I read with great interest the bold experiment launched by Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks to encourage his young baristas to trigger conversations on complex issues like race. In this particular campaign the barista was expected to write the words “race together” on customer cups – a trigger to initiate a conversation on the contentious issue. Needless to say the campaign ran into some rough weather.

Reading this triggered an entirely different thought in my mind – a thought around coffee and conversations, not by baristas but HR professionals. Young HR professionals who are responsible for employee engagement and people partnership are often expected to have one-on-ones or coffee conversations with employees. I have often seen that many of these professionals feel quite challenged having these conversations.  They feel challenged for two reasons – they may not know enough about the subject to carry on a great conversation or more importantly they may just lack the conversation skills.

Back to Starbucks, I am wondering whether they had spent time training their baristas on the art of conversation and about the subject of race. I would imagine that it is only the exceptionally gifted ones who can have such conversations without training or preparation.

HR professionals are often required to have conversations around company policies, careers, the performance rating system, bad managerial styles, perceived unfairness, pay increases and such like. To be able to engage in such conversations with empathy and understanding without feeling compelled to offer solutions or defend oneself or convince the other person is indeed a fine art – something that even the most seasoned Coaches sometimes struggle with.

However, the idea to me is extremely exciting. Imagine the difference it can make if hundreds of young HR professionals were able to pull off great conversations with employees on contentious issues for which there are no right answers. Imagine the difference it will make to the employee’s perceptions of reality, if HR professionals could have conversations which lead not just to inquiry but also change.

That would be the day!

The success of HR professionals depends in good measure on the quality of their conversations with a wide range of stakeholders. Given that the heart  and soul of HR work is listening, consultation, advice, expertise sharing, data gathering, collaborating and joint problem solving, and rests on trust, confidentiality and credibility, effective conversations are at the very core of what makes all this effective.

Based on my personal experience, I am able to identify at least seven contexts calling for great conversations from HR professionals.

Conversations to build trust

All good relationships are built on trust.  For trust to develop, HR Professionals must move out of their role boundaries and communicate with candour and openness and of course sensitivity. They must learn to connect at a human level with the leader or manager in the business.  Such candor becomes especially important in owning up failures.   

Conversations to demonstrate empathy

Leaders and managers may often express issues, concerns and problems. HR Professionals should resist the temptation and anxiety to offer ready-made solutions and instead tune into their worlds, listen with empathy and respond with understanding. To be seen as someone capable of listening and understanding is by itself a huge virtue.

Conversations to bring new perspectives

HR Professionals often need to share with leaders and manager organizational issues and concerns arising out of their sensing effort. They may also need to present their professional views and opinions when called for. This will call for being precise, firm, respectful, objective and sensitive and of course open to engage in a dialogue. 

Conversations to shape agendas

HR Professionals need to spend a fair amount of time having conversations with managers and leaders to give shape to their HR agendas and plans.  This will require them to ask the right questions and take an outside-in view to the business.  The focus in these conversations is to find out what HR needs to do.

Conversations around the leader’s agenda

Leaders and managers often look to HR as a neutral platform to discuss some of their dilemmas and use them as a thinking partner to make certain critical decisions.  In these conversations the partner must not only be a great listener but also ask good questions and present his or her perspectives in an neutral and unbiased manner to facilitate clarity and decision making.

Conversations to bring a teachable point of view

There are times when leaders and managers look to HR for expert advice or guidance.  These are typically in areas where HR has expertise. In these conversations the partner has to present his or her knowledge and insights with precision and confidence.

Conversations around immediacy

There will always be times when the relationship between the HR professional and the leader or manager is broken because of a conflict, or a particular issue. It is important that he or she has the skill to talk about things that are coming in the way of their relationship with the objective of addressing the issues and restoring the relationship.

When HR professionals learn to have these seven conversations well, their leaders and managers find it a pleasure to work with them, seek them out and will always have time for them.

The CEO has been talking about risks to key talent and the urgent need to do something. The HR head is unable to read the CEO’s concern about “risk to talent” against the context in which the CEO mentions it and responds defensively by talking about the Top Talent Development management program he has launched and how it will solve the problem. The CEO gives up and calls in a consultant, albeit reluctantly.

This HR Manager is facing huge resistance from one particular Line Manager over a new policy change that he has been championing. His discussions are going nowhere.  The HR Manager is unable to influence him by taking for a moment the perspective of the line manager and keeps pushing hard. No marks for guessing that things turn nasty.

In a lot of my work as a coach, consultant and facilitator I encounter very senior and successful HR professionals who often fail to see things from others points of view.  These otherwise competent professionals somehow fail to imagine or envision how things might look from somebody else’s perspective.

So, what do we call this skill or ability? Experts in the field of psychology and human behaviour describe this ability as cognitive empathy.

Cognitive empathy is also called perspective taking and is also seen as related to the theory of mind or the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others and through that understand others’ perspectives, beliefs, intentions and needs. Cognitive empathy is about cognitively appreciating how others are feeling or how things look from their perspective.

There are at least nine things that HR Professionals with high cognitive empathy are able to do.

1. They are able to understand their line manager better by imagining how things look from their perspective.
2. They strongly believe that there are two sides to every situation and always look at them both.
3. They are able to accurately assess what their stakeholders would say before they take a decision that affects them.
4. They are able to comprehend the real meaning of what their leaders are saying by combining what they said with the context in which it was said.
5. They find it easy to visualize and understand how their line managers are likely to receive what they are about to say.
6. They are able to read between the lines and gather the unstated needs, expectations and messages from business.
7. They are alive to potential disagreements in any situation.
8. They are able to imagine with reasonable accuracy what their internal customers are thinking of them and how they are being assessed.
9. They are able to influence the behaviours of their stakeholders by saying things in a way that appeals to them

So what hinders or helps in developing cognitive empathy?

Egocentricity or pre-occupation with oneself certainly hinders the development of cognitive empathy. HR Professionals who are able to transcend their own needs, anxieties and concerns are able to develop and demonstrate cognitive empathy. Given the socio-cultural shift towards greater individualistic orientation, the development of cognitive empathy will call for conscious and deliberate efforts.

You will agree that what I say here about HR folks is equally applicable to business folks too. But, then this blog is for HR folks!

