The answer is usually unspoken but real. Coaching is something I do to improve another person or team; it’s part of my job. Learning happens to me; it makes me feel vulnerable. Learning focuses on my weaknesses, pressuring me to change the way I think and behave. Besides, I’m a professional, with established competencies and knowledge. I’m paid to get results, not to learn.

Thus, managers’ most common response to the growing demand for corporations to become learning organizations is to scramble to be the teacher, not the taught—the coach, not the coached. But, to be an effective coach, an individual must understand the nature of learning. And to understand learning, a coach must be actively engaged in the learning process and personally familiar with the kinds of vulnerabilities and obstacles a learner experiences.

Developing Learning Capability

Learning, coaching, and building a learning culture are critical to the success of modern businesses. Because learning increases our ability to perform, the capacity to grow capability is becoming indistinguishable from the capacity to grow wealth. However, unacknowledged resistance to learning and coaching can make it difficult for us to realize the ideals of the learning organization.

As children, we were naturally engaged in learning in everything we did. Thus, as adults, we don’t really need to learn how to learn, as much as we need to remember what we once knew. We need to unlearn some of the attitudes and practices we picked up from our formal education that seriously undermine our natural appetite and inherent capability for learning.

The Inner Game approach (see “The Inner Game” on p. 2) is about unlearning the personal and cultural habits that interfere with our ability to learn and perform. The goal is simple, if not easy: to give ourselves and our team’s greater access to our innate abilities. The approach can be summarized in a simple formula:

Performance = Potential – Interference

“Potential” includes all of our capabilities—actualized or latent—as well as our ability to learn; “Interference” represents the ways that we undermine the fulfillment or expression of our own capacities.

Diminishing the Obstacles to Learning

We can achieve increased capacity for performance and learning either by actualizing potential or by decreasing interference—or by a combination of both. In my experience, the natural learning process—which is how we actualize potential—is gradual and ongoing. By contrast, reducing interference can have an immediate and far-reaching impact on learning and levels of performance. Thus, a successful model for skill development must take into account the phenomenon of interference.

But beware: The barriers to learning are often well guarded and may become even more entrenched when challenged. Coaches must generally be gentle in their approach to surfacing interference to learning and performance in an individual or team. Hints, suggestions, and indirect probing, though they may seem to take longer than a more direct approach, are usually more successful over the long run.

I learned a great deal about interference and how to help people work through it while coaching tennis and golf—two sports in which the obstacles to performance are difficult to disguise. And I have continued to find these sports excellent examples for exposing hidden obstacles to learning and performance. In addition, tennis and golf show the kinds of results that can occur when one succeeds in diminishing the impact of interference.

One of my favorite examples is what I call “the uh-oh experience.” A tennis ball is coming toward a player who thinks she has a weak backhand. As the ball approaches, she thinks.

“Here comes a probable mistake.” She tightens her muscles, steps back defensively as if to avoid the threat, then slashes jerkily at the ball. When this action results in either an error or an easy shot for the opponent, she confirms to herself, “I really do have a terrible backhand,” and unwittingly sets herself up for the same results on the next similar shot.

If a coach tried to correct each of the elements of the player’s stroke that were incorrect, it would take months of “learning.” However, if the coach worked at eliminating the player’s negative self-talk by focusing her attention instead on perceiving the details of the ball’s trajectory, most of the positive behavioral changes would take place without conscious effort. Working at changing a player’s perception instead of his or her behavior saves time and frustration for both student and coach.

Below is a partial list of obstacles to growing capability:

• The assumption that “I already know.”Professionals often feel that they must present the appearance of already knowing everything and already being perfectly competent. This is an obstacle to learning that young children do not share.
• The assumption that learning means remediation. For many people, the suggestion that they should learn means there is something wrong with them or their level of performance.
• Fear of being judged. We learn this early, through teachers and parents who used judgment as a means to control behavior and effort.
• Doubt. The uncertainty we feel when we face the unknown is a prerequisite for learning. Young children are not embarrassed by not knowing something. However, as we age, we are taught to feel stupid or incompetent if we lack knowledge or experience or are unable to perform up to expectations. We are especially vulnerable to this feeling when faced with the challenge of unlearning something. The prospect of acknowledging that we might have invested time and effort in a perspective that is no longer valid can seem especially threatening.
• Trying too hard to learn and to appear learned. This phenomenon is a derivative of fear and doubt, and leads to constricted potential and mistakes. Our errors then confirm ours self-doubt and bring about the very outcome that we feared.

Revealing the barriers to learning and performance can be an important first step in maximizing an individual’s or a team’s potential. To find the greatest leverage for reducing obstacles to learning in the workplace, I believe we should start with our definition of work itself. The way we see “work” has an impact on how we perceive everything we do in the workplace.

What Is Work?

If you ask executives the meaning of the word work, they focus on work as doing something—as accomplishing a goal, such as providing a product or service. In other words, to many people, work means performance. But definitions that equate work with performance can be limiting, especially in the current business environment.

Are there other results of work? When I ask executives this question, they generally offer responses that refer to two other distinct aspects of work. One is the domain of experience: How you feel while working is also a result of work. While working, people feel satisfaction, meaning, accomplishment, and challenge, as well as frustration, stress, anxiety, and boredom. Everyone at work experiences feelings that range from misery to fulfillment.

