The Coaching Process

Your relationship with your boss may have more to do with your success and advancement in your career than just about any other factor. Whether you are in a new job or a remote job, or you have been in your position for months, knowing how to coach your boss will improve your career and your life.

The process of coaching is simple: You check your ego at the door, and you work out what is best. Coaching up is just a process of working with your boss to obtain the best possible results for your boss, your organization, and you. You do this by honoring and respecting each other’s ideas and intelligence through dialogue and brainstorming, without pushing a personal agenda, instructing, or demanding that others see things your way. Coaching is not political maneuvering; rather, it is a deliberate effort to bring understanding and cooperation into a relationship between individuals who often have different perspectives. Think of your role as a coach (whether you’re coaching up, down, or sideways) as a process of understanding what organizations want from their people, what leaders want from their teams, and what employees want from their leaders.

As a prerequisite to developing your coaching style, while you must continue to focus on delivering results, you must also know your own motivations, values, and needs (refer to Chapter 1 for clarification). These motivations (perhaps to make a contribution, to enjoy yourself, to learn, to earn respect, to make friends, to feel trusted, to work with people you trust and admire, to be part of a team, to share your talents, and to be valued) are absent of ego and are your springboard for coaching and helping others, even your boss.

Are You—and Your Boss—Coachable?

To be able to enter into any coaching relationship, you need to be coachable yourself. Take the Coachability Quiz (Exhibit 9-1) to determine your coachability, then reread the questions with your boss in mind (better still, have your boss take the quiz, too). Then look at the scoring key.

Exhibit 9-1: Coachability Quiz

Circle the number that comes closest to representing how true the statement is for you, then add your total score and consult the Scoring Key.

Consider these statements, and answer honestly:

Less True/More True	Statement
1 2 3 4 5	I am open to learning.
1 2 3 4 5	I am willing to be influenced.
1 2 3 4 5	I readily reveal my thinking.
1 2 3 4 5	I am ready to “try on” new concepts and ideas.
1 2 3 4 5	I identify, and explain, my assumptions.
1 2 3 4 5	I encourage others to explore my ideas (or assumptions).
1 2 3 4 5	I listen to others, giving them time to fully express their ideas.
1 2 3 4 5	I seek to understand the views and ideas of others.
1 2 3 4 5	When responding to another’s view, I ask, “What led you to that viewpoint”?
1 2 3 4 5	I am someone who can share my success with my boss.
____________	Total Score

Scoring Key

10–20: If you scored between 10 and 20, you probably are not coachable at this point. Review the statements on which you scored a 1 or 2, and learn what you must do to upgrade those behaviors and skills for yourself. Refer to Chapters 1 and 2 for needs, values, standards, and boundaries work.

21–40: You are coachable, but you need to pay special attention to your standards and boundaries, listen carefully to others, and avoid defensiveness.

41–50: You are very coachable. Make sure that you and your boss demand a lot from each other.

Coaching Guidelines

Now that you know your own coachability status and you have at least a sense of the coachability status of your boss, let’s move on to three important guidelines for coaching up:

1. Lead, Follow, Coach Great organizations rely not only on dynamic leaders, but also on dynamic followers, and both can be great coaches. Leadership skills are often touted as the main factor in getting ahead, yet when you are on a team, you must also have followership skills. But what are followership skills?

Followership skills are those that allow you to move together with others along a set path. This does not imply that you are unqualified for or incapable of leadership; it means that you can work with and for a leader, toward a goal, with others for a cause. Followership skills include

• Receiving and accepting ideas and instructions willingly

• Setting high standards for yourself and others

• Listening without expressing disapproval

• Flexibility

• Asking questions to clarify and identify needs

• Praising the work and efforts of others

• Sharing diverse perceptions on issues

• Commitment to project or task completion

• Talking things out

• Showing tolerance for ambiguity

• Trusting and believing in others

The skills and talents of dynamic followers are equally as important as the skills and talents of dynamic leaders, and coaching within your organization requires you to value the talents and skills of each. Coaching is a process of communication and understanding that has no hierarchical boundaries and that ultimately will demonstrate your leadership and collaboration skills, regardless of your rank.

