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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Become a more effective leader by discovering the resources you already have
Pamela McLean, CEO and cofounder of the Hudson Institute for Coaching, has been at the forefront of the field for the past three decades, using clinical and organizational psychology to provide the highest-quality coaching and development training to professionals in organizations and solo practice worldwide. Now, Pamela is teaching readers to cultivate their leadership potential through “use of self as instrument,” a key dimension of developmental coaching that emphasizes the whole person. Her holistic methods give coaches and other leaders a clearer framework for getting to know themselves, exploring their multiple layers, and fostering their latent abilities so that they can foster the abilities of others.
Self as Coach guides you along a path that interweaves six broad dimensions of your internal landscape into the fabric of great coaching. This creates lasting improvements, unlike more common remedial, tactical, or performance-based programs, which often only function as short-term solutions.
- Develop leadership skills using internal resources you already possess
- Achieve real improvements with long-lasting benefits
- Based on methodology proven successful in business and personal settings
- Includes useful practices and exercises for self-reflection and brainstorming
Whether you’re an emerging or experienced coach, whether you want to grow your own leadership skills or develop them across an entire organization, Self as Coach can help. With its innovative approach, proven methods, and near-universal applicability, this book will not only provide effective instruction but also help you uncover lasting insights that will benefit you long after you’ve turned the last page.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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PRAISE FOR
SELF AS COACH, SELF AS LEADER
With our profession entering its next stage of maturity, coaches must do the same. Written by one of the legends of the field, McLean lays out a compelling roadmap to help coaches go from good to great. This book will push you, challenge you, grow you. Don't read it lightly!
—Brian O. Underhill, PhD, Founder and CEO, CoachSource, LLC
Pam McLean has created a master class on how to become a great coach by mining the depths of one's self and full potential. A perfect blend of art and science combined with her own unique wisdom and personal insights, honed by over 35 years of practice; the one definitive book on coaching for all current and aspiring coaches.
—Steve Milovich, Professor, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business Former SVP Human Resources, The Walt Disney Company
Pamela McLean has created a profoundly valuable coaching book for both new and experienced coaches. Self as Coach, Self as Leader teaches us the essence of how to develop ourselves into uniquely wise and effective coaches. She is one of the original master teachers of a rich, developmental style of coaching and her book is packed full of not only her own personal reflections on developing coaching excellence but also in-depth coaching vignettes that are superbly helpful to the reader. This book has my strongest recommendation.
—Jeffrey E. Auerbach, PhD, President of the College of Executive Coaching Coauthor of Positive Psychology in Coaching
The coaching field, and all the “interaction sciences” like mentoring and managing, needs this book. So much of what is practiced in these sciences is not rooted in the deeper knowledge and principles from which our practices stem. Read this book to learn why and how we need to do what works with clients of all types in an endless number of situations. Pam McLean is a gift to the field, with a gift of elegant depth and doable practices.
—John Schuster, Executive Coach, Facilitator at Columbia University's Coach Certification Program Author of Answering Your Call and The Power of Your Past
Drawing on her extensive experience as therapist, coach, and leader, Pam McLean, co-founder and CEO of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, adds new dimensions to the profession of coach. Interweaving personal examples with samples of client coach interactions, and adding practices to carry the work forward, McLean demonstrates the what, the why, and the how of the elusive concept of bringing one's own self to the encounter with the client in service to the client's needs.
—Patricia Adson, PhD, Master Coach, author of Depth Coaching
McLean once again brings the heat! To serve high-performing leaders, coaches must first serve themselves: a process of self-leadership that requires deep inner work—way beyond what's comfortable—toward an evolved coaching character. For those with the courage to go, the roadmap is right here.
—Ray Luther, Senior Lecturer, Management & Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Pam McLean is a thought leader who embodies the knowledge and wisdom that she imparts in her book. Her willingness to share her own journey as a coach sets this book apart. You will not only gain a deeper understanding of the coaching profession and gain new insights from her model and framework, but you will come to admire her as a mentor, teacher, and guide.
