Millennium Coaching

By John Fielder

The Changing Workplace

Organisational changes within the global workplace over the last 10 years have been more profound and far reaching than at any time since the initial impetus of the industrial revolution.

Organisations in order to survive must innovate, change and evolve to anticipate or match the evolutions within the market places that they trade in. They - in effect - will change their behaviours in ways that will hopefully maintain their competitive edge, optimise their profitability whilst at the same time ensuring continuing customer satisfaction, and repeat orders within their existing and emerging market places.

Innovation is a process, not a single event, and needs to be managed as such. (Tidd, Bessant & Pavitt 1997 p.39)

King and Anderson (1995) postulate that writers in the areas of organisational change and innovation label organisational change to generally indicate a macro level approach, which is more concerned with the organisation as a whole and its major sub-systems than with the experiences of small work group and individuals.

Is this approach a modern day form of Taylorism where it is so much easier to forgo the complexity of human interaction and to keep the 'social man' in its place and prevent it from supplanting the 'economic man' of Taylorism.

Ray Strata (Senge 1990 p350) whilst discussing the role of the leader as the designer of an organisation argued that the "scientific management" revolution of Frederick Taylor took the traditional divisions of labour between workers and managers and gave us the "thinkers" and the "doers". The "doers" were basically prohibited from thinking. I believe our fundamental challenge is tapping the intellectual capacity of people at all levels, both as individuals and groups. To truly engage everyone - that's the untapped potential in modern corporations'.

Coaching in Context

The idea of truly engaging everyone is not a new phenomenon Heider (1985) in his adaptation of the 2500 year old "Tao Te Ching", compares the wise leader with a midwife.

The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily. The leaders' presence is felt, but often the group runs itself. If you must take the lead, lead so that the group, (mother) or individual, is helped, yet still free and in charge. So, when the work is completed the group, (mother) or individual, will rightly say, "We/I did it ourselves/myself".

So, if Lao-Tzu can compare a leader to a midwife, who acts as an instructor or teacher or coach before, during and after a birth, how can this concept be expanded into the successful growth and change within organisations.

Landsberg (1996) explains that, Tao means 'the way in which things happen', and in terms of coaching means 'the way in which I work and live in order to derive energy from interacting dynamically with people and things as opposed to expending energy by continually 'going against the grain'.

The midwife, or coach, therefore works with the mother, before the birth by asking the exactly relevant questions, increasing the mothers self understanding, helping her to prepare so that during the birth she will be more self aware, effective and in control.

The Role of the Coach

So does the coach lead or the leader coach? Landsberg (1996) argues that the twin notions of,

(1) helping others to develop and grow, and
(2) increasing your effectiveness as a leader, are simply two sides of the same coin.

There are a number of definitions of coaching, and of those, some authors state that they owe their roots to Socrates (C.about 70-399BC) who saw himself as a 'midwife to understanding' and whilst he wrote no books himself and established no regular school of philosophy his thoughts have been chronicled by two of his distinguished scholars, Plato (C.428-348) and the historian Xenophon (C.431-352BC).

Socrates believed 'that all vice is the result of ignorance, and that no person is willingly bad; correspondingly, a virtue is knowledge, and those who know the right will act rightly'. (Funk and Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopaedia 1993)

Is then the role of the coach leader to assist others towards knowledge, and what is this knowledge at the dawn of the 21st century?

The knowledge within the Taylorist models favoured a reductionist philosophy of telling operatives at the workplace - what to do - using simple models that assume that all persons are uniform units of production.

It also defined the relations between employee and organisation explicitly in terms of a clear contract of wages paid in return for measured effort or output.

This relationship has been used within many areas of industry and commerce until the present day and can still be seen in the legacy of the production lines at Ford Motor Company. Ford wrote, 'Machines do not give us mass production. Mass production is achieved by both machines and man. And while we have gone a long way toward perfecting our mechanical operations, we have not successfully written into our equations whatever complex factors represent Man, the human element.' (quoted in Littler and Salaman 1986, p 91)

So that was then, what is now, and what is next? (Mabey and Salaman, 1995, P.56.)

Is it the knowledge that the human relations movement bequeathed to Human Resource Management that workers have significant social needs that can be satisfied at work, and the idea that if satisfied, these needs could be used to influence the workers' attitudes and behaviour.

