In the recently launched book “Coaching in Asia, The First Decade” professional coaches working in Asia tell many personal stories of how they are actively engaged by companies and governments in the region to help grow and develop their most senior leaders. The tremendous growth of professional coaching has been spurred by two key factors; the entry of a number of reputable coach training organisations into the region and the increasing evidence that good quality coaching has a positive effect on bottom line performance. There are now more than 500 trained coaches in Singapore alone. Some are part-time life coaches, some are trainers who offer coaching as a side line to their training business and others are executive coaches who earn their income purely from coaching.

There are many niches in which coaches operate; life, teen, career, parental, executive and others. In this article we focus on the professional executive coach and what coaching supervision means to them, their clients and the coaching profession as a whole.

One of the problems facing corporate buyers of coaching services is the fact that there is no overriding benchmark of what constitutes competent coaching. Different coaching schools teach differing methodologies, although the concept of helping a client find their own answers, rather than answers prescribed by the coach, is a common thread through all reputable coach training courses. Once trained, coaches often go for further training in disciplines such as Solution Focused Coaching, Counselling, NLP, Meta Coaching and even hypnosis. Hence ten different coaches may have ten different tool kits with which to approach their coaching assignments. This presents a puzzle for HR and learning and development professionals charged with hiring a coach for senior leaders in their organisation.

Compounding the hesitation in choosing a coach is the fact that, unlike counselling and psychotherapy from which coaching borrows some techniques, coaching is unregulated. Not only do most professional bodies in the UK such as the British Association for Counselling and psychotherapy require supervision, but it is also seen by many as an ethical imperative. A UK client who encounters a therapist working without supervision would probably consider carefully whether they wish to work with that person at all.

Whilst not currently mandated by any coaching professional body, supervision is seen by many as vital to the continued growth and reputation of coaching. The International Coach Federation prescribes a certain minimum number of hours of mentoring to move from one accreditation level to another. Supervision is a little different and I dare to suggest deeper than straightforward mentoring. Coaching supervision, is defined by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith, two recognised thought leaders in the field, thus; “The process by which a coach/mentor/consultant with the help of a supervisor, who is not working directly with the client, can attend to understanding better both the client system and themselves as part of the client-coach/mentor system, and transform their work.”

In essence the difference between mentoring and supervision is the depth of exploration of the relationship between the coach, coachee, the hiring organisation and the world outside that system. Mentoring tends to focus on the substance of the coaching engagement, providing the mentee with food for thought on new interventions they might try with a coachee to achieve a desired outcome. Supervision does this too but with much more of a systemic view of what is going on with the coach and his relationship with all parts of the client, coachee, organisation and outside world system. In this sense it can be thought of as “mentoring plus”.

Supervision also shines a spotlight on what the coach is bringing into the room when they sit down with their coachee. What past experiences does the coach bring that parallel the experience of the coachee, what prejudices, assumptions and judgements is the coach making subconsciously? In many respects supervision aims to bring what is unconscious into the coach’s vision, so they become aware of their own state of mind and how it is affecting their ability to coach impartially and effectively.

A common topic of client coaching sessions is “engagement”. “My team doesn’t seem to be engaged and I’m out of ideas on how to get them engaged”, is what I often hear. My first question to the client is, “If they weren’t “engaged” yesterday but you came into the office today and they were engaged, what would you be seeing, hearing and observing that’s different from yesterday?”

This question usually results in some deep thought, because the client has never really thought about defining what engagement is, they just know they don’t have it in their employees or team. After being prodded by some thought provoking questions the description of “engaged” comes back something like this:

If my team members were engaged:

• They would be coming to me proactively with ideas.
• They would be talking to each other more about their ideas to make us more successful as an organisation.
• They would fully understand and embrace our mission and purpose.
• They would be chatting more socially.
• They would happily work all hours without complaint to achieve tough goals and would celebrate every little success.
• They would smile more frequently.
• They would be approaching me for feedback on their performance.
• They would be doing things on their own initiative to improve themselves as professionals.
• They would come to me with more answers than problems.