A second set of answers fall into the category of learning: While working, you can grow, develop know-how and skills, and improve your ability to communicate, plan, and strategize. Like performance and experience, learning is a universal and fundamentally human result of work—people of all ages, cultures, and levels of expertise are either learning and growing or stagnating and “devolving” while working. Adults can learn while working, just as children learn naturally while playing.

The Work Triangle

How are these fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—related? They are unquestionably interdependent. If individuals aren’t learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer. These three results can be represented in a mutually supportive “Work Triangle,” with performance at the apex, and experience and learning at the base angles (see “The Work Triangle” on p. 3).

When I ask a group of executives, “Which of the three work results gains the greatest support and encouragement in your work environment?” their response is overwhelmingly, “Performance.” I then place my marking pen at the center of the Work Triangle and slowly draw a line toward the performance apex. “How much more priority is performance given over learning and enjoyment?” I ask. As the pen reaches the top of the triangle, a voice usually says, “Stop there.” In response, the majority chants, “Keep going,” until the line has gone past the apex and is several inches outside the triangle. There is a general chuckle and a sense of a common understanding of corporate priorities.

In the competitive world of business, it is easy to see why performance may be given priority over learning and experience. But what are the consequences of pursuing performance at the expense of learning and experience? In any but the shortest timeframe, the consequences are dire: performance itself will fall. And what will be management’s typical response? More pressure on performance, resulting in even less time and fewer resources directed toward learning or quality of experience.

How does the emphasis on performance play out in practice? Take your average sales manager who meets weekly with his sales representatives. The conversation usually focuses on performance issues, such as, how many calls did you make? What were the results of those calls in terms of sales? What are your plans for next week?

But what if the manager were committed to his own learning, as well as to his team’s development? He might also ask: What did you find out from customers that you didn’t know before—about their resistances, their needs, their perception of our products, how we compare to our competitors? How are different customers responding to our latest promotion? Did you gain any insights into your own selling skills? What is the competition doing? What are you interested in finding out next week? Did you learn anything that might help others on the team?

Our definition of work should include the worker’s experience and learning, as well as his or her performance. The real value of this redefinition of work is that it includes me as an individual. I directly and immediately benefit from the learning and experience components of the Work Triangle. The “Experience” side of the triangle reminds me that I can’t afford to neglect personal fulfillment during my working hours in the hope of enjoying myself only during vacation time or on weekends. I can never replace the hours of my life I spend at work, so I need to make the most of them.

The “Learning” side of the triangle reminds me that my future work prospects depend on the growth in in my capabilities. Even if I’m fired from my present job, I take with me what I have learned, which I can leverage into productive and valued performance elsewhere. When my customers, managers, teammates, and the surrounding culture pressure me for performance results, the Work Triangle helps me remember that the person producing those results is important, too. I neglect my own learning and quality of experience at great peril to myself as well as to my future levels of performance.

The Tunnel Vision of Performance Momentum

The definition of work that focuses strictly on performance results at the expense of learning and experience produces a kind of tunnel vision that prevents workers from being fully aware and focused. I call this state of unconsciousness “performance momentum.” At its worst, performance momentum is a series of actions an individual performs without true consciousness of how they relate to his or her most important priorities. Some call this mode of operation “fire-fighting.” Examples include getting so caught up in a game of tennis that you forget it is a game, or engaging in conversations that undermine a relationship for the sake of merely winning an argument. In short, performance momentum means getting caught up in an action to the extent that you forget the purpose of the action.

I don’t know of a more fundamental problem facing workers today. When individuals are caught up in performance momentum, they tend to forget not only important performance goals, but also their fundamental purpose as human beings. For example, my need to finish an article by the requested deadline obscures the reasons I chose to write the article in the first place, and dampens the natural enjoyment of expressing my thoughts and convictions. The person caught up in performance momentum neglects learning, growth, and the inherent quality of the work experience.

THE WORK TRIANGLE

The fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—are interdependent. If individuals aren’t learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer.

The tunnel vision that results from performance momentum is difficult to escape when individuals are working in a team that confirms and enforces the focus on performance. Any activity that is not seen as driving directly toward the goal is viewed as suspect. However, when a team or individual sacrifices the learning and experience sides of the Work Triangle to performance momentum, long-term performance suffers. More important, however, the individual suffers. And because the individual constitutes the building block of the team, the team suffers as well.

Balancing the Work Triangle

A simple method for assessing the balance among the three elements in the Work Triangle is to evaluate the way an individual or team articulates performance goals in comparison with learning and experience goals. It is revealing that many employees, when asked about learning or experience goals, are vague and express less conviction than when discussing performance goals. Setting clear learning goals is a good way to begin rebalancing the Work Triangle.

However, the distinction between learning and performance is often blurred. Even individuals who have worked on plans for the development of their competencies often fall into the trap of expressing their learning goals in terms of performance; for example, “I want to learn to focus more on the customer”; “I want to learn to reach higher sales quotas”; and“ I’m working on learning how to get a promotion. ”The general rule for distinguishing between learning and performance goals is that learning can be viewed as a change that takes place within an individual, while performance takes place on the outside. Learning is an increased capacity to perform; performance is the evidence that the capacity exists.

A good way to focus on learning goals is through the acronym QUEST.

