1. Leadership: Leader as Coach

Two of the more critical and foundational skills of a leader are [1] the ability to lead a team to deliver a goal or result and [2] the ability to coach a person to improve him- or herself.

You have probably been a part of a team before. Teams bring together different people to accomplish a particular goal. There are all sorts of teams, however, and some are far more effective than others.

A key component of effective teams is the ability to leverage the unique skills, experiences, strengths, and interests of each person while coming together to fulfill the team’s purpose. This is the key role of the team leader.

Attributes of Team Leaders

Leadership of a team is dependent on the situation, as discussed by Daniel Goleman in the article “Leadership That Gets Results.” You need to adapt your approach depending on the team’s capability and your needs.

In general, good team leaders:

• are dependable and willing to help
• train, coach, and mentor the people on the team
• leverage skills and strengths to maintain and obtain desired results
• help people flow to the work as needed, meaning they adjust the team’s workload to where it is needed, based on skills and needs.

Cog’s Ladder

A team goes through many different stages of development from the time it is formed to the time its goals are met. George O. Charrier defined this process as Cog’s ladder (he simply reversed his initials to create the name).

This model consists of five unique stages:

1. Polite (FORM)
2. Why are we here? (FORM)
3. Power (STORM)
4. Cooperation (NORM)
5. Esprit de corps (PERFORM).

Polite

The first stage is the polite stage. This stage is most commonly found when teams first form. However, a team can move into the polite stage from a higher stage with the introduction of new members. The intent here is not to rock the boat and to simply join up with other team members.

Team Characteristics at This Stage

• Only acceptable things are said.
• Controversy is avoided.
• Serious topics are avoided.
• Feedback is minimal.
• Disclosure is minimal.
• The basics are shared, such as your name, your title, and what you do for a living.

Why Are We Here?

The second stage is the why are we here? stage. The why are we here? stage quickly follows the polite stage as members search for the purpose or mission of the team. Questions such as the following emerge: Why do we exist as a team? What are we doing here? What are we going to do? At this stage, conflict may arise as members discover their reasons for joining the team differ and their understanding of what the team would do are not aligned. This causes team members to seek out those who support their views and to identify those who don’t. This leads directly into the next stage.

Team Characteristics at This Stage

• Objectives and goals are defined.
• There is some demand for clarity and a moving toward formal structures and agendas.
• Cliques grow.
• Team identity is still low.
• Risk-taking begins.
• Hidden agendas are sensed.

Power

The third stage is the power stage. In this stage, competition for control of the group begins. Conflict arises, and team members solidify cliques in an effort to assume power in numbers. Conflict arises between groups or members with differing views, and there is much evidence of win-lose communication. Hidden agendas are used to influence the group to “meet my needs without telling you what they are,” and there is evidence of game playing between members. Members play “ain’t that awful?” outside the room after meetings. Feedback is not behavior-based, and issues are left unresolved.

Team Characteristics at This Stage

• There’s competition for attention, recognition, and influence.
• Conflict rises—voting and compromise occur.
• Cliques assume power.
• Hidden agendas show up.
• Feedback can be stinging.
• Disclosure is cautious.
• Creative suggestions fall flat.
• Tasks are accomplished but not optimally.

Cooperation

The fourth stage is the cooperation stage. In this stage, team members decide to focus on what’s best for the team over what’s best for them individually. They begin to look at problems and decisions objectively verses selfishly. Cliques no longer have a purpose as power is shared and feedback becomes behavior-based. Conflicts are dealt with constructively and no longer plague the group. Everyone can and does contribute to their fullest. A feeling of closeness begins to emerge, and listening for understanding is at a high. The team can now contribute at a greater level than the sum of the team members separately. A feeling that “we can accomplish anything together” begins to form. Pride in the team’s work and each other develops.

Team Characteristics at This Stage

• Attitudes change.
• Open-mindedness is the norm.
• Team members actively listen to one another.
• Team spirit starts to build.
• Conflicts are dealt with.
• Comradery builds, and it can be difficult to bring in new members.
• Cliques dissolve.
• Leadership is shared.
• Resources are used effectively.

