Chapter 12
Elephant: You and Your Key Hires Don’t Receive Coaching
Back in my early 20s, before I officially began my career at Virgin, I found myself between jobs. As a stopgap, I got hired on at The Body Shop, of all places. Anyone who’s worked in retail knows the annoyances that come with the job: rude customers, repetitive work, long hours on your feet. I was less than enthusiastic about it. But then my manager asked me to take on a new responsibility: masseuse. Baby masseuse, specifically.
The Body Shop was hosting workshops for new mothers to teach them how to give massages to soothe and connect with their babies. My manager thought I would be a great choice to lead them though this was years before I became a mother myself. I said yes without the slightest clue what I was signing on for—at least it was a break from the tedium of retail. Instead of being on the floor, I got to huddle in a back room and pore over the ins and outs of the massage technique until it was time to teach in front of real live mothers and their real live babies. These ladies would actually hand me their babies to demonstrate on. I was exhilarated. I was also terrified!
But pretty soon, I felt like an absolute rock star. The massages were actually working. The babies were happy! Seeing the relief and gratitude on these desperate mothers’ faces made me feel like a million bucks. Here I was, actually improving women’s lives with a tool, rather than just folding merchandise and ringing up customers. Because of my class, these women were learning how to be better connected to their babies and to inhabit their new roles as mothers more comfortably. I got a high you can’t buy.
However unexpected, my experience at The Body Shop provided me with my first foray into coaching, and I discovered that I absolutely loved it. I loved studying the material until I knew it inside and out (God forbid I screw up and hurt a baby!) and then translating that knowledge into practical assistance to help these mothers in their “jobs.”
I believe that receiving coaching is transformational. It’s the quickest way to grow, personally and professionally. In this chapter, we’ll examine how you and your teams can level up by investing in coaching.
This is something I believe in the marrow of my bones: Everyone needs a coach.
New moms need a coach. Recruiters need a coach. CEOs need a coach. Hiring managers need a coach. Coaches need a coach. In the words of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them. A coach really, really helps.” For that reason alone, it’s vital that CEOs receive coaching as they lead their organizations and that they bring the rest of leadership along with them.
The company’s leadership must be on the same page as they seek to “know what they don’t know.” With the help of an objective third party, they can identify and overcome any blind spots.
Only someone who’s removed from the ins and outs of your company can help you evolve to the next level. A coach who isn’t directly involved in your workplace politics can see situations clearly and provide useful feedback. Recall my experience with Anthony and Henry in Chapter 9. Henry was unable to see how the massive earthquakes at the company had deeply unsettled Anthony in his first 100 days. He was too focused on the bottom line to have enough mental space to consider the human aspect. Had I not been there as an objective third party, confusion and frustration would have continued to reign.
CASE STUDY
Tom and the Looming Culture Clash
I saw the potential for internal disruption with one of the first candidates I ever placed at the beginning of my headhunting career, back when I still needed to prove to myself that I could do the job. We’ll call the candidate Tom. I was so pleased when I placed him with a promising organization. His skill set matched the position well; the company was grateful to have him, and the salary was fantastic. Tom went to work with the new organization, and everyone went merrily on their way.
Yet I was deeply unsatisfied. The more I thought about Tom’s placement, the less well it sat with me. Tom was unknowingly walking into a potentially tumultuous situation—the leadership of the company was Italian, and I knew their working style was quite different than what Tom, an American, was used to. Plus, the job was in the UK—a triple culture shock. I knew this. But I didn’t think Tom had been adequately briefed on the work environment for which he was totally uprooting his life. I began to feel more and more uneasy—even guilty. Did Tom have any idea what he had signed up for? Could I have done more to prepare him?
I knew Tom needed more than the services I could offer at the time, and it gnawed at me. What was lacking was coaching, yet I wasn’t equipped to offer it to him at the time (this was before I obtained my Executive Coaching Certificate, Professional Certified Coach (PCC) accreditation, and EQ-i 2.0 practitioner qualifications). Later, when I launched FORWARD, I saw the need to have an integrated coaching branch so we could set our clients on track for the most success possible.
You’re likely familiar with the grim statistics regarding CEO retention: There’s about a 50-percent chance that a CEO will leave within the first 18 months. This rapid rate of turnover causes stock values to plummet, shareholders to get antsy, and employees to become frustrated. How is your company ever going to move forward if you can’t retain people, especially in leadership?