Q—qualities or attributes you might want to develop in yourself or others

U—increased understanding of the components of any person, situation, or system

E—development of expertise, knowledge, or skills

S—capacity for strategic, or systemic, thinking

T—capacity to optimize what you do with time

Teams and individuals can use QUEST to help form goals regarding what capabilities they want to develop. To be most effective, these objectives should support immediate performance goals but at the same time apply to many future performance challenges.

Coaching: A Conversation That Promotes Learning

When executives list the qualities, skills, and expertise they want from employees, they often list intangible attributes, such as creativity, accountability, sense of humor, team player, problem solver, and so on. So, how can you get the qualities and capabilities you want from people? The first response to this question is usually, “We have to do a better job in hiring.” Clearly, it is important to hire capable people. But the real question is how to build the capabilities in the people you have hired, and how to keep those qualities from diminishing.

Unfortunately, the tools of managing performance are not particularly useful for promoting or developing important qualities and core skills. And it is difficult to imagine a course that teaches the rudiments of initiative or cooperation. So what is left? The word I use for the capacity to promote such desired attributes is coaching.

Coaching is a way of being, listening, asking, and speaking that draws out and augments characteristics and potential that are already present in a person. An effective coaching relationship creates a safe and challenging environment in which learning can take place. Coaches know that an oak tree already exists within an acorn. They have seen the one grow into the other, over time and under the right conditions, and are committed to providing those conditions to the best of their abilities. Successful coaches continually learn how best to “farm” the potential they are given to nurture.

A primary role of the coach is to stop performance momentum by calling a time out and providing questions or perspective that can encourage learning. Actual learning happens through experience—taking actions, observing the results, and modifying subsequent actions. To turn a work experience into a learning experience, a particular mindset must be established beforehand. Establishing this perspective can be done through something I call a “set-up conversation,” which an individual can conduct alone through self-talk or with a coach. The set-up conversation helps make the learner aware of the possibilities that the imminent work experience could yield. In conducting one of these conversations, the coach asks questions that aid in focusing the individual’s or team’s attention.

At the end of a work experience, the coach and individual can hold a “debrief conversation.” During this interchange, they might “mine” the gold of what was learned and refine questions to take into the next work experience. In this way, experience itself becomes the teacher. The coach’s role becomes helping the learner as valuable questions of the “teacher” and interpret the answers.

Coaching is very different from what we are generally taught as managers or teachers. We cannot teach work teams and individuals how to grow capabilities—in the sense of the transference of information in a class-room environment. Nor can we build capabilities through managerial techniques—for example, requiring certain abilities and rewarding employees when they display them or punishing them when they don’t. Neither can we measure learning, because we can’t directly observe it. In sum, it is the learner alone who controls the process and perceives its benefits. Managers don’t even need to reward employees for learning—if learning indeed takes place, it will lead to improved performance. And employers generally award bonuses, raises, and promotions based on an increase in a worker’s performance results.

Employees and managers cannot afford to wait for their corporate cultures to become learning cultures. Workers benefit from an expanded definition of work that includes learning and experience goals, and therefore must make the commitment to achieve those objectives. But companies also benefit from this new perspective on work. Wise are the corporate leaders who recognize that redefining work in this way is a difficult task, but that the company and its shareholders also gain advantages from a balanced Work Triangle. The best managers will provide what support and resources they can to the effort, and will make it their mission to shape their workplace into an optimal learning environment. The payoff will be improved business results and a corporate culture that attracts employees who equally value growth in capabilities.

Tim Gallwey is credited with founding the field of sports psychology. His four best-selling books on The Inner Game have deeply influenced the worlds of business and sports. For the last 15years, Tim has spent most of his time working with companies that want to find a better way to implement change. This article is based on a working progress called The Inner Game of Work, to be published in 1998 by Random House.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Janice Molloy.

The post The Inner Game of Work: Building Capability in the Workplace appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

As a process leader or facilitator, how can you use systems thinking as part of an effective group process? The following are some overall considerations that should be addressed.

Engage, Don’t Convince

If learning is the objective, then you want everyone to be thinking hard about the problem at hand. To be engaged, people need to feel that their ideas are being heard, examined, and tested. Whether you are presenting a diagram, or facilitating the development of one, it is important to get everyone engaged in creating a shared understanding of the problem. This approach may generate more debate, but it is much better to finish a meeting with strongly felt, irreconcilable differences in the group than to finish with weak acquiescence to an analysis that no one truly believes.

Presume that every view has merit. Whenever anyone makes a suggestion or offers a fragmentary theory, listen to it, inquire into it, and draw out the assumptions. If necessary, help articulate the conditions under which it would be valid. This will draw out more ideas and create a sense of shared problem-solving.

Pursue differences. Areas of conflict often provide the greatest opportunities for learning. One of the most common sources of disagreement in systems thinking diagrams is fuzzy or changing definitions of variables (see “Clarifying Variables”). Work through these issues to gain clarity about what each variable means, and add variables if needed. This process will ensure that the finished diagram represents the collective understanding of the group.

CLARIFYING VARIABLES

Listen for the frequent mistake of changing the interpretation of a variable in a loop.