What are the things that concern our employees today? What seem to be the most common causes for their psychological and emotional disturbances? Many of us who are conditioned to thinking about our employees within organisational boundaries are likely to say that it could be their pay, their most recent performance review, their careers or their managers. Many of us are just not oriented to think of our employees as individuals within a social setting.

In reality, when compared with workplace factors, socio-cultural factors have a far deeper impact on the psychological and emotional state of employees and therefore their behaviours.

History tells us that for most nations, economic progress has always brought with it several irreversible socio-cultural shifts. These socio-cultural shifts when not managed well places a huge psychological and emotional burden on everyone in the society including our employees.  My research about the helping needs of employees also confirms that 80% of the problems that employees face are what we might call personal problems. In the present Indian context, these personal problems are to a large extent triggered by socio-cultural shifts which have their origin in our economic progress.  In my view there are five problems or societal concerns arising out of rapid socio-cultural shifts in the last decade that all of us must be concerned about.

1. Making relationships work

One of the most important sources of stress and transient disturbance among young employees in metropolitan India seems to be around making their relationships work.  High disposable income, freedom and privacy given the need and opportunity to migrate and live and work in a different city and lack of norms to live life given the conflicts between local and global cultural identities, has had a huge impact on how young employees view their relationships. While getting into relationships seems easy, making it work through investment of time and mutual adjustment seems hard in a rapidly emerging individualistic society. As a result, the trauma of getting into relationships, breaking up relationships and reinvesting in them before and after marriage are causing enormous trauma among a reasonable percentage of youth at the workplace. Given the nature of the issue, family support is often not available or of little help. While we may traditionally term this as personal, its impact on employee engagement and productivity is not difficult to image.

2. The guilt of being a young working mother

Even as organisations are hiring women employees in very large numbers and are doing their best to provide flexibility and support systems, it gets very hard when women start a family. The guilt associated with pursuing one’s career and not paying enough attention to the child is carried almost entirely by women and not men and its psychological implications are enormous. While one part of them wants to continue to and progress in their career the other part constantly reminds them about the price they are paying in terms of caring for their child and being there when needed. While some are able to take hard decisions, many attempt to find that elusive “balance” and suffer in the bargain.

 3.  Maintaining health and wellbeing

It is common knowledge that today’s threat to health and wellbeing is not as much from infectious diseases as it is from lifestyle illnesses.  We see increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart diseases and cancer among employees in their 30s and 40s in India.  While many employees see opportunities to grow and prosper, their psychological preparedness to cope with what it takes to seize those opportunities seems grossly inadequate as evidenced by the distressing rise of these lifestyle diseases among young Indians. The implications of this are enormous for individuals and their organisations. While progressive organisations have programs in place to promote health and wellbeing and make this an organisational priority, such progressive organisations are few in number.  

4. Parenting amidst affluence

For many generations of Indian kids, the burning desire to do well in life or just survive and build one’s life was enough of a source of motivation to take responsibility and get one’s act together. For many parents of today, their challenge is to bring up kids in an environment of affluence and abundance. Affluence combined with what many call today’s vacillation between over parenting and freedom has ended up making the parent – child relationship quite fragile.  Many parents confess that it is very hard for them to carry on a real conversation with their children beyond five minutes, leave alone develop the ability to establish boundaries, influence them and their decisions. Parents who are unable to develop the skills of parenting in a globally connected environment are struggling and that number is growing by the day.

5. Caring for aging parents with individualistic orientations

With increasing life expectancy, executives across generations have the understandable responsibility of taking care of their parents. However their challenge is complicated by the fact that they are now dealing with parents who are themselves wired differently.  Aged parents of today want their space, time for their leisure activities and the freedom to maintain their daily routines. At the same time, they would like to have access to their children’s care, love and attention, when they need it. This makes the challenge of caring for parents rather complicated for many of today’s employees.

These five societal concerns (and I am sure there are a few more you will be able to spot) have a huge impact on every employee’s emotional and psychological state. Unless employees are able to develop the concept of individual development planning to handle these challenges and also get access to the right sources of help to develop the internal capacity to handle these challenges, they are likely to become far less effective than they potentially can be.

Given this reality, only a helping oriented organisation will be in a position to even empathize with these needs and concerns and explore ways in which it can help its employees help themselves.

Every year, a clutch of consulting firms routinely release their “much awaited” list of best employers or workplaces in India. These lists are based on the firm’s hypothesis or definition of “best employer” and a research methodology they adopt to validate that hypothesis or definition.

As I see these lists I find the usual suspects. Some names on the list surprise me. I also wonder why some are missing. To me these lists raise many questions about employee value propositions, engagement and the larger issue of Branding.

So, here are the questions I ask myself as I see these lists and some tentative and incomplete answers I give myself. 

1. Is there one truth to who the “best” employer is?

Like many things in life, there is more than one truth, each defined from a certain logic bubble. So also is the question of who can be called best employer. Each firm has its own definition and its own methodology. That means the list can be quite diverse. Of course, shorn of all jargon, some common truths emerge.   Employees value money, career opportunities, good hygiene in terms of benefits and facilities, a safe workplace, a friendly atmosphere that promotes affiliation and so on. Long Live Abraham Maslow!

2. If an organisation does not appear on any of the lists, does that mean they are not a good employer?

Not really. It may simply mean that they did not take the trouble to apply. Maybe they were not aware or did not have the time or just did not believe in all this. Maybe they applied but did not make it to the list. There are thousands and thousands of employers who are fair, pay reasonably, provide good work, ensure safe and fair working conditions and help their employees perform and grow but are not on any list. I wonder if it requires a certain extraversion to get onto these lists. 

3. If an organisation is on the list, is it truly among the best employers?

I am now entering muddy waters but I will muddle my way through and answer nevertheless.

There are two possibilities I see here. Most organisations that figure in the list are good employers. They would meet all the criteria that most of us would consider important. Some in fact, do a very good job on many counts. This is one possibility.

There is another possibility. If the consulting firm that is running the survey did not have good participation, they might be forced to create a list from among those who applied.  That is not a good situation but quite a possibility – remember, organisations also suffer from “best employer application fatigue”.

 Also, if you read the CV of some of the HR Heads, one item on their CV that they are proud of is their effort to get their organisation onto a list. Does that mean that with some effort, you can get onto some list?