This is not an exhaustive list but it is typical of some of the things that come up in a coaching conversation around engagement. Notice that the description of engagement by the client is all about “them”, i.e. the employees, the team. There’s no mention of the client leader him/herself. In my usual challenging coaching style, once the client has come up with his description of engagement my first question is, “What are you doing to prevent all this happening?” Ultimately if a team is not engaged it is because the team leader is not behaving in a manner that promotes or encourages engagement.

In many instances my client comes to realise that one of the problems is that they are not engaged with their people. They are not modelling or demonstrating “engaged” behaviour themselves and yet expect everyone else to be in an engaged state. They do not know their subordinates as human beings, only as task doers. They do not exhibit a happy and energised demeanour. They do not give regular feedback, positive or negative to their team members. They do not celebrate team successes and in many cases do not even give praise for a job well done. Once these leadership omissions become clear the client can come up with concrete actions and changes in behaviour to turn disengagement around.

Another important component for both morale and engagement to be present is “purpose”. Where there is no clear mission, jobs can lose their meaning and become dull and uninspiring. I have encountered this kind of issue in public sector organisations where employees can sometimes see themselves merely as paper pushers with little or no sense of purpose. When this happens it is because no-one has bothered to point out the value of their work and its purpose. When my clients realise this they often call a team meeting to remind everyone of the higher purpose of their work. They then go on to ask team members to define purpose and mission in the context of the work they are doing. The result can be impactful when people finally understand the bigger picture, the ultimate goal of their daily toil. If they are also engaged in defining the mission and purpose they can go on to decide how to enact that purpose in their day to day work.

If you are struggling with engagement, or morale in your team, ask yourself these simple questions:

• What does “engaged” or “high morale” actually look like, sound like, feel like?
• What are the observable behaviours of those conditions?
• Am I as the leader demonstrating the behaviour I want to see, or am I part of the problem?
• What do I need to stop doing to turn things around?
• What do I need to start doing to turn things around?

Be honest when you answer these questions and be prepared to shift outside your comfort zone to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

What makes an executive coaching assignment succeed or fail? The short answer to this question is that the Coach must have a willing and honest coachee who is open to taking a critical look at himself or herself. Coaching is a partnership between the Coach and the coachee and both hold equal responsibility for success or failure. This article takes a look at what it takes for a coaching assignment to produce positive change and outstanding results.

A good Executive Coach needs to have the skills and tools of his profession as well as a good degree of experience in order to have credible impact on the senior managers that he coaches. He has to be a first class listener and the courage to directly challenge his coachee’s thinking in order to bring about positive shifts in leadership behaviour. He is responsible for creating a safe and trusting relationship such that his coachee is comfortable to talk about his innermost doubts, fears, hopes, aspirations and anxieties. The Coach must also be fearless in the way that he gives behavioural feedback to the coachee to bring about self-awareness, a prerequisite for any behavioural change.

Recently some prospective clients have asked me about some of my most successful coachees and the reasons why they were successful in making the transition from competent manager to outstanding leader. Others have asked what makes a coaching assignment unsuccessful. This set me thinking about the difference between those clients who have made massive transformational shifts that elevated them to their maximum leadership potential and those who made changes but still needed to do more to reach their full potential.

The key to a successful coaching engagement is the quality of the partnership between the Coach, the coachee and stakeholders. First, the coaching intervention must have the enthusiastic support of the hiring organisation and the coachee’s boss or bosses. Without that support it is difficult to establish specific outcomes expected from the intervention. Without some clear cut goals from the stakeholders it is incumbent on the Coach and coachee to come up with goals, which may or may not be aligned with the organisation’s needs.

Second, the coachee must grasp that he or she shares equal responsibility with the Coach for a positive outcome from the coaching programme in which his organisation has invested. The Coach brings the skills, art and science of coaching to the partnership. However, there is also an art to being a coachee. He or she needs to be totally committed to the process, willing to take honest behavioural feedback and treat it as helpful rather than critical. Most of all he needs to be open to change and prepared to do things outside of his comfort zone, to experiment with different behaviours and discover how others react to the change.