—Dr. Beverly Kaye, Coauthor of Love 'Em or Lose 'Em, Up Is Not the Only Way, and Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, and Founder, Career Systems International
Coaching is the inner game of change; it will transform self and leaders. This is the great guidebook to make transformation happen.
—David Dan, Intel Former President, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, Hong Kong University SPACE program executive coach faculty
As a leader or coach, do you keep that remarkable instrument, your “self,” as fit as you keep your body? If it hasn't occurred to you, then try this remarkable, honest, practical book. It makes difficult theory clear and useful, and brings in new material that might surprise even the world's best coaches. The greater the challenges, the more you need yourself to be better tuned.
—Anne Scoular, Cofounder, Meyler Campbell, and Visiting Scholar at Oxford Saïd Business School
Awareness precedes choice! When we are able to truly understand our inner landscape and be awake to the narratives and beliefs that run and live within us, we are able to make choices that have the potential to positively impact our lives and those around us.
—Penny Handscomb, Partner, Omidyar Network
The future of leadership is coaching! Self as Coach, Self as Leader supports leaders in knowing themselves. This self-knowledge is mandatory to navigate the increasingly complex business landscape.
—Dawn Sharifan, Head of People Operations, Slack Technology
The wisdom in Self as Coach, Self as Leader is exactly what the coaching profession needs to catapult its empowering impact on the leaders we need in this increasingly challenging world.
—Marilee Adams, PhD, Author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
This book is a seamless blend of Pam's personal and professional experiences and the best academic research in the field of leadership coaching. Pam masterfully partners with you and leads you on a fascinating journey of continuing self-discovery. Your clients will be very glad you read this book. They should read it, too.
—Steve Knight, Executive Coach and Adjunct Professor of Business Communication, INSEAD
An inspiring and electrifying read that compels the insightful coach to explore and embrace their deepest self to fully cultivate their craft. Vital for anyone coaching physicians grappling with redefining their identities when embarking on career role changes.
—Elizabeth Brill, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer
Once again, Pamela McLean provides a comprehensive and deeply resourced guide for developmental coaching in the twenty-first century—an awe-inspiring gift to all coaches. Through McLean's deep understanding of the demands on today's leaders to lead in “tumultuous and unpredictable times,” she challenges and inspires her readers to broaden their knowledge and deepen the quality and capacity of their coaching through increased self-awareness as coaches and leaders.
—Cathy Medeiros, Global Vice President, Inclusion and Diversity, Eaton
Self as Coach, Self as Leader is a shining star in a cosmos of somewhat shallow how-to books on leadership. Its deep insights go to the heart of what really matters to becoming an evolved coach, leader and person—transforming self.
—Louise M. Morman, Executive Director, Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute, Miami University
Any leader or person who wants to build or grow leadership capacity would benefit from Pam's book. We face ever-increasing challenges in today's rapidly changing employment environment, and improving your inner game has become an essential mechanism to overcoming these challenges. Self as Coach, Self as Leader not only offers a powerful learning approach that is highly relevant to leaders, but also shares Pam's reflections on her journey as a track record coach and researcher. This book played a role in my personal leadership transformation journey, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
—Cici Li, VP of Human Resource, Shanghai Disney Resort
Bombs of wisdom from the queen of coaching! It's like having Pam McLean in your back pocket.
—Amy Hayes, V.P. Facebook Global Learning and Development
selfAS COACH
DEVELOPING THE BEST IN YOU TO DEVELOP THE BEST IN OTHERS
selfAS LEADER
PAMELA MCLEAN
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2019 by Pamela McLean. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: McLean, Pamela D., author.
Title: Self as coach, self as leader : developing the best in you to develop the best in
others / Pamela McLean.
Description: Sixth Edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2019. | Includes index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019005880 (print) | LCCN 2019006631 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119562542 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119562573 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119562559
(hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Employees–Counseling of–Handbooks, manuals, etc. |
Employees–Coaching of–Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Personnel
management–Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Mentoring in business–Handbooks,
manuals, etc. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / General. |
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Leadership.