Treat Theory as Theory

Every causal loop diagram represents a theory (or model) of the way things work. When we create systems diagrams, we are trying to ensure that our solutions are well grounded in a theory of what caused the problem in the first place. In this way, we reduce the possibility that we will end up with solutions that address only the symptoms of the problem. Because each loop diagram is a theory:

• It is important to know who is advocating the theory. If it’s yours, say so. If it’s unclear, ask. A danger signal comes when no one is willing to take ownership of a particular theory. Some groups believe (or hope) that data will point the way to a theory independent of the personal commitment of any person. This rarely happens. Encourage people to suggest a hypothesis, a mechanism, or theory about how things are happening.
• Every theory should be tested vigorously. Since theories are by definition never complete or universally true, it is important to clarify under what conditions or assumptions the diagram will be valid and helpful (see “Testing Theory”). When a model fails a test, ask, “If that theory doesn’t work, what explanation might work better?”If testing a diagram becomes an issue of right vs. wrong, the discussion can quickly deteriorate into a win-lose situation and learning will suffer. Be careful when presenting your own diagrams—if challenged, it is easy to become defensive and lose the openness which is necessary for real inquiry.
• You can facilitate inquiry by asking, “As you see it, how does X cause Y? What’s your rationale? What is the data? Can you give me an example?” (Or just make sure someone asks questions like these.) Once you have heard the answers, state your point of view (“Well, that doesn’t quite work for me.. ..”), but share your own line of reasoning as well.

Remember that an effective group process brings out several alternatives before closing in on one. Without some guidance, most groups will settle for the first reasonable suggestion without investigating other possibilities.

Be Clear About Process

It is usually helpful for a group to have a “road map” for the process. Make sure that all participants have a clear understanding of the overall systems thinking process—if necessary, post a chart of the systems thinking steps (see “Six Steps to Thinking Systemically,” March 1995). From time to time, make sure the group stops to note where it is situated in the process.

Use the Diagram as a Learning Tool

Groups are often reluctant to add variables and links to their diagram until they’re sure that the line of thinking is sound. But the group may need to see an idea in the diagram in order to respond. To avoid this “chicken-and-egg” situation, encourage the group to use the causal loop diagram to support group thinking, not just to record finished, tested thoughts.

Show every suggestion or idea in the causal loop diagram. If someone says, “Longer hours will cause more turnover:’ then add that to the diagram. If someone responds, “I think the improved spirit will keep turnover low,” show this as well. If the ideas don’t work out, then change the diagram back to its original configuration.

The key to making this technique practical is to use self-adhesive notes (such as Post-Its). Put each variable on its own self-adhesive note, using a size large enough to be visible to the whole group. Arrange the notes to illustrate a chain of cause and effect. If the chain seems accurate, then ink in the arrows between variables. Magnetic vinyl tiles and a white board are another good alternative.

Being a Systems Thinker

Being a systems thinker yourself is perhaps the most important single factor for supporting systems thinking in your group. If people see that you model the behaviors and skills you are trying to encourage, it will provide a powerful example. If they hear you say one thing, but see you do another (not “walking the talk”), it can have a negative impact on the work. The actions and bearing of a single individual can be a strong force in setting the overall tone for an approach, regardless of that individual’s level or position in the organization.

Richard Karash (Boston, MA) is a consultant, facilitator, and trainer in the disciplines of the learning organization.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Colleen P Lannon.

The post Coaching and Facilitating Systems Thinking appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Eight weeks later . . . “Let’s see what you’ve come up with. No, this is all wrong. In the first place, these ads are too small. Start over. Make them full-page and full-color. Put the headline here, the body text here, and the logo there. You need a new photograph — this one isn’t dramatic enough. Use softer lighting here. This is better, closer to what I want. This works.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of what I’m looking for — you know, what works with our customers.”

Many of us remember a time early in our careers when a manager coached us on an assignment. Although the details of the conversation varied, our boss inevitably gave us “words of wisdom” or “constructive criticism.” He or she expected us to learn in the time-honored tradition of apprenticeship, in which an expert instructs, monitors, and corrects the learner on how to do a task a certain way.

This traditional model contains a powerful implicit assumption by managers: “I’m the expert. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’re here to learn from my experience. If you question me, you question my expertise and authority.” Unfortunately, this perspective locks both the manager and the employee into roles that don’t always serve the employee’s learning or the manager’s efforts to teach and guide. The teacher’s “performance” and expertise may take on greater importance than the learner’s improvement.

Timothy Gallwey, whose “Inner Game” philosophy has challenged most traditional coaching methodologies, often cites a valuable insight he gained about the roles of teacher and learner early in his career as a tennis pro. During a lesson, he was astonished when the student learned something before Gallwey had a chance to teach it to him. Gallwey remembers his exasperation as he thought, “How dare he . . . I haven’t shown him that yet!” Reflecting on it later, he realized that he had been more concerned with his own teaching than with the student’s learning.

What Gallwey discovered was simple — but not easy — for coaches, managers, and leaders to accept: When a coach concentrates on facilitating a person’s learning instead of on teaching, the coachee’s performance can undergo an almost magical transformation. Natural learning, based on the coachee’s learning style, happens quickly and easily — much the way we learned to walk or ride a bike. Because this kind of learning experience promotes relaxed concentration and enables us to create our own high-quality feedback, we stop trying so hard and perform almost unconsciously at increasingly effective levels. Over the years, Gallwey and others have shown that this change in focus can be effective in enhancing individual and team performance and learning in business, sports, and even music.