Third, the coachee must recognise that it is he who does the work, not the Coach. He must be prepared to sit and think carefully about the challenging questions posed by the Coach before answering. He must commit to those uncomfortable behavioural changes and take action once he has decided what needs to change to increase his leadership effectiveness.

There are often early signs of a coachee that is going to excel and dramatically up their game as a leader. Right from the first coaching session they are hungry for honest feedback, take time to think long and hard about the most challenging questions and jot down copious notes during their coaching sessions. They come up with behavioural changes they need to make and more importantly they commit to doing things outside their comfort zone. This is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. They appreciate that what happens in a coaching session is important but it is what happens between coaching sessions that matters.

What is the difference between being a manager and being a leader? This is a question that comes up from time to time in my coaching sessions with senior managers. For a long time I wasn’t even sure myself on exactly how to define the difference. However, some recent experiences have made the distinction much clearer.

When I co-facilitate a certain two-day workshop to introduce coaching skills to middle managers, we do an exercise the outcome of which I can predict with 100% accuracy. I split the group nof 20-26 participants, into four groups. I send each group to a flip chart and give them fifteen minutes to write up the attributes of the best leader they ever worked under. At the end of the fifteen minutes I scan the results and these are the words I see on the flip charts every time I conduct the exercise:

As the participants walk around and view each others’ flip charts the themes running through the output quickly become apparent. They notice that there are no words related to “task driven” or “KPI focussed”. That is not to say that leaders are dismissive of KPI’s, deadlines or getting tasks done. What the flip charts suggest is that true leaders are more person focussed than task focussed. In other words they devote a large chunk of their time understanding the talents, hopes, fears, anxieties and aspirations of their direct reports in order to know how to effectively motivate and inspire them.

When we ask the workshop participants what they notice about the flip charts there is much looking down at the floor and shuffling of feet as they realise they are not actually doing much of what they describe as good leadership. The usual excuse is, “I don’t have enough time”. The truth is a manager will never have time. He or she can only make time for the important work of leading and developing people to their full potential.

Many of the managers I work with spend little or no time being a leader because they are too busy managing KPIs and tasks. They fall into this trap for a number of reasons:

• They have not figured out that their job is to achieve results through others and they continue dabbling in the detail themselves.
• Fear of not being recognised if they are not personally involved in completing tasks.
• Failing to trust his or her people and therefore not delegating enough work as a result.
• Wanting to be deeply involved in the technicalities of the work in which they are a specialist.
• The person to person aspects of leadership are not in their comfort zone.

This list is just a sample and by no means exhaustive but typifies some of the reasons for not attending to the business of leadership.

Simply put, what emerges from this exercise is that the difference between managing and leading is the difference between the head and the heart. It is clear from this workshop exercise, as well as plentiful literature on the topic, that the key to effective leadership is an ability to relate to people on a person-to-person basis as well as role-to-role. The mistake some of my clients make when considering their shortcomings in their person-to-person skills is that they believe it is about being their direct reports’ “friend”.

Particularly in the Asian context there is a belief that work is work, social is social and never the twain shall meet. In parallel with this is the mistaken belief that showing an interest in a staff member as a human being means having to be their “friend”. Friend is defined by the client as being someone with whom you socialise regularly outside of work and attend their family weddings and funerals. However, the truth lies somewhere between “friend” and “subordinate”. Using person-to-person leadership skills is about knowing what makes a fellow human being tick in order to get the maximum productivity from them, not about being their best friend.

When a manager knows the person behind the job title he is in a much better position to understand the behaviour of staff, able to fully appreciate and exploit their strengths and weaknesses, knows what kind of work inspires and what demotivates. It is this knowledge that enables a manager to be an effective leader and not merely a task master.

Truth 1 – Great Communicators Can Be Made

Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, was known as “the Great Communicator.” He made one of his most famous statements during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987. During this speech, President Reagan threw down this challenge:

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Interestingly, the “tear down this wall” statement was vehemently opposed by foreign policy experts in Washington who had heavily lobbied the president not to say it. Ultimately, the lobbying was ignored, and Reagan included the challenge in his speech. On November 9, 1989, the border separating East Germany from West Germany was opened, and the wall came tumbling down. The Fall of The Wall will forever symbolize the end of the Cold War, which arguably was Reagan’s greatest achievement as president.