 4. What is the future of these branding efforts in a world driven by social media

Perhaps a decade ago, when the media controlled information about organisations and employees relied almost entirely on what they read in the media to form impressions about organisations, these lists were very influential.

With all the information available about organisations and its people and its practices on the social media on a real time basis, employees are able to form impressions and make decisions effortlessly. It is my belief that a list published once a year has little value today.

In fact, if these lists need to survive in the next five years, they may need to reinvent themselves and find ways in which they can offer real-time insights into organisations. One never knows. Someone might come up with an app (and some VC might fund it) to offer employees real-time insights into their target organisations using crowd sourcing and through that make these lists almost redundant.

5. Why am I saying all this and being such a spoil sport?

I am saying all this because I find it hard to come to terms with the current approach to employer branding. I belong to a school of thought that if you did all the right things because you believed in it, your brand will be recognised.  It looks contrived that an organisation can work on its employer brand and act like someone that it really is not – that would be phoney.

This Guide is meant to help Potential Sponsors of executive coaching engagements help  their team members (the coachees) get the most out of the experience.

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Assessment has an important place in leader development, given that it creates the necessary disequilibrium to motivate change. However, assessment without appreciation, a form of emotional nurturance, can leave learners diffident. In this article, Ganesh Chella shares how assessment when preceded by discovery of an individual’s positive core using the principles of AI can be powerful in engendering acceptance and change.

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Considering Coaching as part of your leadership development approach? Or perhaps you already have an institutionalized coaching process, and are wondering how to make it more effective. Whatever the stage of coaching evolution in the organization, a question that we often hear is “How do we make coaching more effective from the organization’s point of view”?

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Your organization has just offered you the opportunity of working with a coach as a part of your leadership development and you have said yes to it. You are excited but also somewhat unsure. There are a thousand questions flooding your mind and you really wish you could find some honest answers.This Document shows throws light on many of those critical questions. 

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Every time I catch up with my friends who are CHROs in reasonably large organisations, one thing strikes me instantly. They are all so busy. Their calendars are full and their mail boxes are overflowing. They have many problems to solve, decisions to make and urgent and important things to get done – a new acquisition to integrate, a big account to win, an IR fire in a factory to put out, some CXO hire to close out, some headcount reduction to complete, a disgruntled employee’s complaint to the CEO to resolve and so on. Having exited corporate life as a CHRO 15 years ago, I shudder at the thought of doing one of these jobs today.

This picture is a far cry from the image of CHROs as men or women sitting in a corner office on the 15th floor, coming up with great strategies, conceptualising new OD interventions, ideating on the next big HR breakthrough and generally flexing their grey cells and sharing their wisdom.

Does that mean today’s HR leaders are operational and not strategic? Well, if being focussed on results and getting things done under trying circumstances is defined as operational then every CEO of any business today is extremely operational. In fact, the divide between operational and strategic is irrelevant today.  

Since CEOs are focussed on getting things done, they are certainly likely to expect their CHROs to focus on execution and get things done too and that to me is good news. It is good news because it is indicative of HR being very close to business and business results.

In fact, leadership roles in HR are no different from leadership roles in other functions today. There is a huge premium on execution and on doing what it takes to keep the wheels of business moving.

That brings me to the rhetorical question – should CHROs be wise or young?

The fact that more and more Boards are hiring CEOs who are young and energetic is indicative of the sharp focus on execution that is demanded of the role.  

What is true for CEOs will be true for CHROs. I strongly believe that HR leaders of today and tomorrow need to be young and have the energy to cope with the huge operational demands of their roles. There is little room for those without the energy to act.

Of course, it goes without saying that the winning CHROs of tomorrow would be the ones who can combine their youthful energy with wisdom.

Like Joel A Barker said, “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”

For years now, many HR leaders have been busy implementing what is popularly referred to as the tripod structure for their HR functions – the three legged stool consisting of shared services , centers of excellence and business partners.

In theory, three legs are supposed to be neat and provide a lot of stability. But the problem is that business does not want a wooden stool to sit but an adaptive and organic function that works and deliver results.

Thanks to our research efforts for our book #hrhereandnow, we have been talking to several HR leaders and teams and one uncomfortable truth that we got in touch with is this – the so called tripod HR structure looks neat but is not always working and delivering results.

Why the famous tripod structure is not working

1.      Power and context: While on paper there are CoEs and partners who are expected to do their bit, the reality is that there is a baggage, a legacy and history to bear in mind. There are power centres to deal with. If the businesses or functions within the organisation are federal in nature, it is quite likely that the HR Business Partners will align strongly with the businesses and business leaders and call the shots and the so called centres of excellence will feel marginalized. In other words, the front will drive the back.

On the other hand, if the organisation has a centralized structure or power is centralized at head office, it is quite likely that the CoEs will call the shots and the HR Business Partners will see themselves as merely deploying corporate initiatives. In other words, when the back drives the front, the situation is the reverse.

Power and influence becomes much more potent than the structure on paper.

2.      Tenure: HR teams experience a fair amount of churn. They also grow and hire new people. Also, HR functions rely a lot on history. As a result, irrespective of the structure, much depends on who has been there long enough, who knows most of the senior business and functional leaders, who can get things done for whom and who has a successful track record and is therefore well regarded. Such a person could be an HR Business Partner or in a CoE or be running shared services but business will go to that person all the time. Sometimes such a person could be in the largest factory or the biggest business division or the most profitable entity or has the greatest trouble shooting abilities. The person might determine the structure.

3.      Goal alignment, competition: HR teams often have the greatest trouble collaborating. While they are busy propagating team work, they have trouble working as a team. For one, they are in specialized and fragmented roles. They also have goals and KRAs that force them to do what will make them look good or earn their bonuses rather than contribute to the business or help the function as a whole. Sometimes, the goals of one person might not be aligned to that of another. An L&D person might have goals to run a certain number of programs but the HR Business partner might push back because businesses is having a busy season. A business partner may be under pressure to come up with a policy or program to solve a local problem but the CoE may find it unacceptable.

4.      Shared Services may not be world class: An important precondition for CoEs and HR Business Partner roles to succeed is that shared services as a function will take away all the transactional work and drive not just efficiency but also service excellence. It was assumed that shared services will liberate these individuals from intervening to make processes work. Unfortunately, we have ended up positioning shared services as the place for the weakest or as the least glamorous function. HR may also not invest in technology or automation and as a result both CoEs and Partners are embarrassed about the fact that we continue to deal with problems in full and final settlement or faulty on-boarding.

