Coaching and Leadership
Development have one thing in common: they usually both begin with the
employee’s best intentions. Whether it’s following an annual performance
evaluation, or when planning a career transition, or simply as part of an
ongoing learning and development effort, an employee will typically establish
his/her “skill gaps”, also known as “development areas” or “growth
opportunities”, and then lay out a plan to address them – either alone or with
the help of a coach. So far, so good…
But what if the
“self-assessment” of the competency(ies) to be developed is flawed? In other
words, what if the employee has mis-evaluated his/her strengths and weaknesses?
Then the entire coaching and development effort that ensue is ill-fated from
the get go. This may lead to waste of time and money, de-motivation, missed
professional opportunities, and sometimes more drastic consequences such as
career stalling, employee resignation or dismissal.
With such important organisational
consequences, it is useful to understand the reasons behind this “misalignment”
and to consider a development approach that minimizes occurrence of this
happening in the first place.
Blindspots
and Johari’s window:
One practical way to look
this situation is by using a popular tool called Johari's window(1). This 2x2
matrix (see diagram below) is a nice and simple way of conceptualizing and
classifying someone's self-awareness and self-development areas. Johari’s model
is composed of the following four quadrants: #1. Open Zone (Top-Left), also
called the “Arena”, consists of what is known by the employee about him/herself
and is also known by others; Quadrant #2. Hidden Area (Bottom-Left) what the
person knows about him/herself that others do not know - hidden area, hidden
self, avoided area, avoided self or “Facade”; Quadrant #3. Blindspot Zone
(Top-Right), consists of what is unknown by the person about him/herself but
which others know or are aware of; and Quadrant #4. Unknown Area (Bottom-Right)
is what's unknown by the person about him/herself and is also unknown by
others.
Obviously, an employee’s
competency deficiencies that fall in quadrants #3 and #4 will certainly lead to
an ill-designed development plan. In other words, the employee’s self-awareness
is inaccurate such that “blind spots” remain, which lead to the employee not
focusing on some of the leadership skills that do in fact require improvements.
But what about using a coach to palliate for this imprecise self-assessment?
One could argue that coaching - through its powerful questioning, feedback and
support approach - is optimal when dealing with a "competency
blindspot" (quadrant #3). The coach acts as an objective party to help the
employee take a step back and "see the forest" so to speak...
Coaching may certainly help
an employee with skill gaps that fall in Quadrant #1 (open area), but I would
say that it is less necessary because of the heightened self-awareness by the
learner of his/her development needs. Quadrant #2 (Hidden Area) poses some
difficulties to the coach because of the perhaps very conscious effort from the
employee to not reveal certain areas of his/her personality/competencies. But
my take on this “façade quadrant (#2) is that, as a coach, you do your best
(poking, digging, powerful questioning) to uncover what's hidden and may feel
painful or difficult to deal with by coachee. But, in the end, "you can
bring a horse to the water, but you can't force it to drink..." What I do
find truly challenging from a coaching point of view are quadrants #3
(blindspots) and #4. (the complete unknown). To illustrate my point, let me
tell you a "coaching" story...
Real-life
situation:
A good friend of mine - an
experienced and qualified HR VP (MBA, CHRP, ICF ACC) - had been coaching this
colleague of hers (a newly-promoted director working at another office within
the company) for around 6 months. Everything seemed to be going well – they had
identified some important development areas and progress seemed to be
materializing… until a point (annual performance evaluation period) where the
employee’s superior – upon reviewing the employee’s dismal 360 assessment
feedback – demoted him back to a manager position within the division. My
friend was shocked! By no means was her coachee a superstar employee, she
thought. But, based on their mutual coaching conversations, he was making
legitimate progress (at least she thought so… and so did he!). What had just
happened? Perhaps the employee kept a bit of a facade with his coach – hiding
weaknesses or misreporting progress… But, based on my friend’s (the coach)
assessment, the employee was truly convinced that he was making progress.
What we’re dealing with here
is a Quadrant #3/#4 situation. Clearly, some of the competency deficiencies
that my friend’s colleague was struggling with were unknown to him. But his
peers/staff seemed quite aware of these (as reported in his annual performance
review). This is a classic blindspot situation (unknown to self, but known by
others). However, because my friends – the employee’s coach – did not have the
opportunity to “see the employee in action” (which is typical of most
employee-coach relationship), she was also “blinded” by the feedback she
received throughout the coaching engagement. In other words, neither the coach
(my friend, the HR VP), nor the coachee (my friend’s colleague) were fully
aware of the competency gaps and the developmental challenges that the employee
faced (quadrant #4 – unknown to self to the coach).
Multi-rater competency
assessments: After discussing this with my friend (who was still upset about
failing her coachee), she told me that the superior’s decision to demote the
coachee was most likely the good one. As an HR VP, she was allowed to review
the employee’s 360 results and, low and behold, the feedbacks were numerous and
pretty bad (I’ll spare you the details here). But as she debriefed with the
employee, she realized that he was truly clueless and, although well
intentioned, he simply wasn’t aware of his destructive interpersonal patterns
at work.
The morale of the story here
is that – based on my friend’s feedback and my personal interpretation of the
situation – “you don’t know what you don’t know”. And if the coachee doesn’t
know either, then you’re essentially paddling down the St.Lawrence… and the
Niagara Falls are just around the corner!
So, as a coach, you have two
options: 1. Shadow the employee on the job, and interview his peers, his direct
reports, and anyone else who can provide a valuable and actionable feedback or
2. Obtain a solid 360º assessment of some sort prior to getting too far in the
coaching situation. Option #1 is probably to best one in terms of “data input
and coachable observations”… However, for most “external coaching” situations,
it’s logistically impractical/unfeasible or extremely costly! Even for my
friend’s “internal coaching” context, the fact the both her and her
colleague/coachee worked three time zones apart made this shadowing
unrealistic.
So What...
The net of it is that,
although imperfect and sometimes biased, a 360º Assessment may be the only
helpful and efficient way for a coach to find critical information hidden in
Quadrant #3/#4 – the blindspots and the unknown areas… Hence the need for a multi-rater
competency feedback prior to embarking on a coaching relationship and/or
initiating a substantial leadership development effort.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Reference for Johari’s
window: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window
What do you think?
- Patrick
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