Are the right people in the room?
Here’s a question for the coaches out there; in a typical coaching conversation, what’s the balance of time spent talking about your client’s behaviour, and the behaviour of the people they line manage?
I’ve noticed that at times I can be swept into a detailed exploration of the behaviour and motives of my client’s team - people who aren’t in the room. This is usually because they are at the core of my client’s immediate concerns, and my client wants to figure out how to understand them and manage a tricky situation better. So it can be a legitimate use of coaching time, made easier if I’ve met the team myself. But I do wonder how much of this speculation is actually deflection, a tactic that avoids the tougher subject of helping my client reflect on their own behaviour, attitudes and blind spots? And how do I collude with this behaviour?
I’ve learned to stay alert to these moments of deflection and bring the conversation back to the people in the room – me and my client. This means asking questions like “so what does this situation mean for you? Where have you seen this pattern before? How do you feel when this happens?” If I notice the deflection as a regular pattern, I’ll describe it to my client.
Taken to an extreme, this tendency to deflect can this actually lead to a client handing over their own management responsibility to the coach.
For example, I recently met ‘Mike’, a potential client who wanted to explore how coaching might help him and his team. After hearing about each team member’s particular development needs and character flaws, Mike seemed taken aback when I asked him about his appetite for coaching; “But it’s my team who need coaching, not me. I just need them to hit the numbers”. I fully realised then that he thought hiring an external coach could reduce his workload by tackling a number of tricky people issues – which in turn would allow him to meet his KPI’s so he could make a promotion. It had precious little to do with him challenging his own behaviour or improving his own competence. Not the sort of assignment I am particularly interested in!
Context is critical and it’s often incredibly valuable to ground a conversation in real relationships. So I’m not advocating that coaching should be a laser-like examination of the person being coached, just highlighting the need for us coaches to stay self aware.
And make sure the right people are in the room.