The way out

It would be too simplistic for me to suggest that all tripods structures should be disbanded and replaced with something else. Much depends on the nature of the business, its size, maturity, quality of the team, business priorities, cost considerations and so on.

Having said so, a few general pointers are worth offering:

HR leadership maturity: Irrespective of the structure, HR leaders within the organisation at a certain level and above must transcend structures and worry about the business and organisation as a whole. There must be every effort to ensure that all leaders in HR have shared leadership for shaping the function. They must also role model openness, trust and collaboration.

Internal mobility: Diversity of experiences makes people a lot more open and appreciative of one another. HR leaders must ensure that their team members keep moving within and we do not bring up silly excuses about past experiences or specialist knowledge to prevent mobility. Only mobility will foster collaboration.

 Matching competencies with roles: The tripod structure assumes that the incumbents have competencies that befit the roles they are playing. HR Business partners need strong partnering competencies, they need HR planning abilities, they need to have internal consulting abilities. Similarly, those in CoEs need to have specialist abilities relevant to their work, be it Organisation Development or Learning or Talent Management.

From silos to processes: For ages, businesses have been reinventing their functional roles to build them around value adding processes rather than remain silos. HR has an urgent need to do the same. Rather than organize roles around functional specializations, HR may need to organize roles around value adding HR processes. 

In my mind, the HR tripod can at best be a dynamic framework to organize HR resources and competencies to meet business needs and not a structure that imprisons us and prevents value addition.

A participant of CFI’s CEO Coach Accreditation Programme was looking forward to his coaching internship to apply the new knowledge and skills that he had acquired in the classroom. At the start of the engagement, he was confronted with a situation where the original Coaching agenda as agreed upon was not what the coachee seemed to be uppermost in the mind of the coachee given certain sudden developments in his career. The Coach intern wondered whether he should continue working with the original agenda or work on the coachee’s current needs. He even questioned whether Coaching was appropriate in the given situation.

That is when Coach intern turned to his peer supervision and support group (his co-participants in the programme) for help. Without compromising confidentiality, he discussed how his Coachee during the course of the initial conversation disclosed that he could be laid off. Dealing with this situation seemed to be more pressing than the initial Coaching agenda. Through the discussions with the group, it became clear to the Coach that it was appropriate to address his current need and then move towards the original Coaching goal. These peer discussions not only helped the Coach intern handle the engagement, it also helped his peers gain valuable coaching insights.

CFI has been encouraging its Coaches and interns to actively seek and participate in peer supervision and support which its members have embraced enthusiastically. In this article, we are pleased to share with you some of our Best Executive Coaches experience with Peer
Support and Supervision.

Defining Peer Supervision

A Peer Supervision Group can be defined as “professional support group in the helping profession that provides a safe place to explore the personal and professional development needs of all the practitioners involved in such a group.”  Peer Supervision Groups are not formed to solve other’s problems, or give expert advice to other participants of the group. The primary purpose of peer supervision is to promote peer learning. It is also a forum that fosters the process of self-awareness through techniques like self-disclosure, dialogues, discussions and brainstorming

Why & When CFI recommends Peer Supervision and Support

CFI promotes Peer Supervision and Support as a very beneficial practice for its Coaches and Coach interns. CFI believes that peer supervision should be encouraged at three levels.

1. During classroom sessions, where the participants of the programme interact face-to-face and learn mutually by sharing inputs on situations enacted through role-plays or during the course of their internship practice. Such peer supervision could take place either through calls or face-to-face discussions.

2. In their journey of professional development where Certified Coaches seek out other Coachees as peer supervisors.

3. Specifically in Coaching engagements where a team of Coaches are working with a group of Coachees in the same organisation. Here peer supervision becomes very critical in order to share contextual knowledge and align approaches and deliver an overall value to the sponsor organisation.

In all the CEO Coach Accreditation Programmes, each participant is assigned a peer partner. They would then work together on role-plays and dyadic discussions in the class room. They also continue to support each other during the course of the entire internship.In addition to some of the benefits outlined above, the practice of Peer Supervision has helped CFI establish a great culture where no Coach believes s/he has arrived and is perfect and beyond review. It also enables Coaches to develop the humility to accept that s/he can be effective by partnering with a peer at all times.

In the 2010 batch of our CEO Coach Accreditation Programme, the participants undertook an interesting experiment. In addition to their peer partner support, the participants chose to stay connected as a batch to provide peer support to achieve two goals:

1. ensure that they completed the course requirements on time without delays caused by lack of clarity, support and so on
2. learn from each other’s experiences

Using a conference call platform to accomplish this objective, the group has been interacting every fifteen days since the completion of their class room sessions. It would be interesting to know the outcome of their efforts.

CFI’s Coach Perspectives

Momentum of Building Relations

Mr. Gothi, a participant of the sixth batch in 2009, believes that a successful peer relation solely depends on the level of cooperation that participants have amongst themselves. He confesses that the first couple of meetings may need one of the participants to take the initiative. However, over time the enthusiasm builds to an extent that a peer meeting planned for 2 hours could go on for longer. This enthusiasm is what makes peer supervision meaningful for each participant.

Leveraging the power of Peer Supervision

Mr. Rajagopal, a participant in the seventh batch of our 2010 CEO Coach Accreditation programme believes Peer Supervision and Support to be a best practice in Coaching. The peer supervision group shares Mr. Rajagopal’s notion – “it helps to share experiences freely, without compromising confidentiality”. By sharing, listening and challenging the team members, they believe that they can gain much deeper insights, which would not be possible through self- reflection alone. This is a platform which functions on mutual understanding. It ensures that the Coach stays committed to the engagement. The peer supervision also guarantees that each Coach maintains the ethical standards which are prescribed for Coaching as a profession.

Peer support in learning

Mr. Sridhar, Mr. Pawan Malhotra and Mr. Pramod Gothi, three of our coach interns participated in another interesting experiment of peer support for learning.  While they were all expected to complete the Eagan exercises as a part of their accreditation requirement they chose to get some real value out of it by coming together as a Triad. They chose exercises that were relevant to their back home client situation and worked on it together as a Triad.  To this process they not only completed the exercises but also engaged in some very lively debates and discussions and most importantly integrated it with some of the client situation they were already confronted with.