Partnership Coaching Defined

Effective coaching is a partnership between coach and coachee, expert and novice — a partnership whose purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results (see “Traditional Versus Partnership Coaching”). In partnership coaching, one individual works to support the learning and actions of another person or a team. Following this model, managers help people achieve what they want — through careful listening and gentle guidance — rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or to know. Shifting from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning requires a manager or coach to:

• Ask open-ended questions that focus the person’s attention on critical, relevant details rather than tell her what the coach knows.
• Create an environment that reduces interference — or negative self-talk by the learner — which can reduce the quality of the learner’s thinking and actions.
• Understand the difference between constructive criticism and edible — or usable — feedback and to make feedback learner-focused rather than teacher-focused.

INTERFERENCE MODEL

The Interference Model shows how, by reducing interference, individuals can dramatically and immediately improve their performance without learning any new skills. In an interference-free state, new learning is natural and easy

The Limitations of “Telling”

As shown in the opening example, the traditional structure used for conveying expertise and advice emphasizes telling. Although good, clear instructions are vital to the successful completion of a task, most managers find it difficult to convey information in a way that enhances a learner’s performance. In the telling mode, a coach usually assumes the employee understands what he is saying, but often the employee goes away feeling confused at best, and mistrusted and disrespected at worst.

Our informal polling of approximately 1,000 middle to senior-level managers indicates that executives use telling as a means of communication an average of 85-90 percent of the time. And yet, at least five conditions must be met for the telling approach to be effective. 1. The coach has to know exactly how to do the task. 2. The coach has to be able to articulate clearly what she does know. 3. The other person has to understand what the coach is saying. 4. The other person has to be able to translate those instructions into action. 5. The other person has to want to do the task. If one or more of these conditions is missing — which is often the case — the odds of a coach’s successfully transferring know-how to a learner are low. Moreover, the coach has likely wasted her own time, the other person’s time, and the company’s money.

According to the British author and business coaching expert Sir John Whitmore, “To tell denies or negates another’s intelligence; to ask honors it.” Yet shifting from telling to asking isn’t the only change coaches need to make in order to improve their skills; they also need to learn to ask effective questions.

The Anatomy of an Effective Question

Effective questioning uses the principle of creative tension to set up conversational structures that promote learning. According to Robert Fritz, a structure seeks to resolve the inherent tension within it, much like a stretched rubber band seeks to return to its original state. Asking a question sets up a tension that is resolved by an answer; for example, when asked “How are you?” we feel compelled to resolve the tension in the linguistic structure by responding.

A good question helps individuals put aside their assumptions regarding the correct or right answer and lets more reflective and flexible responses fill the void. The word question itself suggests a “quest” for something, inviting the respondent to create or find an answer. Thus, an effective or powerful question creates a structure in which an individual or group feels compelled to seek a resolution. In addition to providing creative tension, effective questions:

• Are nonjudgmental.
• Are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) instead of closed (requiring a yes or no answer).
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality by broadening his perceptions.
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention.
• Make feedback “edible” — or easier for a learner to hear and use.
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner.

A powerful question asked with the wrong intention (such as getting the person to agree to something) isn’t as effective as a question posed from a place of genuine reflection and interest. When people feel cornered and manipulated, they are likely to be less forthcoming and thoughtful with their responses. “Yes/no” questions such as “Well, did you ever think about . . . ?” or “Wouldn’t you agree that . . . ?” can come across as accusatory because these queries often contain hidden assumptions about the speaker’s mental models regarding the best decision or the right answer. Such closed-ended questions can make people feel defensive and undermine a partnering relationship.

Surprisingly, tone of voice and body language carry approximately 92 percent of the meaning in conversations; the words themselves convey only 8 percent. The power of a good question can thus be lost if a manager comes across as condescending, negative, arrogant, or even overly solicitous. A leader who is well intended can still create crippling self-doubt within an employee by asking a good question with the wrong tone or inflection.

Overcoming Interference

In his article, “The Inner Game of Work: Building Capacity in the Workplace” (V8N6), Gallwey discusses the concept of internal interference and how it creates obstacles to learning (see “Interference Model” on p. 1). Gallwey defines interference as “the ways that we undermine the fulfillment or expression of our own capacities.” Interference can be internal or external; it impedes our performance by preventing us from concentrating and from receiving ongoing feedback. Gallwey has found that reducing interference can dramatically improve a person’s performance. Learning happens naturally when a person isn’t distracted by negative thoughts and can focus on what he is doing.

The key to reducing interference lies not in diagnosing it, but in asking questions that move learners’ attention away from judging their own performance to concentrating on the relevant details of the activity they are attempting to perform. For example, when an employee appears flustered because she doesn’t know how to resolve a problem, asking her what she is noticing about the situation or the problem, and what is and isn’t working toward resolving it, can increase her self-awareness and reduce her self-doubt, enabling her to focus calmly on the issue at hand. This self-awareness gives coachees pure, nonjudgmental, and noncritical feedback about what is actually happening. At the same time, coaches need to ask themselves, “Am I increasing or decreasing interference in this conversation?”

What, then, might the session in the opening example have sounded like if the coach had used questions to reduce the coachee’s internal interference and increase her focus?

“I want you to create the new print ad campaign. Here are copies of what we’ve done in the past. What do you think about the strategy and format we used? Here’s data from focus groups and information on how well the ads pulled. What do you think we could have done to increase those numbers? Our deadline is in eight weeks. How long do you think you will need? When can you tell me if this deadline is realistic?”

First coaching meeting: “I’ve had a chance to look at the first version of the new print ad campaign. First, I’m curious about your thinking behind this strategy. What about this style and format appeals to you? What about this approach do you think will appeal to our customers? What about these ads works better than our previous campaign?

