Global Coaching Perspectives

Global Coaching Perspectives - Coaching Leadership
hear about them) depression, drug dependency,
and chronic family dysfunction. At the same time,
others are coming to leadership with elation,
passion, and excitement – literally sharing joy in
the world.
We don’t yet have research that proves it, but
our observation is that leaders who are using
coaching generally come with a more functional
profile – happier, healthier and more effective –
and much nicer to be with! Instead of drowning
in the turbulence, they’ve found a way of surfing
the energy of the waves. They are taking an
exploratory approach with due regard to context
and a good sense of what is important to them.
VUCA is engaging and even fun to this group;
while hell to others.
Research by the Australian Centre for Coaching
in Organisations provides some insight. The
Centre found that while executive coaching was
valued by all the participants in a leadership
development programme, what made the
programme effective was a systemic approach
that evolved with the context within which is was
designed and conducted.
Dave Snowden and Mary Boone 4 have
developed a decision-making model that
provides insight into how a coaching
methodology or mindset could help leaders
to stay on the bright side of life. Their model
proposes that different problem situations
require different approaches. Complex problems
require a perspective that views the situations
an adaptive system with characteristics such as
interrelatedness, non-linearity, phase-shifts, and
emergence. Leaders are advised to ‘probe’ as a
first response, which then provides opportunities
to influence the system using appropriate forms
of analysis and problem solving. If VUCA is
happening – and we believe it is – then more
and more problem situations are going to be
complex. Therefore, leaders who are probing/
exploring – taking a coaching approach – are
more likely to be successful on a range of
measures across personal and professional
domains.
The shift in thinking towards a coaching
leadership style involves moving from an
individual, competitive mindset to a collective,
collaborative one. Probing, exploring and
creating in unstable organisational systems is a
lonely and dangerous business on one’s own. In
these complex systems energy is generated as
rich conversations across silos, engaging both
the heart and the head.
Let’s go back to see where Goleman and
emotional intelligence fits in. The role of leaders
is to probe and encourage others to probe,
yet organisations and the people in them are
under great pressure and stress in VUCA. With
stress comes a variety of fight, flight or freeze
responses. Leaders therefore need emotional
intelligence to hold conversations that will
influence the system; coaching is the approach
that promotes this. There is one more feature of
a successful coaching methodology that helps
us understand the VUCA-Leadership-Coaching
nexus. A true coaching approach requires an
exploration of values with the person being
coached. Without a values base – implicit or
explicit – the most clever and pleasant coaching
process will fall over in the face of VUCA
turbulence. For leaders, the one thing that can
be constant regardless of the context is a set of
deeply-held values. The behaviours consistent
with those values may vary, but the values must
hold firm (whilst reflecting lifespan growth).
Then leaders will be taken seriously as they help
people explore what is possible for them, their
teams, their organisations and society.
David Peterson, Director of Executive Coaching
and Leadership at Google, recently extolled the
need for executives to have VUCA experiences –
to be put in situations that are uncomfortable and
challenging and require engagement with new
kinds of problems 5 . A coaching methodology
encompasses just such encouragement to
explore the unknown. This suggests that perhaps
it is time to embed a leadership narrative where
exploration of the possible becomes dominant,
and values are explicitly discussed. The critical
difference is that curiosity and exploration would
be seen as the leadership default rather than
options to call on when things are not quite so
hectic. The VUCA-isation of business and the
world would suggest that waiting for calm waters
might not be a healthy strategy.
The challenge for our own and other business
schools is to provide more guidance for dealing
with a VUCA world, with particular emphasis on
the role of coaching and guidance for leaders
in the coaching methodology. At QUT our hope
is for our programmes to be consistent with the
view expressed by the late writer, poet and civil
rights activist Maya Angelou: ‘My mission in life
is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do
so with some passion, some compassion, some
humour, and some style.’
January 2016 | Issue 8 | associationforcoaching.com | 4