A Coaching Approach for Leadership
A story resonates from my first coaching course I did in which a Deputy Principal had, for a few years, been meeting regularly with a student and his parent to create attendance plans to ensure the child attended school more frequently and on time. She shared with us the power in which changing the approach to one of coaching the parent had led to significant and immediate positive results. Rather than telling the parent what needed to happen, the parent was asked what the ideal would be and then was able to own the possible tactics and habits that could be employed to increase the attendance of the student.
For me, this gets to core of what coaching is about which is providing the space and opportunity for reflection and instigating personal change to meet a challenge or desire for improvement.
"Most of the time when somebody comes to you with a problem, they don’t really want your advice, they want you to help them figure it out for themselves" (Bungay Stanier). The reciprocal nature of coaching means that by being adaptive and reflective in conversation, autonomy not only exists for the client, but also the coach/leader.
Curiosity
I have listened to a lot of Michael Bungay Stanier podcasts, along with readings from my recent coaching course books and other incidentals, where he emphasises the power of curiosity in coaching. He argues that curiosity is essential for effective leadership and coaching because it creates empathy and connects individuals to themselves and others. Bungay Stanier states, "Curiosity creates empathy. Curiosity connects you to yourself, to other people, and to the world around you".
What I was curious about and what shifted for me as a coach, was moving from feeling I had to provide a lead to a specific goal or use my knowledge and experience to shape questions. My thoughts moved to “How could I shift the sense of curiosity back to the client/ coachee?” And so, I decided to keep asking questions to not get answers but to spark further questions from the coachee. This approach incorporates questions in conversational style, such as “What else are you curious about?” “What questions would you ask yourself to find out more?” “What questions would you hope people ask you as a result?”
That has now been integrated into other professional and personal conversations. I am conscious that is more about me being curious about the other person’s thinking and questions, rather than trying to ascertain a fixed state of mind or one determined path forward.
This idea of asking questions and thinking aloud, is emphasised in the leadership book Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, who states that to ensure increased accountability and shared responsibility, leaders need to give back the power of individual thought to our team. This also resonates as a teacher when hearing how difficult it is when students are prescribed tasks, told what to read and to share correct answers, rather than explaining their thinking.
Agency: Creating a sense of autonomy to own the goals and the results
Along with the compelling idea to spark or probe for questions and curiosity, comes the idea that as much as we need to:
- connect and belong with others,
- to feel competent and master skills and knowledge, and
- be independent and autonomous,
these three needs fuel our motivation, as highlighted in the work of Deci and Ryan in Self- Determination Theory and are each an element of the coaching process.
As a coach, I reflect on the term coined by Bungay Stanier of the ‘advice monster’. I have no doubt that, prior to the learning I have engaged in through coaching, I may have been that very monster. It goes back to feeling as a leader that I needed an answer and often I could see a simple solution. What I learnt, through mistakes in communication, in change management and without colleagues’ ownership my solutions weren’t as well received or adopted in the way I envisaged. Coaching gurus such as Van Nieuwenburgh and Bungay Stainer state that coaching encourages others to find their own answers and therefore creates autonomy.
Jette Oksis
ACEL WA Branch Executive Member