Classification: LCC HF5549.5.C8 (ebook) | LCC HF5549.5.C8 H83 2019 (print) |
DDC 658.3/124–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005880
To my late grandmother, Margaret D. McLean, a model of courage, creativity and love.
To my three sons, Christopher, Michael, and Charles, my best teachers in life.
CONTENTS
Cover
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Leaping into the Dark Woods
The Cultivation of the Coach’s Internal Landscape
Learning to Be “Twice Born”: Leaders Who Know Themselves and the Coaches They Need
Leaders Who Know Themselves
The Coaches They Need
The Leap for the Organization
Today’s Leaders Need Coaches Who Have Their Own Inner Game
About This Book
Who Is This Book For?
Note
Chapter 1 The Coach’s Internal Landscape Is Essential Development Territory
Leaping Forward in the Field of Coaching
Chapter 2 Foundational Works Informing Our Internal Landscape
Our Scripts and Stories
Neo-Analytic Perspective from Karen Horney: Life’s Enduring Stances
An Attachment Theory Perspective from Bowlby and Ainsworth
Kegan’s Stages of Development in Adulthood and the Self-Object Dance
Horney, Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Kegan: Uncovering Our Stories and Stances
Theory to Practice via Nick Petrie: Vertical and Horizontal Paths in Leadership Coaching
From Here to Coaching Leaders: A Few Final Thoughts About Theory
Chapter 3 Building Heat Through Cultivation of Self as Coach
Cultivating Self as Coach Builds Heat for the Work
A Coach’s Heat Helps the Leader Grow
The Potent Combination: Heat of Coach + Leader
Chapter 4 Presence
Getting Present
My Internal Landscape: What I’ve Learned from Deep Presence
The Wisdom of Dorothy Siminovitch
Is Your Presence an Intervention?
Presence to the Inner Rumblings
Presence to the Relationship
Presence to Our Ecology
Chapter 5 Empathy
Empathy in Coaching
Walking in a Client’s Shoes without Wearing Them
Calibrating and Cultivating Your Empathy
Wide-Angle Empathy
Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone: Building Resilience Creates Empathy
Applying Heat: Case Vignette I
Chapter 6 Range of Feelings
Culture Matters
My Internal Landscape: Stories and Stances That Shaped My Range of Feelings
Feelings Are Feelings
Feelings Are Human, and So Are Leaders
The Range of Feelings Inventory
No One “Makes Us Feel” Anything!
My Inner Landscape: What I Learned from Conscious Complaining
Chapter 7 Boundaries and Systems
The Necessity of Boundaries
My Inner Landscape: Learning About Systems
The Power of Systems
Origins of Boundary Management
Reducing the Urge to Rescue
Systems Thinking
System’s Thinking Concepts for Coaching
Applying Heat: Case Vignette II
Chapter 8 Embodiment
Get Out of Your Head!