Think back to some great communicators like Reagan, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. What made them great communicators? It wasn’t that they were great orators, had flashy teeth, sported perfect hair, or demonstrated a flawless writing style. They had the following:

• Courage. They weren’t afraid to speak out against the status quo and challenge conventional wisdom.
• Conviction. They felt strongly about their ideas and wanted others to know their viewpoint.
• Wisdom. They knew their subject matter cold and could defend their ideas effectively.
• Clarity. Their message was simple, concise, and easily understood.
• Credibility. They were trusted by others and walked the talk.

Courage. Conviction. Wisdom. Clarity. Credibility. Five attributes that are essential, regardless of whether you are speaking in front of hundreds of people, writing a report to your boss, or running a PTA meeting. Five attributes that build the foundation of someone who gets his or her point across effectively.

Truth 2 – Seek to Understand Your Recipient

From its earliest roots, communication has focused on sender and recipient having some common understanding of the information flowing between them. This means focusing not only on what you are broadcasting but also on what the other person is receiving. Too many times in business we default to thinking about communication from an outbound perspective (what we want to tell someone) instead of from an inbound perspective (what the recipient expects). I’ve seen plenty of reports, presentations, surveys, status reports, and just about any other type of communication go bust because the sender of the information didn’t take the time to understand what the recipients were interested in, how they liked to receive information, and what was being asked of them.

In my career I have learned many lessons the hard way about understanding my recipient’s communication preferences. Whether it was inappropriate drop-ins, written versus verbal communication, or raising issues to the wrong person, I’ve seemed to make just about every mistake you can make. After licking my wounds, I’ve learned to accept the mistakes as gems and understand how to better read my recipient when it comes to communication preferences.

Some of the most effective communicators I have worked with throughout my career were outstanding at understanding the following:

• Who needed to be communicated to
• What information they needed to help them do their job
• Why they needed information
• How they preferred to communicate
• How often they needed communication
• When they preferred communication to happen

Implementing and tailoring your communication method to your recipient can go a long way toward saving you countless hours of frustration and anxiety. For example, one of my favorite managers (and mentors) at Microsoft had a very distinct communication style:

• He liked to stay high-level and drill down into detail where he had questions.
• He liked to focus on areas where his input or decision was needed.
• He preferred verbal, face-to-face interaction versus e-mail.
• He did not like nonurgent, random phone calls or drop-ins.
• He liked to have biweekly one-on-one meetings and reserved time on his calendar to be available.
• He liked to know how I was thinking about solutions to my own problems versus my just dumping a problem on his doorstep.

When I started working for this manager, I quickly picked up on his communication style. Through subsequent interactions (and making a few mistakes), I adapted my style to his and zeroed in on the right communication approach.

Throughout my duration with him, we had an outstanding working relationship, which all started with my understanding his communication idiosyncrasies and tailoring my style to meet his needs.

Take a little time to understand the communication preferences of those you interact with on a regular basis.What if you don’t know your recipient’s preferences? Try some of these ideas:

• Ask about her communication preferences. Plan your questions, and set up a time to interview her on how she likes to communicate. Generally, people love to talk about themselves, and you’ll likely get a lot of good information on how she likes to communicate.
• Watch how she communicates. Does she typically work with her door open or closed? Do others “drop in” for discussion? Does she keep a tight, structured calendar, or does she allow for flexibility? Does she like to stay on point during meetings, or is she open to some meandering in the conversation? Take a period of time—say, a week—and take good notes on how she interacts.
• Ask others. Coworkers or an administrative assistant might have some great insight into how your recipient likes to communicate. Get the scoop from someone else who has experience with the recipient.