Esprit de Corps

Cog’s ladder is a simple way for you to diagnose where a team is in its development. The minimal goal is to be cooperative. A high-performing organization will get to esprit de corps, which is a feeling of pride and loyalty toward the group. That is the ideal.

This is a stage that few teams reach, but when they do, they will never forget it. To deliver results, you do not always need to be at this level, but keeping esprit de corps as a goal and giving all the members of your team the ability to experience it can create world-class results. Long-term esprit de corps teams are called high performing, and you will learn about the leadership principles for high performance in Unit 7.

In the esprit de corps stage, the team is working on instinct. Things just happen. As the famous Celtics basketball star Bill Russell once described of the Celtics:

To me, one of the most beautiful things to see is a group of men coordinating their efforts toward a common goal, alternately subordinating and asserting themselves to achieve real teamwork in action. I tried to do that, we all tried to do that, on the Celtics. I think we succeeded.[1]

Team Characteristics at This Stage

• Team unity and bonds are strong.
• Results are delivered, often beyond expectation.
• Spirits and morale are high.
• Loyalty is intense.
• Acceptance among members is mutual.
• New members can cause regression since they can affect existing relationships.

A shorthand version of Cog’s ladder that may be easier to remember is Bruce Tuckman’s forming, storming, norming, and then performing. As a leader, you want to use team-building skills and coaching to move people up to high performance.

GROW Coaching Model

A transformative leader needs his or her organization to be effective, learning, growing, and engaged. A key skill for the leader is the ability to coach others.

One of the more effective tools for coaching is the GROW model. The GROW model is used as a way of achieving goals and solving problems. While no one person can be clearly identified as the originator, Graham Alexander, Alan Fine, and Sir John Whitmore all made significant contributions.

A true coach is someone who takes valued people from where they are to where they want to go. There are many definitions of coaching, but that is a simple one. Coaching is not just for people who have performance issues or a need for remedial training. It is something that is done daily to help valued people improve their performance further. It is what you say or do to help others to further build their contributions. And, in many ways, it’s about helping people close the gap between where they are today and where they want to be in the future.

Take a minute to reflect on the qualities of a good coach.

In order to coach effectively, coaches should do the following:

• set clear expectations for the people they are coaching and track their performance
• establish trust with the people they are coaching
• use the GROW model as a tool to ensure active listening, encourage powerful questioning, and give essential feedback after pinpointing mistakes.

The GROW model will be discussed in greater detail in the next section. First, you will closely examine each of the coaching competencies and discuss them.

Reflect on the following five questions:

1. Do I typically grant trust or must it be earned?
2. Do I trust differently at work and in personal situations?
3. What behaviors violate my trust or earn it?
4. If someone violates my trust, can I trust the individual in the future? What does the person have to do to earn it back?
5. What is my level of trust with my direct report on a level of one to five?

Before you even go into the GROW process of active listening, powerful questioning, and giving specific feedback, you must first establish trust as a potential coach. You’ll also work on these skills in Units 4 – 6 when you’ll learn more about emotional intelligence.

Trust = Creditability + Reliability + Intimacy

Here’s a simple way to think about trust. It’s a combination of three key factors:

• how CREDIBLE you are to your direct reports
• how RELIABLE and consistent you are with them
• how INTIMATE you are in terms of being real and sometimes vulnerable, showing them your human side.

Tips on Establishing Trust

• Show genuine concern. For example, one of the ways to show genuine concern is to be concerned. You can’t fake it.
• Demonstrate personal integrity, honesty, sincerity, and transparency. Even in tough situations, your team relies on you to be honest with them.
• Establish clear agreements.
• Make and keep promises.
• Demonstrate respect for uniqueness. Come from an understanding that everyone is different and works differently, and celebrate that difference.
• Provide consistent support in tough times; give credit and take blame as appropriate.
• Ask permission from the person to coach in sensitive and/or new areas.
• Help interpret ambiguities in the environment. Have the ability to sense what might be confusing to others, and help guide them through it.
• Share some of yourself; be vulnerable.
• Role model and champion new behaviors and actions.

Actions speak far louder than words. Keep in mind that in establishing or eroding trust what you do is more important than what you say. Nothing can destroy trust more than saying one thing and doing the exact opposite.