Honing Our
Felt Sense
and Our Somatic Markers
Somatic Markers
Becoming Self-Generative
Chapter 9 Courage
Courage Has Many Forms
Psychological Courage
Cultivating Our Courage
My Interior Journal: What I’ve Learned About the Power of Courage
Our Courage Creates an Invitation
Fear and Lethargy Thwart Courage
Learning to Rock the Boat
Leaders Need Courageous Coaches
Turning Up the Heat and Demonstrating Courage in Our Coaching
Five Truths About Courage
Applying Heat: Case Vignette III
Chapter 10 Supervision as a Medium for Cultivating Self as Coach
My Inner Landscape: My Early Experiences in Supervision
Supervision Purpose and Modalities
Roles of the Coach Supervisor
Formats for Supervision
From My Inner Landscape: My Current Experiences in Supervision
“Who You Are Is How You Coach”
The Inner Supervisor in You
Our Inner Supervisor Supports our Vertical Development
Bigger Questions to Cultivate Your Inner Supervisor and Deepen Your Work
Haven and Harbor
Frameworks and Models to Grow Your Inner Supervisor
Supervision as the Ethical Compass for Self as Coach
Chapter 11 Self as Leader
Self-Aware Leaders
Self as Coach Dimensions Are Also Self as Leader Dimensions
Purpose-Driven Leaders
Leader’s Use of the Inner Supervisor
The Inner Work of Self as Leader
References
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1
Table 2.2
Table 2.3
Table 2.4
Chapter 6
Table 6.1
Chapter 7
Table 7.1
Chapter 9
Table 9.1
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Horney’s Moving Toward, Moving Against, Moving Away
Figure 2.2 Kegan’s Transformation of Self
Figure 2.3 Kegan’s Constructive Development Theory
Figure 2.4 Petrie’s Vertical Development
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The Self as Coach Model
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Three Layers of Presence
Figure 4.2 Scharmer’s Theory U Model
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Mirror Neurons Source: Iacoboni, M. (2009)
Figure 5.2 The Empathy Continuum
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Pathway from Emotion to Action
Figure 6.2 Range of Feelings Continuum
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Boundaries
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Argyris and Schön’s Double-Loop Learning
Figure 10.2 Self as Coach: Sample Reflective Inquiries
Figure 10.3 Hawkins Seven-Eyed Process Model of Supervision
Figure 10.4 Clutterbuck’s Seven Conversations in Supervision
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Argyris’s Ladder of Inference
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Foreword
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Foreword
Over the years, I have spoken at many international coaching conferences and been struck by the number of coaches eagerly searching for new tools and methods from the panoply of workshops on offer, while ignoring the most important tool and resource they need for their work, namely their own self.
All leadership happens through relationship, and the same is even more true of coaching. “It takes two to tango” and “it takes two to coach.” Rather than think that as coaches we are coaching the client, it would be better to think of how we are doing the coaching in partnership between the coachee and coach, facing the challenges and lessons that life is providing for the client. This requires us to listen, not just with our ears and our neocortex, to understand cognitively what the client is relating to us, but also to listen with our whole body, to listen verbally and non-verbally, to the lyrics and the harmonics, to what is in the story and in the room and what is excluded, not in the room, but needs to be invited in. This may include the wider stakeholders of the client, needs from the future, or shadow aspects of the client. As coaches, we need to be resonating echo chambers that are finely tuned to the faintest of signals, both from the client as well as from their wider stakeholder ecosystem. This requires a lifetime of practice, supervision, and discipline, where we not only develop a depth of empathy and compassion with the individual client, but also “wide-angled empathy” for every individual, team, and system in their story (Hawkins, 2018).
It is with this in mind that I was delighted to receive and read Pam McLean’s latest book, in which she generously offers her long experience of coaching, supervising, and training coaches, to how we can use all of our self, in service of the work of coaching others. She offers not only powerful disciplines and practices we can use to regularly tune up our self as instrument, but also stories from her own life’s journey and vignettes of work with clients, illustrating how she has applied her deepening sensitivity. This weaving by Pam of the various strands illustrates how coaching is not something you can just learn in an initial training and then apply, but rather a lifelong action learning journey, where the challenges and learnings that are brought to you by your clients, if attended to with quality reflection, deepen and hone your practice, help you unlearn your previous models and assumptions, and deepen your self as instrument in service of others.
Pam McLean has been a beacon in the American coaching landscape, quietly showing how quality supervision is essential in this lifetime journey of deepening your self to deepen your coaching. For many cultural, political, legal, and historical reasons, the United States has been slower than many other parts of the world to adopt and develop the importance of lifelong learning and supervision for coaches (Hawkins & Smith, 2013; Hawkins & Turner, 2017). The Hudson Institute of Coaching in Santa Barbara, which Pam leads and where she teaches, has not just built supervision into all their training courses, but has also developed a supervision and lifelong learning ethic into their alumni community. In this book, in her own quiet and clear way, Pam provides a whole book showing the essential ingredients of our internal landscape, which details the qualities we need to constantly refine and deepen to be an effective coach. She shows that to develop these qualities requires more than self-reflection; the mirror, echo-resonance, support, and challenge of others and particularly trained supervisors who are further down the path than ourselves is an important component, as well.