This experiment of using peers to support learning certainly seems to hold enormous purpose for CFI coaches.

Addressing Blind Spots

Mr. Chella, Co-founder and Member Governing Board, CFI wants Peer Supervision to become central to the culture of CFI. He believes that this practice would make every Coach more responsible for his or her actions, especially because each Coach has his / her blind spots and may not realise a certain point or issue on his / her own. Given CFI’s Coachee-centric model, Peer Supervision helps Coaches to validate their actions, cross-check their diagnosis, deal with their own anxieties and concerns in a suitable manner

Caution

While every participant agrees that Peer Supervision is very beneficial, they believe that it is not a substitute for supervision by a more experienced Coach

It is recommended that Peers should not offer advice on action points and the final decision should be left to the concerned Coach.

Concluding Thoughts

It is evident from the above experiences that Peer Supervision and Support is a very valuable platform and enhances the quality of the Coaching process. It also helps provide a robust quality assurance process in a profession that is so personal. It is also fast emerging as CFI’s key differentiator and distinct cultural identity.

-Saumya Rastogi

This article focuses on some of the ground level issues involved in setting up an effective relationship between a Coach and the Client or Coachee. At CFI we refer to this entire process as the pre engagement phase or the phase before the actual coaching commences.

Coaching is a very personal process and therefore does not follow a single universal flow or sequence.  Different individuals and Organisation have their own unique needs and contexts and therefore the process adopted in setting up a coaching relationship can be quite varied depending on these needs and contexts.  However there are certain universal principles that if adopted can help him establish a robust coaching entrepreneurs relationship. This is the purpose of the article.

The search and empanelment process

Setting up a sound coaching relationship rests on the ability of the organisation to first establish a robust search and empanelment process. Organisations with a mature coaching history tend to have a fairly well established process for the search and identification of potential coaches and empanelling them. This empanelment process protects the Organisation from the risk of hastily scouting around for and assembling a team of coached after the need has arisen and coachees have been identified.

While some Organisations have well evolved a method to manage this empanelment process many others may not have this process at all. In my opinion this is a very desirable process but it will be quite a while before Indian Organisations get there. This subject however merits a separate article!

Two way or three way relationships

 At the heart of setting a coaching relationship is the awareness about the issues surrounding three way and two way coaching relationships.

In most corporate settings coaching relationships are three way.  In other words, there is always a sponsor who would be the immediate manager, the coachee who would be the client and the coach who is the expert.  Of course there would in addition also be the HR leader or the L&D leader who would act as a facilitator.

In a more entrepreneurial setting or when the Founder or CEO himself / herself is looking for a coach it is a simple two way relationship because the sponsor and the coachee or the client is the same.  At CFI we have seen many entrepreneurs seeking Coaching on their own.  We have also seen executives with a pressing agenda or dilemma seeking coaching help on their own.

CFI we have had enough experience in reviewing two way and three way relationships and on this basis are able to come up with some generalised guidelines.

Two way coaching relationship

In our experience, a two way relationship has a significantly higher potential to succeed compared to a three way relationship for the simple reason that the coachee has taken the initiative of seeking coaching help on his / her own and is not being encouraged to do so by anyone.

In a two way relationship we have normally seen a fair level of motivation in the coachee to achieve something.  This motivation ensures the commitment to get value out of the engagement. His willingness to bear the cost of coaching is the ultimate test of his motivation.

In addition to commitment, in a two way relationship the coachee always has a reasonable sense of what he / she wants out of the coaching engagement.  This makes it much easier for the coach to zero in on the coaching goal.

Most importantly in a two way relationship there are no conflicts between what the coachee would like to achieve and what anybody else believes he / she would achieve.  To that extent there are no alignment concerns.

While a two way relationship has many benefits there are also problems.

• • The lack of a sponsor leads to the absence of a broad system perspective about the coachee. In other words, we may not get a sense of how the coachee fits in to the Organisation or the eco system.
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    We may not also have access to good quality information about the coachee’s performance in two way relationships.

    
    

However, in my opinion the merits of working in a two way coaching relationship far exceed these constraints.

Three way coaching relationship

A three way coaching relationship is certainly more complex for more reasons than one.  Here are a few:

• Despite best efforts in building awareness about coaching, the coachee may believe that his manager is asking him to undergo coaching because something is wrong with him.
• The coachee may wonder how it will be perceived by others and might even believe that it may not be perceived well.
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  If the relationship between the coachee and his or her manager has not been open and transparent, it is likely that all or some of the coaching needs articulated by the manager to the coach in the intake meeting might come as a total surprise to the coachee.

  
  

It is also quite likely that what the manager sees as the coaching need might be seen as an Organisational failure by the coachee, and he may not take responsibility for it.

In summary a three way coaching relationship has a lot more challenges compared to a two-way relationship because the coachee has not initiated the coaching process and there could be lack of agreement on what the coaching needs are.

Having said this, three way relationships are likely to be more common than two way relationships and we must learn to make them work.

Closing the gaps

HR has a very important role in closing the gaps and ensuring alignment while setting up a three way coaching relationship.  The following are the possible ideas for HR leaders to pursue:

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  Given that coaching is a very new and untested helping relationship HR needs to regularly run several “getting acquainted” seminars and help its leaders within the Organisation appreciate and understand the values that they can obtain from coaching.

  
  
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  HR can ensure that coachees and managers have had adequate dialogues and discussions about the need for coaching and the potential agenda well before they invite the coach for the intake meeting. It can be very embarrassing for all people involved if differences between managers and coachees get surfaced in front of a coach in the intake meeting.

  
  
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  HR must uphold the principle of coaching being a voluntary process and give the employee the freedom to accept or decline it based on his readiness.

  
  
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  Most importantly, HR must be sure that the employee being considered for coaching is indeed ready for coaching and ensure that coaching is not being applied inappropriately. (Please read Dr.S.Sabesan’s article on this subject in this issue.)

  
  
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  HR can explain the process clearly to the coachee and answer any questions he may have about how it will unfold.

  
  
• At a more operational level, HR can help put together all the necessary information about the Coachee for the Coach so that the intake meeting is productive.

