reaction to acknowledge and affirm a person. You may want to feed it back and question if your reaction is one he has encountered before. Or you may use your reaction as a basis for an analysis of issues or problem solving. What you do will be based on the third stance: your judgment on such things as what the client needs, what the client is open to, the stage of your relationship with him, and your level of skill, among other variables.

Tools for Managing Sessions

The coach has many tools to work with the client to analyze issues, solve problems and set goals. Various personal inventories such as DISC, Myers Briggs, Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Analysis, various learning styles inventories and others help with self-awareness.

Stakeholder analysis can be useful as an exercise to identify who and what needs to be satisfied by the client. Values analysis can help him identify beliefs and values which shape his approach to his life and work.

The Problem-Solving Process

A basic problem-solving model can provide a useful structure for coaching sessions.

Analyzing the Problem
The coach assumes that the concerns that the client brings to sessions are symptoms which have their roots elsewhere. Thus, a headache may seem to be a problem, but it is in fact a symptom. It may be the result of poor eyesight, stress, or a brain tumor. Aspirin treats the symptom, but is more or less effective in treating root causes. If the cause is not diagnosed and treated then the headache will return and will need to be addressed repeatedly.

The coach begins with good diagnosis work to identify root causes so that the real problem is addressed. Recently, for instance, a woman called a radio counselor about a co-worker who was withholding information. Because he had not told her about certain orders that had come in from management, she had failed to do a piece of important work. After questioning, it became apparent that the job had been created for the co-worker as an alternative to laying him off, and management may not have made his job role clear. The way she approaches the problem will be profoundly affected by whether she defines it as deliberately holding back information or as being confused about responsibilities.

Generating and Assessing Alternate Solutions
After identifying the problem the client defines the gap between the ideal situation and current reality and generates options for closing the gap. The next step is to analyze options. By using a type of force field analysis in which he takes into account both rational and factual elements and intuitive gut feelings, the client locates what he finds good and bad about each option. Often this process generates new and more creative options as he begins to understand how he limits himself in the way he defines his options.

Considering Possible Obstacles and Developing an Action Plan
Once an option is selected and a goal is set, the client needs to identify anything that will prevent him from achieving the goal. Next, he sets action plans that incorporate both strategies to achieve goals and strategies to deal with obstacles. Finally, he establishes indicators for success by completing the statement: I will know my goal is achieved when....

Once he has put the plan into action, he will want to use the same problem solving process in subsequent sessions to refine strategies.

Matching Your Style to the Maturity of the Client

Hershey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership model helps us to vary our style according to client maturity and commitment. They offer the matrix depicted in Figure 2.

The coach bases judgments about maturity on such things as the client's age, how fully he takes responsibility for his action and learning (avoiding such things as excuses and blaming others), how experienced he is, or how new he is to a particular job. It also relates to how reflective the person is and how concretely or abstractly he engages with his experience. Commitment relates to how actively he engages and follows through in response to organization, customer and personal needs.

The matrix indicates a continuum from low to high directing activities and low to high supporting activities on the part of the coach. In the lower right quadrant, communication is more one way with the coach giving information and setting structure and direction. The upper right quadrant moves to a balanced two way conversation in which the coach still provides information, but engages with the client in explorations of what the information means for him. As we move to the upper left quadrant, the process becomes more client-initiated and the coach becomes a facilitator. Finally, in the lower left quadrant, areas which no longer need discussion will be increasingly identified.

As the client grows in maturity, experience, and commitment the coach works increasingly in the supportive mode. The coach ultimately aims to work as much as possible in the upper half of the matrix. For the most part the coach works in a counseling mode of listening, questioning and challenging to enable deeper learning. However, she should always keep herself alert to when the client needs direction and when areas of work are complete and no longer need discussion - or for that matter, when it is time for the coaching relationship to end. The coach should also know her zones of comfort and be able to respond flexibly according to need. Some questions can help: What is my natural style? How aware am I of when I am acting from the different quadrants? How comfortable am I with moving into quadrants outside my natural style? How do I need to stretch myself to meet the client's needs?

Use of Self in the Client/Coach Relationship

The client will bring his patterns of relating to other people into the coaching relationship. In addition, because the forum is one that is set up for the client's learning, it will carry an association for him with other learning experiences, and his expectations of the coach and his anticipation of what will happen will be influenced by these previous experiences. There will also be a tendency on his part to react to the coach as he typically has to authority figures such as teachers, mentors, and parents.
These areas provide rich sources for understanding and growth for the client that you as a coach can tap by noticing patterns, being aware of your own reactions to the client, and commenting on the process between you. For instance, in my own experience as a client, my coach once commented that I tended to accept his input rather uncritically, and in our conversations I placed myself in a “one-down” and him in a “one-up” position. This felt familiar to me, and as we explored it I became more aware of how I diminished myself by deferring to others - particularly authority figures.

Some people may defer to authority figures as I did. Others may rebel and fight authority figures. When you are coaching, you may feel helpless, angry, bored, skillful, excited in relation to the client. You can be fairly sure that your reactions to the client and his behavior will reflect that of other people he comes into contact with and any of these reactions may warrant inspection. An effective way of approaching such issues is from a position of uncritical curiosity. “I’ve noticed that -- fill in the blank -- and I wonder if my perception seems accurate or familiar to you?” Your observation becomes a subject for exploration.