I would recommend this book to all coaches, wherever they are on their coaching journeys, for even those of us who have been coaching for many decades need to have a beginner’s mind that is learning afresh with each client relationship and a practice of daily tuning of the instrument of our being to deeper and more subtle levels of receptivity and resonance.
Professor Peter Hawkins
Author of Leadership Team Coaching and many other coaching and leadership-related books
Preface
The Completely Revised Handbook of Coaching was written in 2012. This is where Self as Coach was first written about. Until then, we had regularly referred to the concept of going deeper and attending to what’s beneath the surface in order to create the conditions for real change to occur, but until 2012, it was an amorphous concept. In the intervening years, I have used Self as Coach in my work at the Hudson Institute, training coaches and coach supervisors. This has given me the opportunity to research and test the efficacy and value of the model. Through time, experience, and study, the model has evolved in some important ways: I have broadened and deepened the dimensions, acknowledged the interplays and overlaps, and emphasized the fluidity of the model from interaction to interaction.
Our findings provide ample evidence that there is real value in providing coaches and leaders with a simple path into exploring one’s internal landscape. This landscape accentuates the reality that our ability to use our “self” as the most important instrument in our work is paramount. As coaches and leaders, we need a roadmap that allows us to combine our horizontal and vertical development. We need a means to make the very best use of our self as our most important resource when working in this highly charged relationship domain.
Of course, it’s impossible to write a book exploring one’s internal landscape without paying attention to my own changing landscape. I have sought to use my reflections and experiences in a transparent way in this book in order to provide a personal voice that might breathe life into these concepts in ways that are useful to the reader.
My goal in writing this is simple: to help us, as coaches and leaders, make the leap from good enough to truly great—coaches and leaders who are able to understand our inner gifts and the challenges in the service of building breadth of capacity. We need this breadth to meet the broad spectrum of issues and challenges confronted by the leaders we coach. Well-honed skills, soaring IQs, and impressive credentials are insufficient for us to do our best work. The ability to create the conditions to explore what’s below the surface provides the possibility for deeper change to occur: change that transforms us as leaders and allows us to do our best work.
Acknowledgments
Writing a book is in the domain of deep work—a solitary, maddening, and joyful undertaking. Yet, it is never created in isolation. This book represents the work and influence of many people and the most important contributors are the hundreds and hundreds of leaders and coaches I have had the privilege of working with over the past 30 years. Everything I have learned from them is the impetus for this work and what makes it possible.
I am most appreciative to all those who read parts or all of the manuscript and provided feedback that both challenged and affirmed my thinking along the way: Toni McLean, Bev Kaye, Pat Adson, John Schuster, Steve Milovich, Tom Pollack, Ana Pliopas, Leslie Goldenberg, and Bill Lindberg.
To everyone at Wiley who helped make this possible—Jeanenne Ray and Vicki Adang—thank you for believing this subject is an important one! To my talented development editor, Nat Chen, who is masterful at her craft. I am grateful she was willing to travel with me on yet another book project. My work is simply better in every way because of her. To Amy Detrick, who created all of the illustrations, I owe you a special debt for making the book more meaningful and approachable.
Introduction:Leaping into the Dark Woods
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself astray in a dark wood
where the straight road had been lost sight of.
—Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
The Cultivation of the Coach’s Internal Landscape
William James, professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard early in the twentieth century, wrote about “once-born” and “twice-born” people (1913). He described once-borns as those who tend not to veer very far off course in this life, staying close to who they believe they are or ought to be and what they think others expect of them. Once-borns may not be fully satisfied with their lives, but they choose not to venture into the shadowy “woods,” that mysterious territory where the unknown surpasses the predictable. Twice-born people, through choice or crisis, cross into the woods (sometimes with no alternative and other times willingly), make mistakes, allow themselves to fully suffer losses, learn from them, and get up again. These people are more likely to take a dive into exploring changes they need to make in themselves in order to live a life that radiates with greater meaning, to reinvent themselves and shed old stories and ways of being to discover the new. A century earlier, Danish philosopher Kierkegaard used a similar analogy, a leap of faith or an inwardness, again underlining that willingness to veer off the road and into the woods when we don’t know what is ahead. A century later, in today’s world, to remain where it is safe has less appeal and is simply insufficient if we want to live a life of meaning.