Truth 3 – Communication Styles Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All

Let’s assume that you’ve taken the time to understand the recipient’s communication expectations, as discussed in the preceding truth. Through your discovery process, you zero in on how the recipient likes to communicate. You discover, though, that his communication preferences are very different from your style of communicating. He may like structured appointments, while you may prefer “drop-ins.” He might enjoy high-level reviews, where you tend toward more detailed discussions. He may prefer e-mail updates, while you function better with verbal updates. Yes, these are big differences, but this doesn’t mean you’ll forever be in a communication struggle. Quite frankly, you need to have a heart-to-heart discussion with yourself on what is more important: the content you are communicating or the mode in which you are communicating it.

Consider an example. Suppose you’re attempting to get buy-off on a major project you’re managing with your divisional vice president, and you have only 30 minutes to get your point across and get approval. You have a great project description document that has all the information necessary for justifying the project in a 40-page report. You have a couple of alternatives:

• Bring the project description report to the meeting, and walk through key report aspects with the divisional vice president.
• Prepare an executive summary PowerPoint-type document that presents key report aspects that are important to the divisional vice president.

Design your communication around your recipient.

With the first alternative, your preparation time for the meeting is minimal, because you have all the information prepared and ready to go. However, you run a significant risk of not getting your point across, because you have a lot of information and clutter that can get in the way. With the second alternative, your preparation time for the meeting is increased, because you are creating a special document that has information already contained in the charter document. However, your likelihood of getting your point across is increased, because you’ve taken away nonessential information and clutter that could get in the way.

This is a great time to ask yourself what is more important: getting approval for your project or saving yourself preparation time. On the surface, most people would say, “Duh—getting approval for the project!” Despite this viewpoint, I’ve been amazed at the number of times I’ve seen people in this very scenario choose the first alternative and go down in flames because the information was too clumsy to walk through. Getting approval for the project took second chair to an inappropriate mode of communicating the project. Ugly.

Also take note of this: However you adapt your communication style, make sure your passion doesn’t get lost in the words. If your message has the passion of mashed potatoes, you’ll have a more difficult time getting your point across effectively. So, regardless of how you adapt your communication style, do so with passion in your message.

The moral of the story is simple: design your communication around your recipient. It may mean that you have to adapt your style to meeting the situation and the recipient’s preferences. It may mean that you “lose” because you’re adapting to someone else versus their adapting to you. Put your ego aside and focus on the end, which is getting your point across, regardless of how you do it.

Truth 4 – If You Think It Doesn’t Make Sense, It Probably Doesn’t

One of my managers was a bit inflexible when it came to communication. He was in many respects a very competent manager and knew his subject matter very well, but it was clear that I simply had to do things his way, or I got my head bitten off. One example of this was when I was managing a large project to reengineer some processes that employees use to enter customer orders for our products. We had prepared a large PowerPoint presentation for a number of key stakeholders to review some key design concepts. When I reviewed the presentation with my manager, he told me to create a Word document in addition to the PowerPoint document.

The Word document would literally be a copy and paste from the PowerPoint document. When I asked why we needed a redundant document, the response was “Because this has to be in Word.” I asked someone on the team to take everything we did in PowerPoint and copy and paste it into a Word document. We spent a significant amount of wasted time and money creating and maintaining a redundant document that no one read, all because one manager told me it had to be in Word. Now, I’ll admit I had a bad attitude about this and wasn’t feeling very empathetic toward my manager, but I really struggled with the “It has to be in Word” answer.

Here’s the million-dollar question: What is “realistic?” It depends on your point of view. What may be very realistic to me could be completely unrealistic to you. I’ve found it very helpful to look at three guidelines to find some common ground on reality:

• Need. In assessing need, you take a hard look at whether your recipient needs your information to do his or her job either now or in the future.
• Frequency. In looking at frequency, you assess how often you need to communicate to ensure that your recipient can act on your information in a timely manner.
• Content depth. With content depth, you determine how much information the recipient needs to do his or her job. For instance, the instruction manual on operating a cellular telephone does not need to explain how a signal travels to and from cellular towers to your cell phone.

Let’s carry this forward to a simple scenario: A colleague has just started a new project that affects a small group of people within your department. She sends out very detailed daily e-mails to everyone in the department that communicate the project’s status, what was accomplished the previous day, and what will be done the next day. The information, while very detailed, is largely redundant from day to day. She expects everyone in the department to read her daily status e-mails as the means of keeping up with the project.

