Coaching
How to make the most of your coaching experience at ILS
During your initial session, your coach will do three things:
- Find out what your biggest challenges are
- Ask about your history to gain a better understanding of you
- Set goals with you
From that point on, the goal of coaching is to help make you a more effective leader by assisting you in reaching your goals. Your coach will do this by providing the support, insight, and challenge you need to help you change. Typical goals might be:
- Reduce my anxiety
- Increase my ability to focus
- Learn to coach and develop my subordinates
- Become a more effective communicator
- Create more work/life balance
In a nutshell, your coach will help you lead more effectively by helping you change the beliefs that drive your behavior. Please see the graphic below to understand how your coach will help you accomplish this.
Most coaching services intervene at D (behavior). They help you change your behavior, but they do not result in permanent behavior change. At ILS, we “get it out by the roots.” We help you change the beliefs that drive your behavior so that you can change for good. It’s more work, but the payoff is considerably more powerful than behavior change alone.
In every session, you and your coach will decide on your homework for the next session. It is important that you do your homework. You cannot succeed unless you apply what you learn in your sessions. One homework assignment everyone receives is to start a journal. This journal is designed to help you become more aware of your beliefs so that you can change them. Here is the suggested style of writing in your journal. Write about events in your day that impact the attainment of your goals. Here is the suggested style of journal entries:
Acknowledge what happened
Accept it. You can’t change unless you accept yourself with your faults.
Assess it. Why did it happen? What should I do about it?
Act upon your assessment.
We frequently get asked how to do a journal entry, so here is an example from Steve Anderson’s journal from 1/9/09.
Acknowledge
Feeling a little down. Even though I should be excited right now I am not. We have just put together a great strategic plan for next year, but I don’t feel excited about it this morning. I’m not sure why.
Accept
Even though I think I should be excited I am not. It’s okay. I’m sure there is a good reason. I just have to sit with my feelings to understand them. I’m not going to be hard on myself because I don’t feel like I think I should.
Assess
Well, I just came through a really busy period of four months. I am still a little burned out, and I need recovery time. I have to be patient with myself. Also, even though we have more money in accounts receivable than ever, we have a lot of bills due right now. Therefore, even though I am really excited about building this business, I feel a lot of pressure to just get out and serve clients and make money instead of executing our plan. This internal conflict is draining me.
Act
My plan of action is as follows:
- Sit still. Resist the temptation to react to the pressure to make money. You have to be patient if you are going to build this business properly.
- Go through your aging and contact any accounts that are late so that we can get caught up on cash flow.
- Realize that it will take a while to overcome the burnout you naturally feel at the end of our busy season. Take time to recover. It is necessary. Be patient with yourself.
- Realize that you are not alone. Your whole team is committed to making this dream come true. We will do it together. It’s not all on your shoulders.
- Get busy exercising and take time to meditate. These two activities will help you get recentered.
(End of journal entry.)
Your other homework assignments will be designed to increase your awareness of your beliefs so that you may change them to lead more effectively and attain your goals.
Be aware that you will not change until you believe you can and are convinced that you deserve it. Here are the stages that all human beings go through when they change:
Pre-contemplation. It’s not my fault.
Contemplation. Maybe I’m responsible
Preparation. I’m responsible and I’m preparing to change.
Action. You implement your plan
Maintenance. You make sure the change sticks.
Termination. You pick new goals and start over.
Every bit of our coaching is designed to help you become a more emotionally intelligent leader because we know that is what is required to succeed in today’s challenging business environment. You may think that emotions are not important in leadership, but as your coaching progresses you may come to feel differently. At ILS, we believe that to lead effectively we must let passion, not fear, dictate our behavior. In order to do this, you must understand your emotions and learn to harness them. Any part of your emotional landscape that you do not understand has the potential to derail you as a leader, that is, make you reactive.
Which brings us to another point about your development as a leader. According to research by Robert Kegan at Harvard University, each of us goes through stages in how we interface with other people in our lives. The progression can be seen in the graphic on the next page.
In the egocentric phase, we can only see the world through our own eyes. We are unable to take another person’s point of view. As you can imagine, egocentric leaders are not very effective. In the next phase (reactive) we can take another’s viewpoint, but we must seek approval or control in relationships to feel comfortable. Once again, a less than ideal leadership paradigm. The fascinating thing is that 80% of human beings never get beyond stage three! Real leadership starts at level 4. This is where you really start to create and stop reacting. Our coaching is designed to take you from stage 3 to stage four and beyond. In stage 5 we become even more effective leaders because we gain the ability to be comfortable with discomfort and we continue to lead through significant stress. Stage 6 is reserved for world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. If you get to that stage, you will be coaching us!
If you do decide to take a 360° leadership assessment with us, your profile will be based upon the graphic above. By picking 20 people who know you well to evaluate you, you will get a good idea of where you are presently reacting and where you are creating. On the next page is a graphic of a generic 360 profile. Notice the horizontal line between reactive and creative in the middle of the circle. That line divides stages 3 and 4 on Kegan’s chart.
Don’t try to understand the entire graphic from this picture. If you are interested, you can learn more about the profile by asking your coach.
If you hope to make the most of your coaching experience it is important that you do your homework in between sessions. You will gain insight in your coaching sessions. Change, however, requires effort between sessions.