Trust Bank Account

Are you familiar with Stephen Covey’s idea of the emotional bank account?

The emotional bank account is a metaphor for trust. When you do the things in the first column, you make deposits into the trust bank account. When you do the things in the second column, you make withdrawals from the trust bank account (Figure 1). In order to do effective coaching, where does your bank account with the person need to be?

Again, understand that all of this has to come with sincerity. You cannot pretend to be kind or to listen. You have to actually want to gain your members’ trust and make an active effort to do so.

The GROW Process

There are many coaching models that can be used as a framework for leading coaching discussions. Figure 2 illustrates the GROW approach, a simple tool that can help you frame powerful questioning.

1. The GROW process starts with clearly understanding a person’s GOAL and what the individual is looking to accomplish.
2. Then comes helping the individual to create a picture of REALITY—that is, where the individual stands his or her goal.
3. Third comes OPTIONS—that is, some of the things the person could do to reach his or her goal.
4. Finally, the process ends with the WAY FORWARD—that is, what action should be taken.

Thus, the GROW process can be defined as the ability to ask questions that reveal the information needed for maximum benefit to the coaching relationship.

The following powerful actions facilitate the person being coached through the process:

• Reflect active listening.
• Evoke discovery, insight, commitment, or action.
• Move the coachee toward the desired goal.

The GROW process can be used anytime you are trying to help a person sort through his or her thoughts on what he or she should do. It can work with small teams, but it’s primarily designed as a one-to-one model.

Active Listening

As a transformative leader, practicing genuine active-listening skills can be a game changer in moving members up Cog’s ladder and delivering results. The way to ensure that clarity is achieved is for the receiver to send back his or her understanding of the message and see if it is correct. If it is, then the speaker, or sender, knows that the receiver accurately received what was meant to be sent. If not, the sender now knows that a misunderstanding exists and that the message needs to be sent again, maybe this time with additional information to get it right. This is called “active listening.” It is something you do with a stranger on the street when getting directions but may not do with people close to you.

Active listening is a deposit in the trust bank account. Active listening is about the other individual, not you. It’s not only about you hearing the other person but also about the person feeling that he or she was heard. You can use verbal communication (e.g., acknowledging and restating what was heard) or nonverbal communication (e.g., nodding and using facial expressions) to let the person know that you heard and understood him or her.

Verbal Responses for Active Listening

• Paraphrasing: Listening for content.
• Reflection and Empathy: Listening for feelings.
• Clarification: Listening for accurate hearing of the content.
• Summarization: Listening for themes.
• Probing: Gathering information.

The only way to coach someone and work through things with the individual is to actively listen. For example, if someone says he or she didn’t get a good night’s sleep, you can either respond to the words, the emotion behind the words, or both. An emotional response may be saying, “Oh really? I’m so sorry.” An intellectual response may be to ask the person, “Is there something on your mind that’s keeping you awake?” Both levels are ideal.

Tips to Improve Your Listening Skills

People can always improve their listening ability. Here are some suggestions for developing your listening skills:

• Develop the desire to listen. You must accept the fact that listening to others is your strongest weapon. Given the opportunity, the other person will tell you everything you need to know.
• Always let the other person do most of the talking. This is a simple matter of mathematics. Adhere to the 70/30 rule. You listen 70 percent of the time, and you talk 30 percent of the time.
• Don’t interrupt. There is always the temptation to interrupt so that you can tell the other person something you think is vitally important. It isn’t, so don’t. When you are about to speak, ask yourself if it is really necessary.
• Learn active listening. It’s not enough that you’re listening to someone—you want to be sure that the individual knows you’re listening. Active listening is the art of communicating to the other person that you’re hearing his or her every word.
• Ask for clarification if needed. This will clear up any misunderstandings you have.
• Get used to “listening” for nonverbal messages, such as body language. The other person may be communicating with you via body language. You need to decode the message.
• Ask a question, and then be quiet. This is a foolproof way to listen. Think of yourself as an interviewer. Listen and question.