2. Observe, Listen, Question When you coach someone, you listen more than you talk: Committed listening is the foundation for masterful coaching. Great coaches believe that people have the intelligence and knowledge that they need if they are to succeed, and that coaching helps them to gain access to it. When you become a coach, you will encourage diverse views and perspectives just to see what is out there, you will stop judging and assuming, you will generate conversations that bring action by asking such questions as, “What is most urgent?” “What is best?” “What are our options?” and “How do we want this to turn out?” Coaching up means that you become proactive but not presumptuous, supportive but not ingratiating, communicative but clingy.

3. Watch Yourself Improve Although it requires self-awareness, emotional maturity, and courage, coaching up will improve your job satisfaction, your results, your organization, your team, and your boss.

Coaching one another will allow you to use all of your gifts and talents, honor all of your values and skills, develop relationships based on integrity, maintain high standards, and keep a tight rein on your boundaries. With this comes a sense of fulfillment that you cannot get in any other way, and your fulfillment, or satisfaction, will result in improved performance. That improved performance will improve your team (and teammates), your organization, and your boss.

Coaching Up Strategies

1. Establish an Appropriate Relationship with Your Boss If you and your boss have had rocky patches in your relationship, review what has not worked, and why. (Refer to Chapter 2 for suggestions.) One of the most important elements in a coaching relationship is that both parties be willing to participate. If there is any baggage or resentment that is creating barriers to your developing a healthy relationship with your boss, you need to determine what it is, prepare a recovery plan, and get ready to take the position of coach (not know-it-all, not expert, not counselor, but coach). Your job as coach is to make your boss look good, and to get the job done more effectively and efficiently.

Since the process of coaching your manager is a format for communication, your manager may not notice that you are coaching her or him. What your manager will notice is that you are always focused on what is right and on how to get it. You might not say, “Hey, boss, let me coach you on that,” but you might ask, “What is the best outcome, and what do we need to do to achieve it?”

2. Be Supportive, but Not Competitive To be supportive is to be loyal, encouraging, and empathetic; to be aware of and sensitive to the goals and barriers that exist; to be willing to ask exploratory questions that may go absolutely nowhere; to be willing to take risks; and to work to help others see options that might not otherwise have been apparent. To be competitive is to take any of those components and make it a platform for aggressively judging the performance of others (typically a win/lose situation). Coaching is neutral, not judgmental or competitive.

Concentrate on providing the kind of support that will help your boss be most effective; this will help you to be more successful as well.

3. Be Certain You Are in Tune with Your Boss’s Goals You may understand that your team has a sales target to reach, a customer satisfaction percentage to achieve, or a zero-error target to accomplish, but have you ever asked your boss what his or her goals are and how you might add value, in addition to your job, in helping him or her reach those goals? Have such a discussion to see how you can become even more valuable to both your organization and your boss.

4. Be Prepared to Speak Up If you do your job well, you have the underlying credibility that you need in order to open discussions when you think things are askew, or when you simply think they could be better. Great coaching requires that you speak the constructive truth, question and explore what is best, and strategize the actions you will take to get to that best.

5. Acknowledge, Affirm, Recognize It is important to acknowledge your boss’s and others’ efforts and achievements.

• Let the boss know. Often your boss hears from his own boss only when there is a problem or a mistake to correct. Sincere praise, encouragement, and appreciation go a long way—even just saying “thank you” leaves a lasting impression. Take time to notice how hard your boss works, and tell her or him that you understand the pressures she or he faces. Praise and acknowledgement should not be saved for extraordinary accomplishments, but should be used every day, with everyone.

• Make it meaningful. Acknowledging or praising your boss is not a political maneuver, and it is not designed to make you look good. It is a verbal gift; it is empowering, and it must be sincere and meaningful.

6. Be Aware Pay attention to the dynamics of your organization and how your boss operates within those dynamics at the peer level, above, and below. This will give you additional insight into how to add value, be proactive, and ultimately get ahead in your career.

7. Accurately Read Your Boss’s Likes and Dislikes Learning your boss’s style in terms of goals and expectations is only half the equation. Learning how your boss handles disagreements, mistakes, priorities, risks, decisions, anger, conflict, and feedback will allow you to coach through issues more easily. The following questions are useful in determining how your boss handles some of those issues in a professional setting. The responses, spoken and unspoken, will give you great clues. Take notes on what you see, hear, and feel about the responses you receive.