One caveat needs to be registered, and that is that you will have your own hot buttons and limitations. If you find that some people are easier to coach than others, then the problem may be located in the intransigence of the client, or it may be located in your impatience or lack of skill. We will discuss support for the coach later, but for now coaches need to have their own coaches to help them gain clarity and find ways forward on such issues.

Reflection and Parallel Process

It is often said that organizations have a tendency to become clones of the CEO. This statement recognizes a psychodynamic phenomenon called parallel process. Structures and treatment of people that are instituted at the top of an organization gets repeated in parallel at all levels of the organization. For instance, in a 1994 study of site-based management in the North Carolina public schools a number of parallels can be identified from the interviews. Principals voiced a number of reservations about including teachers in decision-making processes. They reported that teachers did not really want to be involved, but wanted the principal to make the decisions, especially the unpopular ones. They were also concerned that teachers would not have a broad perspective and would represent narrow interests relating to what goes on in their classroom. Teachers, when interviewed about parent involvement reported that they did not think that parents really wanted to be involved, and a number detailed how difficult it was to recruit parent volunteers. They also expressed concern that parents do not know enough about education to make informed decisions and that they would represent special interest agendas in relation to their own children.
On the other hand, both teachers and parents stated that they wanted full involvement. Parents felt that the schools did not try hard enough to recruit parents onto decision-making committees and a lot of the talk was foreign and hard to understand. They also complained that few of their suggestions were followed and they were appeased by being given “bones and scraps”. They wanted clear guidelines about their role. Teachers complained that their suggestions were not taken on, that they sometimes did not feel trusted, and that principals needed to learn to let go.

Interestingly, officials in the central Department of Public Instruction (DPI) were not interviewed; however, the report did include comments from teachers and principals about central administration. They felt their efforts were consistently thwarted: their ideas and perspectives were not heard or adopted. Communication had not been good; information was unclear and late. They were mystified by the language in the forms from the State. They wanted clear parameters within which to work, but felt they had been given scraps and that all the big decisions had been made already.

Here is a clear repetition of processes up and down the hierarchy of the school systems. From the patterns, we might infer that DPI officials would have voiced concerns similar to those expressed by principals and teachers about devolving power. (2)

Working with Parallel Processes

Inevitably the client will be caught up in such dynamics and because of close involvement, will lack perspective. The person will also experience his own personal limitations in the circumstances. These dynamics will get reflected in the coaching session, and what is happening in the workplace will be recreated there. Thus, the confusion in the system may be acted out in the client's confusion in the session. The coach can use this experience to help the person broaden his perspective by becoming aware of patterns in the system in which he works and how he is caught up in them. Going back to the school example, if a principal were to become aware of the patterns repeating themselves throughout the system, he will find it difficult to continue to believe that his opinions represent the truth. He will have removed some of his blinkers and is more open to new ideas. He can become a freer agent in dealing with work issues.

Ways into this process for the coach are through the three stances discussed earlier. The coach listens carefully for repeated patterns. She pays attention to her own reactions. A judgment to address parallel process may be done at the level of either. She may draw attention to the patterns in the material the client has presented, or she may draw attention to her own reactions with something like. “Im confused. Is this what you are experiencing? I wonder where this is coming from?”

Support for the Coach

Just as the client gets caught up in organizational dynamics, so does the coach get caught up in interpersonal processes with the client and parallel processes in the client's organization and consequently can lose perspective. So for instance, a coach may be working with a client who is stuck in blaming the organization for unrealistic expectations, and the coach feels inadequate and helpless in moving him past this. The coach's inadequacy may stem from her own lack of skill, or it may be a reflection of the client's feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. It is important to distinguish between these two possibilities because each would require a different strategy on the part of the coach.
The process that helps is one of reflecting back what the client is saying by a person who brings an outside perspective. The coach must provide the necessary distance to do this, and she needs her own support to deal with times when she is drawn into interpersonal and organizational dynamics, when her own blind spots are interfering, and when she has become invested in outcomes.

If the reflecting back does not occur between the coach and client, then it can occur between the coach and her mentor. The coach needs a place to discuss her work with clients to help her separate interpersonal and organizational influences operating in the session from her own reactions and limitations. The process helps the coach gain distance and perspective. The coach can be a freer agent in working with the client if her own needs are less enmeshed with those of the client and her vision of forces operating in the relationship is clear.

Conclusion

The process of coaching can be compared to an artist standing back and gazing at his canvas. The painter will have been working closely on the detail of his work - building his picture. He could however, get lost in the detail, and standing back enables him to maintain direction. He takes in the whole, sees how the detail fits in, sees what is missing, and decides what needs to be done.
Coaching helps a person stand back and gain clarity on the interplay between himself and his context. He develops a picture of his strengths, weaknesses and values in relation to the demands that are being made on him. He gains awareness of his blind spots and how he is being affected by the blind spots of the organizational culture in which he operates. He makes decisions and takes actions based on his new understanding.

1. Mapping it Out, by Peter Hawkins, Community Care, London.

2. North Carolina Statewide Implementation Assessment, Site Based Management. Simmons Boyle & Associates. 1994.

8 Lou Raye Nichol, 1999

© 2001 All rights reserved. You may copy or distribute this article in its entirety with this copyright notice and full information about contacting the authors. Brian Nichol is a professional coach living in Raleigh, North Carolina. His telephone is 919-303-5848