A Conversation on Coaching with Dick McCollum
by T.J. Elliott
There are many avenues of intervention within companies. Most of them emphasize the group or system. One method that has received greater attention in recent years which focuses upon the individual in the context of the company is coaching. There are many books on the subject and even more practitioners. To explore that aspect of `Mind On The Job', I asked a friend of Cavanaugh Leahy & Company and a veteran coach, Dick McCollum, to spend some time with me talking about the concept and reflecting on his experience of coaching.
TJE: What is coaching? What's your personal definition?
DMc: Helping someone to design and take actions which will forward their goals. I think of sports. Someone comes on to a team and the coach is responsible for developing that person into a more excellent performer. When they come in they bring you a body; that's what you have to work with. In my case I wanted to play guard on the football team but only weighed 110 lb. It's important that you start with what you've got and then help them get where they can.
The person who is to be coached, however, must make choices about what they want to do. If I had said I want to go out and play guard not backfield, my coach might have told me, "There are some things you can do but you will face limitations. Try the backfield and see if that doesn't get you what you want." I could have insisted, "I don't want to do that." He then might have replied, "I don't see a role for me with you then." So coaching is achieving what is possible with an individual performer and developing pathways to get to that possibility.
Coaching is a dance to help people utilize what they've got, to develop competencies so that they can do what they do better. It isn't therapy in the sense that it does not evaluate and analyze the insides of an individual and then ask for changes in those elements so they can create someone different in that process. I may coach someone to change a lot of their actions but I would need their acquiescence in that we are going for goals. Coaching concentrates on what it is they possess, what their true self is and what is possible for that unique self.
TJE: Why do people get coaching ?
DMc: More recently I've come to think that people don't always distinguish between therapy and coaching. I hope the why is that they say to themselves and then to me, "I've come to want to do something better." The people who get the most out of coaching in my opinion are the ones who say, "I have a goal and I've come because I want to achieve my best." And they realize that they need someone to help them.
Think about it: if you're a singer and you want to get better: What do you do? You get a coach. If you're a violinist and you want to get better: What do you do? You get a coach. The coach deals in those areas both with how you can bring out the best, that is the way to approach situations, as well as the content, the specific expertise of singing or playing the violin. The kind of coaching I do people come to it for the reflection and practice on how they can approach the key situations in their professional life more excellently.
For example, I talk to a brilliant woman who is an economist. I don't know that subject in the way that she does. I can talk to her and help her in the ways in which she executes her art more effectively.
TJE: What are your concerns about the process?
DMc: If I had my way I would want to make sure that whoever is doing coaching also has a coach or a therapist. It's very important that they not visit their baggage upon others. One of the reasons that I do testing is to make sure that I'm actually seeing what I think I see, and that I'm not putting my own belief system on this person I'm coaching. I think that it is very possible and dangerous for a coach to do that, to come in with preconceived notions. Coaching has to be the "coachee's" projection of themselves of what they have desired for themselves. If you take the corporation's viewpoint of who they are or society's viewpoint, you may be selling them out.
TJE: What about testing?
DMc: That's just a mechanism that I use. Somebody else might be more adept at asking questions and taking notes to figure out who is sitting in front of them. I want to assess who they are as effectively as possible and I want to make sure that my questions don't suggest answers. I want then to ask them if this is really who they are. I have to be conscious of how I experience myself when I experience them, so I don't confuse me for them.
Let me read you from a document that I like. It is from a course that I participated in: "Ontological coaching", says the document, "is coaching that involves a process of transformation that we choose to undergo, in which we accept to observe, question and change the principles of coherence that constitute ourselves. It involves not just learning but meta-learning. It always involves the possibility of being a different way than what we are. It is not about new skills... what is at stake is what we call ... our soul."
TJE: What is the sequence in coaching? What happens first? What are the essential components?
DMc: The sequence, for me, is rather simple. First there is a contract stage, where the coachee and I agree to work together and agree what we are together working to achieve in the coachee; perhaps some measurable goals to prove to ourselves that we have addressed and accomplished the task. Second is a period of intense assessment and "un-concealing" of who the coachee is. This takes the form of written and spoken exercises, some measurements and my own assessment of my experience of the coachee. Next there is feedback from peers, superiors, subordinates, and perhaps customers (if external to the organization) which would give us some comparative basis for looking at who the coachee says he/she is and who others say he/she is. Out of these endeavors, we then arrive at what we really need to work on and for in order to develops the goals of the coachee most appropriately. We then contract, again for the work to be accomplished. And then we get to work. For me this is a year- long process to make certain that I am there to support behaviors and beingness that will allow them to accomplish the transformation that they have said they desire.