• What is your number one priority this year? In order to add value, you need to know not only what your boss feels is most urgent, but also what you can do to help your boss reach his or her goals. Look for specifics: If your boss responds with, “Better than I did last year,” ask for more detailed information. Look for something like, “I want to produce a 10 percent increase over last year’s sales.” This type of specificity will help you develop additional questions to identify how you can add value to this area or goal.

• How will I know if my performance displeases you? This is about asking for feedback. With my clients, I have found three basic categories concerning feedback:

  1. Those who experience feedback as criticism, seeing it as devastating and humiliating and a validation of their worthlessness

  2. Those who want to hear only praise, nothing that might suggest deficiency (largely due to the response in the previous point)

  3. Those who actually seek out feedback, good or bad, because they see it as a tool that they can use to learn and grow

  To be a value-added support to your boss, you need to open the discussion by finding out what is working, and what is not working, in what you are doing. Share how you best receive feedback; ask for straight talk (not sugar-coated) that is focused on shifting behavior (not on personality), using your intellect, your intuition, and your skills. Ask for feedback early and often, but be careful to avoid needing feedback (constantly asking, “How am I doing?” is annoying, not supportive).

• What should I do if I think you are making a mistake? This is a critical issue. Ask how your boss would like to be approached—directly or indirectly, in person or by email. Is your boss equally open to receiving feedback (listening carefully, acknowledging your input, and taking corrective action)?

• During what period of the day do you prefer to have discussions with me? This sounds silly, but there are times of the day when energy is low and frustrations are high. Whatever your boss states is a “best” time to talk, respect it.

• How do you handle conflict? Disagreements, varying perspectives, and differences in style are normal parts of life. Conflict (as in aggressive, win/lose behavior) is unproductive. If you have experienced less-than-effective conflict resolution skills, coach your manager toward skills that are more effective. Share how you best “hear” issues that are in conflict (no snapping, judging, or yelling allowed).

• What should I do if I sense that you are angry? Anger can be displayed as fist pounding and door slamming or as silence. Ask your boss how you will know when he or she is angry, and how he or she would prefer that you address him or her at those times. Ask if you can coach him or her through it.

8. Who Moved My Rut? Webster’s defines rut as “A track worn by a wheel or by habitual passage of anything; a groove in which anything runs.”

Sometimes our jobs, and our lives, fall into a rut and stay there. When you find yourself or your team facing the same old problems and using the same old solutions, when your work no longer demands your very best, or when you no longer look forward to going to work, you’re in a rut.

Ruts are familiar and undemanding—and can even be comfortable. However, you pay a high price when you allow yourself to stay in a rut: You actually begin to believe that you are not capable of more and that you don’t deserve better, and your results and your job satisfaction plunge.

Pulling yourself out of a rut is not difficult, no matter how deeply you have dug in or how long you’ve been there. If you, your boss, your team, your organization, or your life is in a rut, use the pause–explore–decide–move process:

• Pause and identify the rut. Give it a name so that you can all identify it when you recognize it.

• Explore the benefits and consequences of this rut. When did the rut start? Why did it come into being? What are the facts and what are the assumptions that keep this rut in place? Why are we in this rut?

• Decide your next move. What are new ways of carrying out this task or this process, new ways of viewing this problem or issue, new ways of acting to shift away from the rut and into effectiveness? Help others, including your boss or your team, to revise their interpretations or assumptions in order to see things in a new way.

• Take action. Once you decide what is most important, act on it. Set a strategy, create a plan, and make the rut disappear.

9. Offer Your Boss Breakthrough Thinking Breakthrough thinking is also called “thinking outside the box.” In order for breakthrough thinking to occur, you first must differentiate between thinking and action. Thinking is an intellectual process that is used to solve problems. Action is motion, the steps you take to achieve goals and make things happen. Breakthrough thinking is investigating new possibilities and options that result in action, creating something new: new processes or products, new ways to manage information, or new ways for people to work together. Think outside the box, and recommend to your boss new ideas, new processes, new products, and new ways to work together to reach and exceed team goals.

10. Add Value As you coach your boss, you will be learning new skills and unlearning older ones. The goal is to add value to your boss, your team, your organization, and your career. You do this by encouraging diverse views, suspending your assumptions, and generating a conversation for action.