Hiring a member of the executive team without a coach would be akin to a football team signing a quarterback and then leaving him to figure things out on his own. That would be madness. It’s imperative that executives have someone to guide them through the transition—and someone not connected to the bottom line.
Beware Unconscious Incompetency
When Dr. Ulrik Juul Christensen was a guest on my podcast, he talked about “unconscious incompetencies.” As the term suggests, unconscious incompetencies are the things we don’t know we don’t know. Addressing and removing unconscious incompetence is the cause to which he has dedicated his life. According to data collated by Christensen’s educational software company Area9 Lyceum, whose mission it is to “deliver the world’s best educational and training outcomes validated by a long-term scientific approach,” people are unconsciously incompetent in 20 to 40 percent of their field of expertise. That doesn’t mean they’re totally competent on the other 60 to 80 percent. On quite a bit of other information, these “experts” may be knowingly incompetent. But for up to 40 percent of the key knowledge required to execute their jobs properly, people don’t even know that they don’t have the necessary information.
Christensen has also noted a disturbing trend: The higher up the ladder someone climbs, the more unconscious incompetencies exist. These more senior people are often the ones who train and teach the more junior staff. This means they are passing on incorrect information, which the junior staff then pass on in their circles, and on and on. Imagine you were having a strange physical symptom and went to a hospital. The attending physician gave you a diagnosis that, ultimately, proved to be incorrect. Yet he passed on this faulty information to hundreds of young medical students who may see—and misdiagnose—the illness in their own practices one day. Clearly, we have a problem.
Christensen is dedicated to first addressing unconscious incompetence and then removing it. He works to develop online corporate training programs that encourage people to say when they don’t know something. These modules also require trainees to rate their level of confidence when answering questions. For instance, participants can say whether they’re absolutely sure of their answer, whether they think they have the right answer, or if they’re taking a wild stab at it. It’s an approach that addresses incompetence with curiosity rather than judgment. People are not penalized for not knowing something; rather, they’re invited to go deeper where they are unsure.
If we had this type of environment in the corporate world—if we could lose our rigid belief system that says we’re never allowed to make a mistake—we would save so much time. We could admit mistakes, address them, and find collaborative solutions. Owning our humanity allows us to take our armor off and get to the heart of the matter.
Coaching: A Safe Space for Professional Growth
Part of the solution to changing our way of thinking is feedback, as we discussed in Chapter 8. Executives must receive feedback publicly. A powerful leader can admit to her team that she doesn’t know something and is open to suggestion and correction. If your team members see you admitting that you don’t know everything, they’ll be more likely to acknowledge their own areas of ignorance and ask for help when they need it.
Yet even in the ideal workplace, where the boss gives and receives feedback, colleagues lean on one another, and no one has unconscious incompetencies, a coach is still invaluable. A coach can see the forest, not the trees. An executive who can discuss every aspect of his job freely and openly with a coach will gain a clearer picture of the organization, his role within it, and what strategies will help him achieve the success he desires.
As leaders, we need to get over our need to be right. The smartest, most innovative people I know are the ones who can utter three simple words: “I don’t know.” In a negotiation or meeting, I trust the person who tells me she doesn’t know something but will find the answer. When the person doesn’t know the answer and is bluffing, or is too arrogant to admit he doesn’t know, my radar gets twitchy and my trust is lost. As a leader, are you more concerned with being right or getting it right?
These two options may sound similar, but there’s a world of difference between them. A boss concerned with being right wants to be The Source: the almighty dispenser of decisions and plans, the savior, the chosen one. A boss concerned with getting it right is open to ideas and solutions, wherever they come from. The second type of leader knows that good ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. His approach is collaborative and loose. If he gets it wrong, he can admit he screwed up and course-correct as he goes. The stakes are lower for him, so there’s room for experimentation, risk-taking, and ultimately reward.
This is where coaching comes in. In the coach-mentee relationship, there is also space for experimentation (even play!). The mentee is answering to a peer professional—not a boss. If you as a mentee “screw up,” who cares? Mistakes are inevitable. They’re also how you grow. In the coaching relationship, that dynamic is understood. There’s no need for a mentee to stick her tail between her legs and worry about how a mistake will affect the bottom line. Mistakes are made, acknowledged, and learned from. Such an atmosphere accelerates growth.