A discussion about setting up a sound coaching relationship will not be complete without mention about two specific aspects:

1. The intake meeting
2. The difference between a coaching agenda and a coaching goal.

The intake meeting

The intake meeting is the first formal meeting where the coach meets the coachee and the sponsor.  It is in this meeting that the broad outcomes expected from coaching are discussed and agreed upon.  It is in this meeting that the coach and coachee also meet each other and affirm their comfort in working with one another.

In this meeting the coaching process is clarified and confidentiality boundaries are reiterated.  It is quite likely that some part of the intake meeting will be three way (and maybe even the HR leader) and some part might be only between the coach and the coachee.

It must be clarified that the intake meeting must not be used to assess the credentials of the coach.  This should happen prior to the intake meeting.

At the end of the intake meeting the coach and coachee must be ready to sign off on a formal coaching contract.

Coaching agenda and coaching goal

 The success of a sound coaching relationship depends on the extent to which there is clarity about the coaching agenda and the coaching goal.

I have seen enormous confusion even in the minds of practitioners about difference between the coaching agenda and the coaching goal.

When a manager or Organisation decides to find a coach for a coachee what they have in mind is only a broad coaching agenda.  A coaching agenda is a very broad understanding of the nature of the coaching intervention that is likely to be of value to the coachee.

The Coaching agenda could also be defined as the broad genre under which the coaching engagement is likely to fall.  For example if an individual is identified as a potential leader and is being given the benefit of a coach, then the coaching agenda may be called coaching for leader development.

On the other hand, if a manager believes that an individual could do much better in the current role with coaching help the coaching agenda could be called coaching for performance enhancement and result orientation

A coaching goal will evolve from the coaching agenda.  To move from an agenda to a goal coaches undertake a lot of assessment, examine a lot of data and have detailed discussions with the coachee to explore their dreams, wishes and causes.

For example, while the agenda is performance enhancement and result orientation, the specific gaol could be around overcoming the desire for perfection (that is inhibiting action and result orientation)..

The coaching goal will be very specific, measurable and time bound..

The idea is to start with a broad agreement on the agenda and then narrow down to a specific The Gerard Egan Skilled Helper model that we at CFI are inspired by calls the agenda as the story (stage I) and the goal as the Change agenda (Stage II) . He recommends that we help clients tell their story, derive new perspectives from these stories, identify what will give leverage, establish commitment to change and then zero in on the change agenda.

In establishing a coaching relationship the intake meeting is likely to build clarity on the coaching agenda. The goal will evolve in a few sessions. Many Organisations and sponsors may seek a review soon after the coaching goals are finalised and this we believe is a good practices because it is quite likely that the coaching goals that finally evolve might be not be aligned to the organisationally envisaged agenda.

Conclusion

The pre-engagement phase in a coaching relationship in many ways can determine the success or failure of a coaching relationship and how well it is set up.  As outlined in the article, two way relationships are easier to set up compared to three way relationships.  However, three way relationships are likely to be more common in Organisational settings and we must learn to make a success of it.

HR can play a very important role in setting up this relationship by doing adequate preparatory work well before the crucial intake meeting.

Having clarity about the difference between a coaching agenda and a coaching goal can also make the intake meeting a lot more realistic and give the coach the flexibility to work with the coachee to evolve the final coaching goal.

Coaching is indeed a very personal helping relationship with a huge emphasis on confidentiality. However in the name of confidentiality, we should not treat Coaching as a secretive art where the Coach or the sponsor cannot explain what happens in the relationship and how it will unfold.  Clarity about setting up the coaching relationship can demystify Coaching while also upholding professional standards, the respect and dignity of the Coachee. This is the cause CFI is committed to!

-Ganesh Chella

As in every other profession, we have in the field of coaching, the good coaches and the not so good coaches. It is therefore legitimate on the part of the coachee, and more importantly, the client organization to ask, ‘How effective was the coaching initiative?’ The process of measuring coaching effectiveness is barely mature and is still undergoing a lot of experimentation. At a somewhat pre-mature stage, the ongoing debate in the coaching world is ‘Can you measure the ROI on the investment made?’ This is a legitimate question and here are some tentative but legitimate answers!

Let me start by narrating a very successful coaching engagement. This coaching journey was narrated to CFI in a private gathering by a former CEO of a 2 billion $ global technology company. Let’s call him, Larry Norton.

When Larry took over as the CEO, the company had a rather modest global revenue of US $ 250 million. The Board recognized that the company would generate significant shareholder value if it were to achieve a revenue of US $ 1 billion in three to five years.

Larry being a first time CEO had two concerns: how would he achieve growth rates which were several times that of competition and how would he get the entire organization focussed on this single objective? With the Board’s advice, Larry hired one of the most outstanding coaches in the world, Prof. Ram Charan. As is now well known Prof. Charan has been a coach to Jack Welch and many other global CEOs.

Prof. Charan accepted the assignment and helped the coachee arrive at the coaching goal ‘Four times revenue in three years.’ His fundamental construct of coaching was that the coachee would focus his entire managerial processes of planning, execution, review and rewards on this single objective. Prof. Charan would make himself available for one day every month and that day would be spent in reviewing this single strategic goal. It was said that Prof. Charan accepted his remuneration only after the company had crossed revenues of US $ one billion and had been listed in the American stock market!

How difficult it is to measure the ROI of Prof. Charan’s coaching assignment with Larry? Elementary, one might say! The return in this assignment is not only clearly measurable but amounted to several thousand times the investment made. So, why can’t the ROI in every coaching assignment be measured as well as in Larry’s assignment? The reason is that Business Coaching works on hard business objectives and is therefore amenable to numerical measurements, thereby easy to arrive at ROIs.

The difficulty is in measuring ROI in the area of Executive Coaching. This is more so if coaching involves behavioural changes. We have some models such as The Kirkpatrick model which indicates that behavioural changes must lead into results and productivity and therefore into a tangible ROI. In the four level Kirkpatrick model, Level 1 evaluates “Reactions”, Level 2 evaluates “Learning”, Level 3 evaluates “Behaviour” and Level 4 evaluates “Results”. As of now, there is limited data to indicate how soon behavioural changes can transcend into increased financial returns for the enterprise! Fortunately, re-administering the 360 degree assessment is working out to be an extremely fine tool as a surrogate to measuring the ROI.