Every so often in life, an unforeseen leap presents itself, opening the way to dark woods that are mysterious and unwelcoming and yet there is no way to turn back on the path. I include lines from The Inferno as the opening of this introduction because Dante’s chronicling of his journey through hell and into paradise provides rich metaphorical ground for understanding life’s surprises and losses. First, we enter the dark woods, and then we find a light that guides us to a new time, a new place, and even a deeper way of being. Dante’s epic story reminds us that even without adequate preparation or a view of what’s ahead, something unfolds that changes one’s life forever. This is an experience we all collide with at some point along our journey if we are willing to step into that second-born space, knowing that sometimes we step in prepared and welcoming, and other times tentative and fearful.
I stood at the edge of those unwelcoming woods midway through my adult journey and the unfolding experience of suddenly entering uncharted territory led me into a twice-born experience, changing me and my philosophy of life. Just as I was leaving my 40 s and reveling in what felt like a perfect life—a great family of three beautiful boys, a loving marriage of many years, and satisfying and meaningful work—our whole family was confronted with a challenging upheaval. It was one of those turning points in life none of us would willingly invite and yet there was simply no turning back.
In Dante’s words, I had to step into the dark woods where the straight line was lost, with no sense of the way out. The upheaval, which was my version of the leap into the woods, was my husband’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. At that time, we had three active and growing children, and a business still very much in the early stages. We reveled in all of the usual future dreams and plans (the “somedays”) and suddenly our perfect life was gone. Like many others, my leap into a twice-born state was mandatory more than courageous. Yet, the results were likely much the same: a new way of being in a world turned upside down, a new version of myself, and a new perspective on a life forever shifted.
This particular leap evolved over time, sometimes slowly and at other times with a pace that was difficult to keep step with. In the early stages, I was in shock, followed by anger and questions like “why me?” and “why our family?” Eventually, I came to understand that this is life. It’s not what happens because “stuff happens!” It is how I live into it with grace and courage that matters most. It was definitely one of those rare twice-born experiences that has had a significant influence on my view of life, the world, and my work. As a coach, it has taught me endless lessons, including how much deep listening makes a difference, how sympathy is never as helpful as empathy, and the reality that some issues and challenges in our lives are not solvable, but rather are situations we must live into in new ways.
Learning to Be “Twice Born”: Leaders Who Know Themselves and the Coaches They Need
Much has changed in our world since James conceived of once- and twice-born lives. In today’s complicated and rapidly evolving world, it seems to demand that we all become twice- and likely thrice-born, if not more! It is almost impossible for us to flourish as human beings, leaders, and organizations if we remain once-born, which is defined by lacking the courage to take a leap, see dilemmas from new perspectives, challenge our most cherished assumptions and preferences, test new approaches, and cultivate innovation. How do we consciously avoid the once-born worldview and instead embrace a way of being in which we do all of these things?
Some of this path from once-born to twice-born and beyond is a very personal inner journey that requires saying yes to the unknown, to unearthing our particular well-worn beliefs, and acknowledging and then wandering away from stories that keep us comfortably locked in an invisible set of habits and constraints. Other parts of the path to twice-born lie in all that is external to us. These parts require examining and saying yes and no to the myriad of complicated global issues impacting all of us. Our world today demands a twice-born approach at a grander and broader professional and community level than ever before if we are to survive, thrive, and fully face troubling global challenges on all fronts.
As coaches working in the world of leadership, if we want to engage in the kind of coaching that creates relevant change, we will need to operate differently than we did when leadership coaching first emerged as a field 30 years ago. We will need to reach well beyond a predictable toolkit of skill-based competencies and practiced inquiries to coach the growing number of twice-born leaders the changing world now needs and demands. Today’s leaders are confronting challenges far more complex than in the past and at a speed that is vastly more pressing. Great coaches need far more agility and breadth of capacities than ever before to operate successfully in this new environment.