“What concerns do you have, if any, about this strategy? Where do you think the trends for print ads are headed? Is there anything you’d like to do differently, given more time or money?

“I’m a little concerned about the size of the ads and the lack of color, but maybe I’m underestimating the impact. I guess I need to know more before I’ll feel completely comfortable with changes that feel this drastic. How will our customers respond to such changes? Will the ads cost more or less to produce? What is the impact on our overall budget?”

In the example above, the manager expresses little judgment regarding what is right or wrong, good or bad, about the proposed ad campaign. She asks open-ended, not yes or no, questions. Her intention, style, and tone convey a desire to learn the employee’s perspective and to help him think for himself and draw his own conclusions. The employee in this scenario is likely to experience much less interference than in the scenario at the beginning of the article, and thus should experience greater learning, clearer thinking, and improved performance. The responsibility for learning is placed on the employee — not on the manager. This employee will probably feel that the manager is “on his side,” supporting his development and achievement of desired results.

“Edible” Feedback

One of the most important ways to improve an employee’s performance and create structures for learning is clear, relevant feedback about current reality — what’s working and not working about the individual’s actions. The traditional feedback model consists of an expert offering so-called “constructive” criticism. But how do people generally feel when they hear, “I have some feedback for you”? Their level of interference usually increases. They may think, “Oh, no . . . I’m about to be judged, slam-dunked, pulverized. I hope I can defend myself, or maybe even blame someone else. Let’s get this over with, or maybe I’ll just zone out.” Meanwhile, they generally don’t hear or consider the coach’s observations simply because they are not edible.

An edible suggestion is one that the coachee can actually take in and digest because it doesn’t overload her with too much negative information, too much advice, or too many suggestions to remember or internalize. This feedback model shifts the focus away from the traditional mode of the manager telling the employee what went right and wrong to one in which the employee discovers for herself what she learned. By helping the performer “debrief her own perceptions of what did and didn’t work, the coach leverages our tendency to believe our own data and observations, rather than those provided by others.

Feedback should do exactly what the word says: Feedback information that nourishes the performer, increases self-awareness and focus, and allows him to internalize useful data for learning. Providing feedback in this manner fosters learning and improvement that are intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, motivated (see “How to Give Edible Feedback”). Performer-based feedback also creates trust and better, more reflective working relationships, because the data is more easily digested. This focus enables the coach to function as a mirror, reflecting back the appropriate, relevant information in a nonjudgmental way.

The “GROW” Model of Coaching

Partnership coaching involves shifting one’s mind-set from teaching, training, and controlling to asking coachees for their desired outcomes and ideas for achieving them; reducing coachees’ internal interference; and learning to give useful, edible feedback. All these elements are woven into a process for conducting a successful coaching session described by Sir John Whitmore in his book, Coaching for Performance. His “GROW” model can help guide coaching conversations to more meaningful and realistic resolutions (see “The GROW Model” on p. 5). Although there are many effective ways to coach in a partnership style, the GROW model provides a useful framework in which the coach guides the coachee toward articulating her goals and achieving desired results. By using effective questions in a nonjudgmental tone, the coach shows respect for the coachee and helps her to take ownership for determining the path to reach her goal.

G=GOALS

The coach and coachee agree on session goals and long-term goals. To set session goals, the coach asks questions such as:

• What would you like to accomplish in the time we have available?
• What would make this time well spent?
• What would you like to achieve today? To set long-term goals, she asks:
• What would ultimate success look like to you?
• If you could create anything you want, what might that be?

R=CURRENT REALITY

Centering on current reality means describing the situation as accurately as possible, challenging assumptions that might be blocking more effective thinking and action, and raising awareness of the relevant details of what is currently happening. Good coaching involves following the coachee’s interests and thoughts and exploring what he has tried so far, without judging. Questions about current reality might include:

• How do you know your perception of X is accurate? How can you be sure?
• Whom else might you check with to get more data about the larger perspective?
• What have you tried so far?
• What are your beliefs about this particular situation? This person? The other department?

O=OPTIONS

The first challenge here is to help the coachee create as many options for potential actions toward the goal as possible without judging the ideas’ merit or practicality. The focus is on the quantity — not quality — of options. Building on the ideas and then choosing among them comes later. The idea is for the learner to stretch the boundaries of his thinking and to use creativity to unlock options he might not otherwise consider.

Once the coachee completes his list of options for action, the coach may offer any ideas she might have thought of while the coachee was brainstorming. Examples of coaching questions at this stage might include:

• If money, time, and resources were no obstacle, what options might you choose?
• What are all the different things you might do?
• What else might you do? What else?
• If you were to ask X person, what might he or she suggest?
• Who else could help?
• What might some “sky is the limit” thinking sound like?
• Would you like to hear some ideas that have occurred to me while you were brainstorming?

At some point, the coachee’s well of ideas will run dry. Now he should look over the list and select those options that seem most promising. The coach can help clarify priorities by asking questions such as:

• Which options would you like to explore further or take action on right away?
• Which would you be willing to implement?
• How would you rate these options from high to low?
• Where would you like to begin?

W=WHAT’S NEXT?