Or is it a step further into the developing knowledge encompassed within the global market place, influenced by advanced information technology, the internet, virtual organisations, intense competition, right sizing, and mass customisation of a diverse range of products designed to meet the ever changing and evolving needs. (Derived from Goffee and Jones, 1998)

So how does Career Performance Coaching, born out of models ascribed to Socrates and the Tao Te Ching, cope with the developing social and economic changes in the Millennium workplace, including recent and ongoing large-scale downsizing or rightsizing, mergers and acquisitions and the increased use of outplacement and career transition management programmes.

A Universal Coaching Model

Is there a universal model or methodology of career performance coaching that is appropriate to all organisations, Landsberg (1997) suggests a simple 4 step structure - the GROW model that is defined as follows GOAL, REALITY, OPTIONS and WRAP-UP. This model is expanded as follows and whilst attributed to the above does have a broad similarity to other current (Whitmore 1992, Lifeskills International 1999) approaches.

Changing Working Patterns.

CPD,
Downsizing,
Emergent workers.
Flexible workers,
Homeworkers,
Internationalists,
Lifeshift related,
Mergers,
Multi-careers,
Multi-dimensional,
Multi-skilled,
Re-education,
Returnees to work,
Rightsizing,
WASPs

Coaching Tools Available.

Written/Analytical/Self Understanding and Feedback.

16PF,
Action Planning Log,
Career Anchors,
EIQ,
Employable/Transferable Skills Inventory.
Job Performance Wheel,
Life Goal Inventory,
Life Wheel,
Management Competencies Wheel,
Management/Leadership Wheel,
MBTI,
NLP, POSERS,
Outcome Generators,
Planning Wheels,
Priorities Wheel,
Self Assessment Inventory,
Value Sorts and Inventories,

Verbal/Facilitative/Transforming

Coaching Models i.e. GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Wrap-up.), Co Active (Listening, Intuition, Curiosity, Action/Learning, Self-Management.).
Counselling Skills i.e. Active Listening, Positive Unconditional Regard, Feed back, Para phrasing.
Metaphors.
NLP Skills - specific i.e. Time Line, Meta Programme, Modelling.
NLP Skills- general i.e. Rapport, Anchors, Changing Behaviour, Limiting Beliefs.
Questioning Techniques. Clean Language.

Applications

Corporate Coaching

Provides companies and professionals with an individual and team coaching service that will have the combined results of achieving clearly measurable individual, team and company growth.

A coaching programme that is structured and tailored to meet the needs of each individual and the company in order to achieve their desired goals.

An effective Coaching Programme, that is designed, developed and delivered to be part of the companies individual career development, organisational succession planning and in house graduate and management coaching - training schemes.

Executive Coaching

Often potential clients inquire about the type of goals that can be pursued in coaching. The following excellent list is developed by Richard Kilburg (1996).

1. Increase the range, flexibility, and effectiveness of the client's behavioural repertoire.

2. Increase the client's capacity to manage an organisation - planning, organising, staffing, leading, controlling, cognitive complexity, decision-making, task, jobs, roles, etc.

3. Improve clients' psychological and social competencies.

a. Increase psychological and social awareness and understanding.

b. Increase tolerance of ambiguity.

c. Increase tolerance and range of emotional responses.

d. Increase flexibility in and ability to develop and maintain effective interpersonal relationships within a diverse workforce.

e. Increase the client's awareness and knowledge of motivation, learning, group dynamics, organisational behaviour, and other components of the psychosocial and organisational domains of human behaviour.

f. Decrease acting out of emotions, unconscious conflicts, and other psychodynamic patterns.

g. Improve the client's capacity to learn and grow.

h. Improve the client's stress management skills and stress hardiness.

4. Increase the client's ability to manage self and others in conditions of environmental and organisational turbulence, crisis and conflict.

5. Improve the client's ability to manage his or her career and to advance professionally.

6. Improve the client's ability to manage the tensions between organisation, family, community, industry and personal needs and demands.

7. Improve the effectiveness of the organisation or team.

Life and Personal Coaching

A unique coaching programme that will give clients the structure, support and guidance to enable them to make the right changes that will move them from where they are now, to where they really want to be, and in the process grow and develop into the person they need to be to achieve it.

Designed to help clients to eventually develop their own self-coaching. It enables them to identify their uniqueness, and helps to clarify and focus on their values, goals and dreams and to create balance in their life and work. It encourages and allows clients to set goals for the future, even if that future is unclear at the start of the programme.

Helping clients to identify what they want in their life and measurably improve their personal circumstances, quality of life and to achieve their goals.

This approach takes in Career, Money, Health, Friends and Family, Physical Environment, Fun and Recreation, Personal Growth and Significant Other/Romance.

© John Fielder

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