Leaders Who Know Themselves
The higher executives climb on the organizational ladder, the less they can depend on technical skills and the greater their need for effective interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence.
—Manfred Kets de Vries (2014)
True leaders today need far more than strategies and smarts—the IQ of leadership. Today’s leaders need to know themselves—their blind spots, values, possibilities, patterns, and old stories. They need to know how to be team players, to think and engage the collective leadership of those around them. This is the We-Q work of today and represents the need to shift from our long-held individualistic orientation to one that recognizes broader systems and acknowledges this truth: that the “leader as hero” model and command-and-control orientation are largely remnants of the past. In today’s world, the price of counterproductive leadership behavior is unimaginably costly and even the best of leaders face challenges that are daunting. The coaches equipped to successfully work with leaders in these changing times need nimbleness, understanding of complexities, ease with ambiguities, and deep familiarity with their own internal landscape.
The Coaches They Need
Like everything else in our world, the field of coaching is changing dramatically. Timothy Gallwey’s well-known The Inner Game of Tennis (1974) was a precursor to the early days of coaching. Written in the mid-1970s, Gallwey drew our attention to the psychological interference, or “self-talk,” that goes on inside our heads, impacting performance both on the tennis court and off. His work stirred the world of mentoring and sparked the early rumblings of coaching. It was followed in the mid-1980s by John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance.
Yet, well into the 1990s, the growth of coaching was slow. When my late husband, Frederic Hudson, published The Handbook of Coaching in 1999, there were only a small handful of books written about this emerging field and there was little clarity about precisely what coaching represented. Was it a conversation? Was it focused on business, life, development, problems, goals, or searching? I recall that most often, when we would describe ourselves as coaches, people would immediately inquire, what sport? As coaching found its way into organizations in those early years, it was too often used as a “red card”—the leader with a coach was a leader in trouble.
A little more than 10 years later, when I did a major rewrite on The Handbook of Coaching, the coaching landscape had changed dramatically to include hundreds of books on the market, a growing body of research and doctoral dissertations, and a shift in the United States from the early days of five or six coaching schools to well over 500. Today, coaching is a multibillion-dollar business that, like so many other professions, risks decline if we continue to operate in a business-as-usual mentality.
Our traditional focus on the individualistically crafted goal(s) of the leader who we support, through a classic coaching engagement, is no longer sufficient. The early bias assumed that “a coach is a coach” and background didn’t matter because a skilled coach would be able to do great coaching with anyone. We know today this simply is not the case. Those of us coaching senior leaders need to understand organizational systems, the field of leadership, the challenges of today’s world of work, and the volatile world in which we live. The old belief that a good coach can coach anyone no longer holds up.
The traditional approach to developing coaches has relied heavily on skill-based competencies. While these are important, they are simply insufficient preparation for a coach to be masterful in their work. Leadership coaching has matured considerably over the past decade and we have many good coaches today. However, to excel as a discipline, we need to consciously raise the bar, cultivating great coaches able to do far more than listen well and ask questions. We need coaches who are adept in systems thinking, equipped to explore complex and ambiguous issues, and able to move with nimbleness and responsiveness based on the leader’s needs. Unless we are willing to take certain leaps and move into the next chapter of the field of coaching, we will fall short. If we fall short, we will cease to exist as a discipline.
My own entry into the field of coaching tracks to the field’s evolution of “coaching then” and “coaching now.” My career path began after my doctoral work; I actively practiced as a clinical and organizational psychologist for two decades in which I deepened my understanding of the interplay between one’s internal landscape and the complexities of the systems in which we exist. The second half of my career led me into the field of leadership coaching when this emerging field was in its infancy. At that time, leadership coaching was broad and a little ambiguous, ranging from short-term work tactically focused in the moment to longer-term work concentrated on deeper themes that ultimately created developmental shifts for the individual.