These are all particularly important to practice in a dialogue session. Active listening is a prerequisite to being a good coach. You need to show you are interested, listen for understanding, demonstrate you care, and have a sincere desire to help the person through his or her issue or need.

Further Skills for Active Listening

Attending

• Make eye contact.
• Maintain an open posture.
• Avoid distractions.
• Remove physical barriers.
• Show you are paying attention.

Attentive Silence

• Don’t talk; listen.
• Allow the person airtime to talk.
• Use silence as a tool, not a weapon.
• Be with the person.

Door Openers

• Offer invitations to talk, such as:
• Can I help?
• Want to go for a coffee?
• Please, say more.
• What’s going on?

Acknowledgments

• “Uh huh.”
• “OK.”
• “Yeah.”
• “I see.”
• “Really.”
• “Oh.”
• “Are you alright?”
• “Let’s take a walk.”

A GROW discussion is extensive. It can take a half hour to an entire hour or longer. You can be transparent, in which the person you’re coaching knows the model and you walk through it with him or her, or you can just reference the model yourself. Explaining the model to someone who has never heard of it before can be particularly time-consuming and will not yield better results. It’s most important that you know and understand the model.

Powerful Questioning Using the GROW Process

So, coming back to the GROW model, here is a sampling of questions that can be used to build understanding in each element of the model. Now practice.

Goal: What do you want to achieve? What are your objectives? What are the consequences?

Reality: What is happening now? Any issues? What have you tried so far, and what were the results?

Options: What could you do? How might you go about it?

Way Forward: What will you do? How committed are you? What are the next steps?

Ask questions. Be curious. Be persistent in searching for clarity. Listen actively to the message coming back. Look for congruence. Question any incongruence. Your responsibility as a coach is to ask questions. Your responsibility as a leader being a coach is to “grow” your performance.

Specific Examples of GROW Questions

Now, look at the questions in some detail. One of the things you want to avoid while asking a question is to put the person on the defensive or make him or her feel threatened in any way, as this would limit the individual’s ability to be receptive to coaching. Here are some very simple questions you could ask to begin the conversation.

Rephrase These Questions

• Rather than “Did you think about _____?”, try:
• “What would you think about _____?”
• Instead of “Did you try _____?”, say:
• “Have you had a chance to try _____?”
• Replace “Why did you _____?” with:
• “Tell me about the thought process behind _____.”

Although the difference between the first and the second sentences here is very subtle, it can make a big difference in the way the person hears you. Since you would want the person to be in a positive frame of mind when you ask a question, you should choose the latter style while framing them.

It is the skill of making the feedback:

• actionable
• specific
• objective
• unambiguous.

Focusing on actions that can be:

• seen
• heard
• measured and quantified.

Pinpointing is the skill that you use to clearly identify the area upon which an individual needs coaching. The area must be specific, objective, and unambiguous. Most importantly, coaching must focus on actions that can be seen, heard, and ideally measured.

For example, telling an individual to improve her or his confidence or that she or he needs to show better leadership is not focused enough. It is not actionable. And it is not addressing the specific behavior(s) that needs to change.

Nevertheless, there will be times when you need to provide candid and direct feedback to someone about performance. Here is a simple framework that you can use to structure more-difficult conversations.

A Framework for Difficult Conversations

• Situation: Describe the circumstances under which the behavior occurred.
• Behavior: Provide details on the specific behavior that caught your attention.
• Impact: Share the effect it had on you, the group, or the project.
• Action: Define the desired or indicated action.

First, start with the situation. An important question to ask yourself would be what the context is in which you are providing the feedback. After analyzing the situation, get into the specific behavior. Again, this should be observable, actionable, and ideally something that can be measured. The next step should be to talk about the impact this behavior had on you, the team, or others. Finally, get into what should be done moving forward. Think about this not only for situations in which you need to provide negative feedback but also for a positive report. Just remember to do the following:

• Set the context.
• Be specific and clear about the behavior you appreciated.
• Tell how it affected you or the group.
• Define what it means for the future.

Leaders as Coaches

Practice the skills of team leadership, team formation, and coaching. Build your skill as an active listener. Few things will raise your emotional intelligence faster than listening, coaching, and giving and getting feedback!