Kevin Watson

In recent years, organizations have increasingly viewed coaching as a way to improve performance, often as a remedial activity. Yet, most of them have failed to grasp that a much bigger prize is waiting for them if they adopt a different approach from simply getting managers to do coaching.First, let's clear up one thing: Coaching is not solely a management activity!To be sure, coaching skills are an important part of the modern manager's toolkit, and these skills are often under-exercised among the management community. You only have to listen in to any work-based conversation to recognize that questions are not well-formed and listening is superficial. Almost everyone hates the silences, but sadly, these same behaviors often occur even after coach training.On the other hand, a true coaching culture has everyone adopting coach-like behaviors as a means to lead, influence, and communicate with each other quite naturally. In this type of organization, people fearlessly engage in candid, respectful conversations about how they can improve their individual and collective work performance—unrestricted by reporting relationshipsIndeed, everyone from the CEO to frontline staff are equally at ease with feedback and consider it a powerful way to build on personal and professional development. So, what is the difference that makes the difference?Well, we know that human behavior stems from our sense of identity, what we believe to be true, and what we hold as important. So perhaps it starts with this thought: To build a coaching culture, people need to BE a coach, not DO coachingBelieve in someone’s potential First, imagine what you will see, hear, and feel if you really believe that everyone can bring something to the party. What would you DO differently if you were to BE like that?In his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey suggests that performance is equal to potential minus interference. So it makes sense to believe in someone's potential—to help them work out how to deal with the interference for themselves in order to improve performance. Yet, most managers focus purely on the individual's performance, demanding greater, faster, or better, rather than recognizing the potential and seeking to understand what gets in the way.Now, if you were to simply hold this one belief, you would almost certainly begin to ask questions that help the other person come to their own conclusions. This, of course, would in turn demand deeper listening and giving the other person time to think by remaining silent.Believe someone may have a better solutionThe belief that others may hold a better answer than you can be equally liberating. If you know the answer you want to hear, your questions will come from the belief and will be unconsciously formed to get it.Compare that to those times when you haven't known the answer. I bet your questions came more from a place of curiosity, with no judgment on whether the answers were “right” at that stage.**Believe everyone is responsible for their own choices**Of course, great coaches also believe that everyone is responsible for their own choices. So as a manager, stop taking responsibility for someone's performance. Encourage them to take responsibility for themselves, because you believe in them.Many leaders in organizations consider coaching as a soft leadership style, so let me tell you what I say to them: When you let go and have someone take responsibility for his or her self, it is a very scary place—for both of you. So, be conscious of offering the right balance of support and challenge to help them take the first few steps and liberate them from a sense of dependence.Actively embrace and use these core beliefs as a compass to guide your coaching practice and forget about simply DOING coaching. Instead, work at BEING a coach.

Three Core Beliefs to Guide Coaching

Part three in a four-part series on what the Human Capital Community of Practice can learn from neuroscience.Importance of boss-employee relationship. For as long as I’ve been a practicing professional in the human capital arena, I have considered feedback a core skill to both practice and teach to supervisors and managers. Recent Gallup research tells us that one main reason employees become disengaged from their work and organizations—and subsequently leave—is the relationship they have with their immediate boss. One of the communication cornerstones between a boss and employee is feedback. So, it’s really no surprise that a pivotal relationship lacking in one of the key communication areas will become strained, or at least unfulfilling. Other related research has shown that no feedback is actually far worse from the employee’s perspective than receiving negative feedback! The rationale? Receiving negative feedback brings a negative or critical message, but it at least lets the employees know that what they do gets noticed, and that their boss felt compelled enough to provide it. Hearing something from your boss tells you he at least acknowledges the working relationship you have with him.No feedback is worse than negative feedback. The brain can handle negative feedback. It doesn’t like rejection, but we can deal with that in various ways. What it doesn’t like at all (and is not very good at dealing with), is the absence of information or feedback. Our brains have a “negativity bias” which predisposes us to assume the worst in situations where information is missing. This bias served us well in the days where we had to make split-second decisions about the likelihood of a saber-toothed tiger eating us or letting us be. Given this negative bias, in the workplace—when we don’t have any indication of rejection or approval from our primary relationship (boss)—we can subconsciously conjure up many reasons why we don’t receive it. For example, “My boss has decided to fire me and is just biding time until he gives me a pink slip.” Or, “I am so uninteresting and unremarkable that other team members steal the spotlight. A co-worker must be stealing credit for my work.” Or, “My boss tolerates me and wants work out of me, but can’t stand me on a personal level. These—and more—reasons to explain a feedback void can flash through our minds in a half-of-an-instant and become our reality. As neuroscience tells us, the more we focus on beliefs, the more they feel like undebatable truisms.Feedback as a core managerial skill. In many first-time supervisor or management 101 courses, we teach the core responsibilities of a boss, which include giving feedback. We teach what feedback is, why it matters, techniques for relaying positive and negative feedback, and what to do in various special situations. And in upper-level manager and executive development programs, we often launch the program with a 360-degree feedback review process, where a select panel of raters spends upwards of an hour evaluating the target’s use of very particular competencies. These ratings are aggregated with our own company ratings on those same competencies, and then the summarized results of both are presented to us—if done well—with anywhere from an hour to a day-long feedback session. From here, individuals can largely decide what to do with the feedback: attempt to change, ignore it, or dismiss it. As you can see, large amounts of time, money, and brainpower are spent each year giving feedback in organizations.New research underscores 1996 findings. In “Turn the 360 Around: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and How to Do it Better,” Phil Dixon, David Rock, and Kevin Ochsner assert that most feedback in corporations is a waste of time. Citing research from 17 years ago, the authors note that a Kluger and DeNisi study found that 30 percent of feedback processes have a positive impact, 30 percent have no impact, and 40 percent of them make things worse (1996)! Additional findings have been highlighted, includingNo correlation between a leader’s effectiveness and whether their self-assessment matches others’ feedback (Fleenor and McCauley, 1996).Managers with higher levels of education spend less time preparing to give feedback (Sillup and Klimberg, 2010).One in five managers simply used their own perceptions in informing feedback (Sillup and Klimberg, 2010).Peers may see the feedback recipient as competition and deliberately rate him more harshly (Ashford and Tsui, 1991).Feedback can, but doesn’t always, improve performance. It can also make performance worse. A Watson Wyatt study (2002) found a 10 percent decrease in performance by engaging in feedback processes. Poorly planned messages can easily be misinterpreted. Employees can miss the main point of a manager’s intended message. Feedback can trigger strong emotional responses. Some employees have left companies after receiving feedback poorly. A large number of conditions must be satisfied in order for feedback to be worthwhile. Feedback is expensive, and without follow-up built in to the process, it is largely futile.If we’re looking for a “both/and” solution to the feedback controversy, perhaps we can find modifications of current processes to keep in place. Besides building in follow-up, then, what else can be done to make the feedback that takes place in your organization worthwhile and not harmful? Please accept these New Year’s “Feedback Resolutions,” given in the spirit of organizational improvement, to you and your kin:2013 Feedback ResolutionsDeNisi and Kluger (2000) divide feedback into categories: feedback about self, task, and task detail. The only category of feedback, they say, that might be useful is that around tasks. I will give feedback around task and not around self or the task detail.I will assume that some feedback is better than no feedback. I will share this message.I will stop believing that the best and most educated managers are also doing the best at providing useful feedback. I will provide support and coaching to them as well.I will spend more time setting up and explaining the feedback process around the feedback event.I will not conduct a 360-degree feedback process if there is to be no substantive follow-up.I will model effective giving and receiving of feedback whenever possible.

Kevin Watson

About