What can make this communication unrealistic? Let’s look at it using the three communication guidelines just mentioned:

• Need. Only the affected members in the department working directly with the project have a need for the information.
• Frequency. Getting information on a daily basis probably isn’t necessary due to the redundancy of the information from day to day.
• Content depth. While some may benefit from very detailed information, it probably isn’t necessary for the broader distribution.

To make the communications more realistic and applicable, the project manager should consider the following:

• Construct two separate communications—one for the small group of people who are directly affected by the project and a second communication for the rest of the department.
• For the small group directly affected by the project, gain specific agreement with them on need, frequency, and content depth of communications to ensure that they get what they need when they need it.
• For the rest of the department, look at ways in which other projects or organizations do broad-based communication, and mirror their frequency, content depth, and need. Look to department meetings, intranet websites, or other established communication vehicles for ideas.

Get aligned on your communication expectations. By gaining a common understanding of need, frequency, and content depth, you will go a long way toward ensuring clear communications between you and your recipient, and you will get your point across smoothly and effectively.

Truth 5 – Help Others Help Themselves

Very early on in my career I did a presentation for some senior executives at a company I consulted for. In this presentation I did just about everything wrong. My slides had way too many words on them. I read the slides to the audience. I faced the screen too much instead of facing the audience. I didn’t practice enough and confused even myself at one point. I mumbled instead of pronouncing my words clearly. In short, I was a disaster, and the client confirmed my poor performance by not awarding us the work.

If you’re a good communicator, share your techniques, tools, and tips with your colleagues.

After the presentation, my manager sat me down and gave me some very thoughtful, direct feedback on all the things I did wrong. I’d always admired his smooth, easygoing communication style and was very willing to listen. He offered some examples of presentations he had done and also left the door open for me to seek his advice and counsel on my communication style. His willingness to help me with my communication style affected me tremendously and imprinted upon me a desire to help my colleagues be more effective communicators.

Before I go any further, I want to reveal a basic philosophy I think is important about working with people. I want others to help me be better, and I want to help others be better. Through the years, this desire has at times been beneficial to me and my colleagues, and at other times it has gotten me into hot water because I didn’t approach the situation appropriately. Having said that, I’d rather offer help to a colleague and let him or her choose to either take it or leave it as opposed to not offering help at all.

How do you go about helping your colleague be a better communicator? Consider using a few techniques:

• Set the example. In setting the example, you establish credibility with your colleague by demonstrating good communication skills through real-life experiences. Formal presentations, meeting facilitation, and written reports are great means by which you can help set an example and gain credibility as someone who can get his or her point across effectively. By setting the example, you teach through in-the-moment, real-time learning versus a more theoretical lab setting.
• Openly share templates. Do you have a great presentation format that has been effective in communicating with senior management? Or do you have an outstanding status reporting template that concisely shows a project’s status? Freely make those templates available to others so that they can benefit from your work and maybe improve on your ideas.
• Make yourself available and open for advice and open to feedback. Some colleagues may want to leverage your experience in work that they are doing and seek your help in making their work product better. Extending an open hand to colleagues by offering to sit down with them and help them better get their point across through their work product is an outstanding means to improving an organization’s overall effectiveness. They not only get to benefit from good examples, templates, and tools, but they also get some consulting on their specific work product. Obviously, you need to control how much of this you do and ensure that it doesn’t negatively impact your primary job responsibilities. However, I do believe that it is important in any work setting to help others learn and improve. The higher you are in an organization, the more important it is to help those coming up the ranks with you learn and improve. It’s a worthwhile investment that pays huge dividends if done well.

What if you’ve got a colleague who needs help but is unwilling to accept it? Well, it’s not your responsibility to take on a communications crusade and enforce change on unwilling participants. If the person doesn’t want help, don’t force it. Do continue, though, to set an example and offer useful templates and tools.

Article Source: Extracts from “The Truth About Getting Your Point Across, and Nothing But the Truth”. A book by Lonnie Pacelli, published by Prentice Hall PTR