Here is an interesting case. John Farmer, 38, joined Asian Business Group to take charge of its new diversified businesses, after a long stint as an investment banker with a European Bank. He soon brought in an investment proposal for a power plant and was nominated as CEO of the new company. The power business began to yield main board. This was the beginning of trouble for John as well as his employers!

In the words of Mr. Hastings, John’s boss, representing the majority stakeholders in the power company, ‘John is an excellent manager but may never reach the main board. He has a chip on his shoulder, he is as cold as a dead mackerel to his colleagues and cynical at the best of times. Nobody knows who the real Mr. Farmer is, and as far as I am concerned I can’t place him and therefore can’t trust him.’

While I will document John’s coaching experience and learnings in some other paper I must say that in the 360 degree assessment almost everybody agreed with Mr. Hastings comments, but felt that trustworthiness was not the real issue. The real issue was probably a deeply embedded loneliness in John Farmer. He was considered a private person. In an unusual gesture John volunteered that the coach could include his wife in the 360 degree assessment. She not only agreed with the views expressed by his colleagues that Mr. Farmer was a private person, but added many insights on how he was misunderstood as somebody with a low concern for people.

Eight months and eight coaching sessions later John agreed to a closing 360 degree assessment. His colleague and CFO for the group summed up their views thus: ‘We knew that John had a coach but we didn’t realize that coaching could make such a transformation in such a short time!’ Mr. Hastings somewhat reluctantly decided to invest in one more new project proposed by John Farmer. In order to raise additional funds Mr. Farmer publicly listed his company and as a result shareholder returns doubled overnight. In his closing lines Mr. Hastings says, ‘I always trusted Mr. Farmer’s effectiveness as a manager. I now trust his intellectual integrity. He is a man for the future of the group.’

The wealth created through the IPO of the power company was clearly an excellent reward for John Farmer’s employers. As a coach, I can boast of a superb ROI! Sadly, however, IPO or shareholder’s returns were not part of our coaching objectives and I don’t wish to be boastful about it. As far as the coach was concerned, a dramatic and sustainable behavioural change on the part of John Farmer was reward enough. Mr. Hastings change to a vote of trust for Mr. Farmer was a source of joy for the coach and the coachee.

In this instance the coachee’s and the sponsor’s objectives were achieved. It is also true that the behavioural changes in the coachee led to a relationship of trust between him and his employers. All this resulted in superior shareholder return.

Can the Coach legitimately claim credit for the shareholder return? Is it fair? That’s the debate in the minds of many Coaches around the world. To ROI or not to ROI!!!

-Pradipta K Mohapatra

Those who invest in coaching (like in the case of training), coaching constantly wonder if their investment is really worth all the cost and effort. They therefore search for and set up a whole host of mechanisms to measure effectiveness. What many do not recognize is that you can design for effectiveness by managing each element of the process effectively. One is to search for the right Coach. More important that even that is to ascertain the extent to which the Coachee is ready for Coaching. In other words, if the Coachee is Coaching ready, there is gain. If the Coachee is not coaching ready, there is only pain and disappointment.

We will explain this through the following real life experiences of our Coaches at CFI.

Situation 1

Mr R is the head of HR of a large Organisation. He was hired six months back. This hire was at the insistence of the Board. The Board is now reviewing his performance. They are quite disappointed with his work as evidenced by his presentation to them. The CEO had in fact given him interim feedback but things had obviously not improved. They Board thinks deeply about the way out. They are convinced that he is on his way out. As a last resort they want to try Executive Coaching.

Situation 2

The CEO of a BPO invites an Executive Coach for discussions. His Organisation has just gone through a merger. In his opinion, his leaders now have to play a much bigger role. He is convinced that Executive Coaching will help. The Coach speaks to the Coachees. They tell him that Coaching is the last thing on their mind. They are unsure about their future, unclear about their roles and tentative about the post – integration situation.

Situation 3

Mr S is a very smart young Sales person. He is shouldering a huge responsibility of an international territory at a very young age. His manager is the CEO. The CEO believes that he has a lot of promise and that coaching will help groom him. The Coach has two sessions with him and abandons the engagement because the Coachee wants answers to his problems – he does not want to be pushed and challenged to find answers.

The three examples clearly point to the futility and even dangers of using Executive Coaching indiscriminately thereby raising a question in people’s minds about the efficacy of coaching.

Even as Indian corporates begin to embark on Coaching in a big way, it would be of immense value to pay attention to the all important issues of Coachee readiness. Companies must take a good look at whether the potential client is ready to receive coaching just as they pay attention to whether the Coach is capable of delivering good Coaching.

It is for this reason that CFI always volunteers to offer a getting acquainted session about Executive Coaching Certification to Organisations and Coachees so that they can make a well considered decision about the appropriateness of Coaching for the coachees. CFI insists that coaching services are offered only to those clients who are potentially ready. CFI also insists that Coachees are given the choice to avail of Coaching and it is not thrust on them.

This article throws light on some of the specific enabling and restraining factors that influence and affect the readiness of the coachee for coaching using CFI’s Coachee readiness model. (given below)

It must however be pointed out that no coachee is likely to be completely or 100% ready for coaching with all the strong enabling factors and no inhibiting factors. It is however necessary that there sponsors are able to use this model to ascertain if there is on balance a good or even adequate level of re

Enabling Factors that support Coaching readiness

There are at least four factors that enable coaching readiness.

Executive Motivation

The most important enabling factor for readiness is the Executive’s motivation to change, improve and go to the next level.

The meta study of Assay, Lambert et.al (1999) about the factors contributing to success in therapy attributed 40 percent of success to client factors. In other words, this epoch making research suggests that it is clients themselves and the circumstances of their life situation that account for the most important element of the change process. This includes the client ‘s own inner strengths and external supportive elements in their environment including friendships and family, membership of a close networking group, religious affiliations, hobbies and leisure activities. The inner factors like self belief, the ability to identify a focused issue or goal, persistence and sense of personal responsibility to work towards it are also key ingredients that account for executive motivation and successful coaching outcomes.

Emotional Intelligence

Coachees should have at least a base level of emotional intelligence which gives them the necessary self awareness, the ability to understand others, the ability to engage in social interactions and control and moderate their emotions. While we do not expect mastery, its absence should not derail the process. For example, if certain individuals have blind spots that are impermeable, any amount of assessment and feedback can be ineffective and the coach may not be able to make any progress.