In my ideal world, every people leader of every organization would deep dive with a coach weekly, at least for the first 100 days and then as needed throughout his or her tenure. (When I say people leader here, I mean a C-suite member or other key hire in a significant leadership position.) Such support would increase the leader’s effectiveness in powerful ways. He wouldn’t run for the exit sign as soon as his head began to slip underwater (for some leaders, that’s on day one), and he would feel less isolated. Isolation is one of the biggest problems facing the modern workplace, from entry-level employees all the way on up to the CEO. The people in the C-suite are no different from anyone else, and it’s lonely at the top. A leader able to check in regularly with a coach gains a unique support system. Unlike employees, the coach’s financial future is not riding on whether the executive succeeds or fails. The coach is a leadership confidante offering a close connection, guidance, a safe space to find solutions openly—whatever the executive needs as he attempts to navigate the tricky business of taking over the operations of a company.
Second, a people leader reporting to a coach is committing to a growth mindset. He goes in acknowledging that he cannot do or know everything by himself. He has limitations, blind spots, areas in which he can improve. He is investing in his personal development because he realizes it’s the smartest thing to do for the company. A leader with this attitude realizes that his employees can grow as well. He can lead the organization in adopting a mindset in which there is freedom to take risks and think outside the box. In a growth mindset, there is an understanding that people, roles, goals, etc. are always evolving. No person is ever “fixed”; there is always room for improvement.
Third, a people leader with a coach retains an openness he does not have if his entire world is constrained to the organization. It’s easy to get tunnel vision. A new leader, who may have been hired to turn the ship around, is very likely stepping into chaos. Everything then becomes about producing value for shareholders. He can easily become consumed with what’s needed that day/month/quarter. In this mode, the leader essentially becomes a firefighter, staying busy just putting out fires throughout the day. There is no space for him to pause, step back, and think creatively about solutions. That’s where a coach can help.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
A coach is a partner—with a coach, the leader is not alone. A coach provides perspective, clarity, and out-of-the-box thinking. A coach enables a people leader to break out of the pattern of constantly feeling stressed. The coaching relationship is collaborative, innovative, fresh; an executive can then transmit this energy and reinvigorate the entire company.
A people leader who recognizes that she needs a coach boasts strong self-perception. Self-regard, one of the pillars of the self-perception component of EQ, is defined as respecting oneself while respecting oneself; having confidence. The better a leader is in touch with her strengths and weaknesses, the more able she is to help the larger organization. Another pillar of self-perception is self-actualization, or the pursuit of meaning or self-improvement. Few things are more dangerous to organizations (or, frankly, to society as a whole) than people who are unwilling to evolve.
As we step fully into the fourth industrial revolution, coaches are more important than ever. We know that adaptable companies are the ones with a shot at survival. Organizations must embrace the AI age and recognize that individual roles will change as AI becomes more prominent in the workplace. This ability to adapt has to come from the top. The CEO must model adaptability and flexibility. Moreover, a people leader who works with a coach realizes that together, we are more than we are alone. Agile teams are better able to respond to changing work force currents. A leader linked to a coach has one more team member to help them weather whatever storms are on the horizon.
A know-it-all attitude can sink a company and send would-be unicorns scurrying for the exits. Yet when a people leader cares enough about the organization to delve into his own unconscious incompetencies and receive guidance, he positions himself to blow past limits and experience exponential growth. When this growth happens on the organizational level, the potential is boundless.
Is embracing a learning mindset a priority at your organization? Answer the questions below honestly to gauge how you’re doing in developing yourself and your employees.
▶ When was the last time you invested in coaching for yourself?
▶ Do your key hires receive coaching? If yes, for how long?
▶ If you integrate coaching, how successful has it been? How do your key hires report on their experiences? How has their work improved (or not)?
▶ Do you have regular, company-wide professional development for employees at ALL levels?
▶ How effective have these sessions been? (What do your employees report? Do you have a metric by which you can gauge their honest feedback? Do these sessions address gaps you see in the companywide skill set—and is there improvement afterward?)
I would never recommend implementing coaching or professional development for its own sake. That’s the equivalent of filling out endless worksheets for “busy work” in school. Rather, sit down and determine what key objectives you would like to achieve before working with a coach. Do the same with your key hires. Begin with the end in mind: Figure out your desired result, and then seek out a coach you trust who can help get you there.