This is the stage for committing to action — stating an intention that is time-phased and observable, identifying potential obstacles, and aligning support from collaborators. Possible questions might include:

• What are you going to do and by when?
• What’s next? What steps are involved?
• How might you minimize the obstacles?
• What might be some unintended consequences of taking these actions?
• How will you collect data for feedback over time as you progress?
• On a scale of one to ten, how certain are you that you will do this?

Self-Coaching

One of the remarkable things about partnership coaching is that managers don’t have to be subject matter experts in order to coach others who are — they just have to be expert coaches. Sometimes, having less expertise on the subject than the coachee frees an instructor from needing to share his knowledge; this “knowing” can get in the way of asking good questions.

Coaches who want to improve their skills can solicit feedback as part

THE GROW MODEL

The GROW Model illustrates the process of helping others clarify what they want, what they have now, options for achieving results, and a plan for action.

of every learning session by asking learners:

• What about the session worked well?
• What didn’t work as well?
• What might I do differently next time to support you more effectively?

Coaches can also guide themselves during a coaching conversation and gain additional learning afterwards by asking:

• What’s happening right now?
• Where is my coachee’s focus?
• How much interference is she experiencing? Where is it coming from?
• When I made that statement, what happened with her body language?

• What cues does she give me to sit quietly and let her think?
• What judgments appeared in my thinking?
• On a scale of one to ten, how would I rate our level of partnership?
• What worked and didn’t work for us in that coaching session?

These questions give managers the opportunity to make adjustments, test assumptions, and experiment with new possibilities.

Leveraging Partnership Coaching

At its most effective, partnership coaching is simply a generative conversation in which the coach asks nonjudgmental, open-ended questions that sharpen the coachee’s focus and increase her awareness of goals, current reality, and possible options for action. In a natural and easy way, it reduces interference and structures feedback for intrinsically motivated learning. This coaching model can leverage learning for individuals, teams, and organizations by helping them improve performance more quickly than in traditional forms of coaching.

As partnership coaching becomes part of an organization’s culture, every leader becomes a steward of learning and a facilitator of performance. Learners come to trust that managers are truly on their side, supporting their learning and development as a partner and not as a disciplinarian. Partnership coaching can be a powerful tool for implementing the principles of organizational learning by facilitating personal mastery, team learning, and shared vision.

Diane Cory is a facilitator, coach, and consultant whose areas of expertise include organizational learning, servant leadership, storytelling, creativity, and coaching.

Rebecca Bradley (Rebecca@ partnershipcoaching.com), president of Atlanta-based Partnership Coaching, Inc., is an executive coach and consultant whose focus is helping individuals and teams improve performance.

The post Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Traditional Forms of Consulting

Over time, a number of different kinds of consulting assistance have developed, including expert advise on specific topics or methodologies, research (both internal and external), training, and coaching and facilitation. In most cases, these methods have a specific content and outcome as their objective, for example, a strategic or sales plan, identification of a target market, rating of customer or employee satisfaction, or a set of new skills to meet market demands. In these instances, the client assumes that the consultant has a better or correct answer, and the value of the engagement depends on the consultant’s successful delivery of this solution to the client.

In contrast, facilitation — and, in some cases, coaching — is quite different. A superb facilitator doesn’t lead a group to the decision he or she recommends; instead he or she helps a group function better together. The value of this kind of work comes from the facilitator’s ability to help generate effective group processes — not in his or her content expertise. In fact, the facilitator’s effectiveness diminishes dramatically if he or she tries to lead the group to a specific answer.

We are now seeing the need for enabling infrastructures —  infrastructures that enable groups with changing members to meet changing goals in the context of changing environments.

But this kind of facilitation usually doesn’t affect groups outside the one that is involved in the intervention. And in rapidly shifting situations, the processes that both the expert and the facilitator bring — while completely appropriate in specific instances where they are used knowledgeably — may actually undermine the group’s productivity by creating dependency on a third party. Thus, in addition to the traditional consulting activities described above, we are now seeing the need for services that provide enabling infrastructures — infrastructures that enable groups with changing members to meet changing goals in the context of changing environments.

Enabling Infrastructures

What are enabling infrastructures?

They are the support mechanisms that make it possible for — or enable — a group to be highly effective, even if the members of the group change. Enabling infrastructures are a combination of processes and tools organized in specific ways so that they support people individually and collectively in sustaining superior performance. Just as hollow bones, wings, and receptors that can sense updrafts (among other characteristics) enable a bird to fly, a combination of invisible processes, visible tools, and intentional organization enable a group to function at consistently high levels.

For example, within a company, enabling infrastructures might include mechanisms for mentoring, coaching, and peer support; a corporate culture that sustains transparency, open communication, and development of interpersonal skills; disciplined gathering, sharing, and responding to feedback from throughout the organization; and attention not only to financial health but also to emotional energy.

These processes, tools, and organizational types sustain groups as they gather information, remember, focus, create sense and meaning, project into the future, take action, get feedback, and learn — all functions that enable people to choose goals effectively and sustain high levels of performance in pursuit of their goals, both as individuals and in collaboration. Most organizations already have support for some or all of these activities, but take them for granted. Building enabling infrastructures requires conscious intent; active integration of processes and tools; careful organizational design; and a set of criteria against which to evaluate success and make changes where necessary.

In addition to the specific processes and practices that support the change process, ongoing coaching and support are vital parts of an enabling infrastructure. But most organizations don’t have the resources to provide rich support services to every person. This is a problem of scale. A longstanding human response to problems of scale is to build automated tools. In many organizations, an intranet connects everyone and provides a beginning platform for services that might support every person. A growing number of developers are creating social software — programs to facilitate interaction and collaboration.