Managerial Support

Coachees do not operate in a vacuum. They spend most of their working time with their managers whose support, guidance and endorsement and alignment is key for success. For the CEO, this could be the Board, for a CXO, it could be the CEO.

If the Coachee and his or her manager are aligned on all substantive issues and also enjoy a good interpersonal relationship, the coachee’s ability to reenter the workplace and attempt new behaviours and succeed will be very high. Even if there are minor differences, Coaches can help and empower Coachees to take the initiative to resolve these differences.

Challenging work

Coaches help coachees develop new perspectives, belief systems, skills and behaviours. However, all this has to be finally put to use at the workplace. For this, they must have work that challenges them and stretches them and helps them test these new found abilities. When their work itself is challenging and they have the benefit of a Coach who gives new abilities, the combined effect can be transformational.

Inhibiting Factors that impair Coaching readiness

There are at least four factors that inhibit coaching readiness.

Performance issues

If a coachee has serious issues with his current performance, Coaching may not be the right solution to help him. There might be need to explore the causes and come up with suitable improvement plans. Coaching certainly cannot be an intervention arising out of a performance improvement plan.

Here it is important to differentiate between individuals who have performance problems and those who desire to enhance their performance. Coaching can certainly help the latter but not the former.

Career Derailment

If an executive is facing career derailment (a condition where his career has literally gone off track and he is no longer progressing as well as he was and is even facing the possibility of slowing down or even being ignored and ultimately asked to go elsewhere) is he suitable for Coaching?

Well, Coaching can actually be an extremely effective solution for executives who are facing potential derailment. However, it depends on how quickly this has been identified and addressed. The truth is that like debilitating diseases, career derailment is hard to spot in the early days but easy to correct. It is however easy to spot much later but harder to correct.

So, depending on when it as been identified, Coaching can or cannot work. Much also depends on the presence of other enabling factors and absence of other inhibiting factors.

Psychopathological problems

Coaching will be an inappropriate intervention when the individual in the organization suffers from psychopathological problems such as anxiety, depression, addiction, schizophrenia and serious personality disorders. Such individuals may require therapy and even clinical intervention and is well outside the realms of Coaching.

In fact, there is a huge danger and professional risk if such individuals are referred to Coaching and Coaches also choose to work with such individuals. Sponsors need to be mindful of such conditions among potential coachees (though likely to be quite rare a few in numbers) and refrain from recommending them for coaching. Instead they may want to look at other sources of therapeutic help.

A case for good judgment

It must be reemphasized that arriving at coaching readiness is not a mathematical process. There is no magic formula here. It has been our experience that even when coachees had one or more inhibiting factors, they still benefited from coaching because they also had in very strong measure, many of the enabling factors.

Arriving at a sound judgment about the balance between these factors is therefore a key task for sponsors.

If they indeed make the right decision, they will not only end up helping the coachee but also themselves and the coach. If they instead use coaching indiscriminately, they will do all concerned a huge disservice!

-Dr. S. Sabesan

As more and more research points out to the impact of managerial styles on employee engagement, companies are realizing that the only way to achieve this is by helping their leaders at all levels become coaching oriented in their dialogues. This means they must acquire the necessary skills. As there is pressure on managers to develop their people from within, there is demand for them to become Internal Coaches and envision, enable and empower their employees to reach their true potential. As one generation passes on the baton to the other, there is a huge expectation that those with wisdom will play mentorship roles formally or informally. Therefore, coaching is becoming the predominant style of managing and working together. Similarly, commitment to organization effectiveness is embedded in a parallel commitment to improving the people.

This is why more and more organisations are talking about Creating Coaching Culture. Building a coaching culture holds the potential and promise to achieve strategic objectives and improve the business results of the company.

Put differently, when organisations ask themselves, what kind of a culture they need the most in order to achieve their goals in the next 5 years, most are likely to end up referring to coaching orientation in one form or the other.

We at CFI are witness to a huge interest being shown by many of our clients in creating a coaching culture within their Organisations. While these organisations provide a range of development inputs and feedback opportunities to their employees, they believe strongly that unless there is a culture of coaching among those responsible for leadership development, they will not achieve their goals. Therefore, they feel the need to embed a coaching culture into the organisation’s ecosystem.

This means that Organisations need to integrate coaching into their talent management processes such as selection, staffing and succession which ensures that people who are hired, promoted and retained are role models for the emerging coaching culture.

What does a coaching culture bring to the organisation?

A Coaching culture would result in following specific outcomes to the organisation.
– Leaders would pro-actively contribute to the development of others by being coaching oriented in their conversations.
– People are able to change roles rapidly as business needs change.
– People challenge and support their colleagues mutually and live up to the best they are capable of becoming.
– Knowledge will be widely shared and utilized.
– Decision making would become participative.
– A climate of trust and openness would permeate the organisation.
– Learning and development would be viewed as top priority.
– Increased employee engagement, enhanced job satisfaction and morale and greater collaboration among team members are visible.
– The Organisation will be able to reach the market position it deserves rather than where it is today.

How to bring about coaching culture ?

CFI helps address this need by providing the right process frameworks, the skills and guidance.

At the most basic level, all leaders need skills to have powerful conversations. Conversations that are full of empathy, attunement, challenge and encouragement. Our programs lay a significant emphasis on skills using the Gerard Egan Skilled Helper model.

Leaders also need the help of a set of processes and guidelines to engage in coaching conversations that lead to meaningful outcomes. CFI has evolved a detailed three stage coaching process which provides coaches with scaffolding to navigate their way through a Coaching relationship.

Finally, the organisation itself needs to put in place a sound framework to integrate all its efforts to create a coaching culture. CFI helps create awareness among potential coaches and coachees. In addition to ensuring that the supervising managers are fully involved in the coaching process, CFI also puts in place a supervisory system to ensure that professional standards are adhered to.

To make such an impact at the cultural level, the active involvement of the CEO is critical. It certainly helps if the CEO himself or herself has experienced the benefits of Coaching firsthand.

If Coaching has to make a significant business impact and has to become a movement like the quality movements and so on, the change must happen at a cultural level.

-Dr. S. Sabesan