TJE: The writer Claire Tristram wrote in Fast Company: "Executive coaches are not for the meek. They're for people who value unambiguous feedback. If coaches have one thing in common, it's that they are ruthlessly results-oriented. Executive coaching isn't therapy. It's product development, with you as the product." What do you think of that?
DMc: I agree with everything that person said. I'm a little uncomfortable with the dehumanizing words. You're not a product, you're a human being. Ruthless? For me it is tough love. I'm not being ruthless. I need to be courageous and honest to tell you what you need to hear. It isn't all about feedback. It's about support. It's about development in such a way that is consistent with the stand the person wants to take in life. It's about getting to a stand that makes their life more meaningful. Coaching needs to enhance the stature and quality of the person's life.
TJE: Let me try another quote on you: "An executive will rise or fall according to her communication skills," writes Across the Board columnist John Wareham, a New York-based lecturer and executive coach, in The Anatomy of a Great Executive (Harper Collins), "for at least three-quarters of her time involves communicating and much of the rest contemplating how to communicate most effectively." Indeed, many business failings can be traced to ineffective communication. Adept as top executives may be at making decisions and issuing orders, they may be equally inept at involving others in the decision-making process, negating subordinates' efforts. From your experience what do you think of this statement?
DMc: What that person is saying is certainly true. But, I have to make a much more "ontological" statement. It has to do with the being of a person. Communication implies the transfer of information. It is that but there is something more integrative than that. You and I both know leaders who don't say much of anything. Yet they engage people in such a way to quickly fall behind them. There is enough data behind the person's words in the way they are to get across what they mean . I want to make sure that we don't overemphasize the technique of verbal communication. I worked with someone with a speech defect. This person has to work through that and is pretty eloquent in her being. What is it that allows her to do that? If the implication of this quote is that the coach knows the best techniques - maybe yes, maybe no. I, as coach, have to know more importantly whether the person communicates their beingness so that they can operate most effectively as a leader.
TJE: How would you work with someone on their 'beingness'?
DMc: I think that I'm trying to measure the impact of the person on other people. My measurements are to listen, to see, to experience on a meta-level, what their values are and how they project them. What gets projected when they walk into the room. In getting to know somebody I may see that there may be other things or issues that prevent others from seeing the essential things that I have come to see, the more powerful aspects. My task is getting them to unleash or to reveal these things that allow them not so much to have power over others, but to have the power within themselves show through. If I'm really good I will get them to approve of that being that they are observing. I will get them not only to approve but to love that being that they are. If they can do that then they are probably going to end up pretty damn powerful.
TJE: Why do people get stuck in coaching?
DMc: It's usually giving up a behavior which they confuse with giving up something of themselves. For example when people have an informational interview, they may be afraid NOT to say, "Do you have anything in the way of a position right now?" Getting people to give up that behavior is difficult even though the behavior is counterproductive. Another example is that when people want to be promoted and recognized they get stuck with wanting to be promoted instead of the greater goals they really want.
TJE: They confuse the means with the end?
DMc: Yes, for instance what if you had a habit of yelling at people who work for you. You don't need to. But when I say something to you about it in a coaching session because I've observed it, you might retort, "But I've always done that and it has worked for me." I might even prove to you that you won't succeed with this group using that behavior and yet you persist. Is it more important - this old behavior - to you than what you want to do? This is a spot where coaching may lead to therapy if the person is stuck enough.
TJE: What are the other obstacles to successful coaching?
DMc: Fear of being oneself, or that if you were oneself then one wouldn't be who one has always known oneself to be. Maybe the person says "I'm pretty comfortable with all my neuroses, who I've always been, so I don't know if I want to try it your way." For example, when I was in a HS play and they would suggest that I act a certain way and speak a certain way and talk a certain way, I would say that it looked stupid. But they said it looked good. I had to trust them and then later on it worked and I also started to feel more comfortable with it.
TJE: We've covered a great deal of ground. As we conclude, is there some essential point of coaching that we've missed, some aspect that deserves mention?
DMc: The distinction of coaching as we have to come to call it, it seems to me, needs to be developed for its uniqueness. Coaching is like a caterpillar taking a hard look at himself and discerning, perhaps dimly, a butterfly; and helping usher in that transformation from excellent crawling, to flying. And the coachee, like the caterpillar, probably has no concept or sense of reality about flying, so that it is almost nonsense to him. What he knows, what he has done, had been in the domain of a caterpillar. The duty of a coach, is to also see the possible butterfly and provide a path so that transformation can occur. What we do is un-conceal who a coachee is, and can be becoming.
To talk more about coaching contact Pam Cavanaugh
Richard E. McCollum Executive Consulting
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