Technology, with its ability to offer time- and effort-saving support to many people, can be a powerful part of an enabling infrastructure, but it isn’t enough; more than 50 percent of all installed software languishes from lack of use. Thus, the enhanced communication and information capabilities offered by social software must be complemented — and often, in fact, preceded — by other forms of training, coaching, and facilitation.

Some Examples in Practice

For instance, an R&D group in a global technology company faced frequent changes in the team’s membership, management structure, competitive landscape, and nature of the products they were developing. To create an infrastructure that would enable high levels of performance despite constant shifts, this group added to their staff meetings the disciplined process of reviewing summaries of feedback gathered from each person through the company’s intranet concerning a wide-ranging and constantly changing set of balanced scorecard areas — supported by ongoing coaching and facilitation. While in the beginning, both meeting facilitation and individual coaching was provided by an outside facilitator, the long-term goal was for other staff members to develop expertise in this arena. As carefully selected new members arrived, the group paid close attention to getting to know them and helping them understand “how we do things around here” — going slow by investing time and energy to insure that, when needed to, they could go fast.

The TEC organization is a pioneering example of the power of an enabling infrastructure to connect individuals and groups beyond traditional organizational boundaries. TEC (www.techonline.com) is an organization that brings together small groups (usually around 15 people) of entrepreneurs once a month to give each participant the benefit of advice from peers using a carefully designed facilitated process. Monthly meetings are supplemented with coaching for each group member and a host of online services.

In their meetings, TEC members are not focused on a single opportunity or problem but on the changing opportunities and problems that arise over time in each participant’s business. Group facilitators are carefully selected, receive ongoing training, and get feedback on their effectiveness. Participants are screened for quality and group fit.

Although enabling infrastructures often differ from organization to organization in the ways in which they are implemented, they share many goals and characteristics. For example, they are designed to facilitate group processes rather than support teams in reaching a specific goal. And they include careful selection of participants as well as an emphasis on the interaction among people and their tools. A successful enabling infrastructure builds in processes (prototyping, training, coaching, buddy-systems, feedback mechanisms, etc.) to support participant needs and sustain high levels of collaboration. Further, as processes tend to degrade over time, continuous feedback specifically on the quality of the group’s interactions helps to maintain quality and secure resources when required.

A New Focus

As shown above, when thinking about enabling infrastructures, we must include a combination of disciplined processes, individual coaching and training, and automated support with an intentional organizational design and focus. In the design process, I believe it will be helpful to use a series of criteria against which to judge our efforts; that is, the initiative must be continuous (not event-based), be based on multiple processes (not “just” learning or feedback), support every person (not only leaders or poor performers), and generate autonomy (not dependency on consultants).

In writing this article, I want to draw attention to enabling infrastructures as a new area in which consultants can have an impact by describing how it is different from traditional consulting services. By creating this distinction and point of focus, I invite systems thinkers to contribute to creating the systems, practices, experience, and body of literature that will help support the development of these needed services in a rich and humane way.

Mary Ann Allison (maa@allisongroup.com) is coauthor of The Complexity Advantage (McGrawHill Professional, 1999), which the Wall Street Journal described as having “the power to change a business in startling ways.” She is the chairman and chief cybernetics officer of the Allison Group, LLC, a New York–based international consulting firm.

The post Helping Groups to Function on Their Own: A New Form of Consulting appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Partnership coaching offers an alternative to managing and teaching. Its purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results. Using this model, managers help people achieve what they want rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or know. How? Managers (1) ask open-ended questions that focus the learner’s attention on relevant details, (2) create an environment that reduces interference, or negative self-talk by the learner, and (3) make feedback “edible”; easier for the learner to hear and use.

How to Give “Edible” Feedback

“Edible” feedback consists of nonjudgmental questions and suggestions that are easy for the learner to hear and to act on. The questions help raise the learner’s awareness of his or her goals and current reality, focus the learner’s attention, lead to deeper and more expansive thinking by the learner, and are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) rather than closed (yes/no). The suggestions add only what is necessary to complete the learner’s understanding “John/Jane, I observed your meeting/conversation/ presentation/etc. I have some feedback that you might find useful . . . is now a good time? Before I give you my thoughts, I’m interested in your perceptions, specifically:

1. What worked well for you during that presentation/meeting/conversation?
2. What didn’t work as well for you?
3. What might you want to consider doing differently next time?
4. Would you like me to offer suggestions that have occurred to me as we’ve been talking?”

The coach is now in a position to confirm the perceptions of the learner or add a different perspective. Clear, nonjudgmental observations about what worked, what didn’t work as well, and what the person might do differently next time will be welcomed and more likely used for improved performance next time.

Effective Questions

• Are nonjudgmental—this requires a neutral tone of voice and facial expression and curiosity rather than criticism— and are open-ended
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before • Are not manipulative or asked in order to help the learner arrive at a “correct” solution or answer

TRADITIONAL VS. PARTNERSHIP COACHING

This material is drawn from “Partnership Coaching” by Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley, THE SYSTEMS THINKER,Vol. 9 No. 4 (May 1998). © 2000 Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley. An expanded version of this “Toolbox” is available in a pocket-guide format; for information, go to www.pegasuscom.com.

The post Toolbox: Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.