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January 2016 - TD Magazine

An interview with Alan Fine, performance coach and founder/president of InsideOut Development

An Interview with Alan Fine

Alan Fine, co-creator of the widely recognized GROW Model, is the founder and president of InsideOut Development. Alan is considered a pioneer of the modern coaching movement, and many of the world’s most respected organizations have adopted his InsideOut approach to performance improvement, including IBM, NASA, Honeywell, Gap, and Coca-Cola. Alan has dedicated the past 25 years to helping people from all walks of life elevate their performance and unlock their potential, including athletes such as Davis Cup tennis star Buster Mottram, record-breaking triathlete James Lawrence, and PGA golfers Phillip Price, David Feherty, Colin Montgomerie, and Stephen Ames.

Alan Fine

December 2019 - TD Magazine

Employees are often hesitant to give feedback to those who are in leadership positions for reasons ranging from fear of reprisal to simply not wanting to overstep their boundaries.

5 Steps for Managers to Get Better Employee Feedback

After two straight years of failing to meet company metrics, you’re finally convinced your team needs coaching. You proceed with outsourcing the task to coaching experts that provide you, your supervisors, and your managers with coaching classes that include everything from Leadership 101 to Creating a Comprehensive Performance Evaluation. Two years later, your team can show off their library of course books and they have spent hours away from their jobs in classroom training. Great…except that performance still hasn’t improved. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Billions of dollars are invested into the coaching of executives, managers, and individual contributors. Sometimes the results are fruitful. However, many coaching programs leave much to be desired or are ineffective altogether. Why? It’s simple: coaching isn’t a commodity you can just buy and count on. Training your leaders and managers to coach and using executive coaches—because research says coaching makes a difference—often misses what makes coaching deployments really work. How coaching is done, when coaching happens, and who is accountable all play a huge role in whether you and your team succeeds. Fortunately, these issues are fixable. Is your coaching program falling short? Here are three reasons it may not be working and what you can do to get back on track. Reason #1: You aren’t clear what your coaching program is supporting When my daughter was learning the piano, practicing the classical pieces she didn’t like was a chore. She went through the motions reluctantly and lacked the faith, fire, and focus necessary for performance. However, when I gave her the music for her favorite songs from the movie the Lord of the Rings, I couldn’t get her away from the piano. It’s the same when people coach. When they don’t get the what, when, and why of coaching, they go through the motions and rationalize their behavior. They think: “I don’t have time to coach,” “I already coach,” and “Coaching wasn’t appropriate.” In other words, there is no faith, fire or focus without passion towards the goal or without a clear, meaningful goal. If your deployment is comprised mostly of classes and training, that may be the reason you aren’t getting the results you want. Simply spending money on information about coaching or acknowledging its importance is not enough. Coaching deployments without clear goals lead to unclear results—at best. So, what are some clear goals of a coaching deployment? In my experience they fall into three areas: Building the coaching competency. This focuses on ensuring managers are capable in specific, “check this box” skill sets. These programs often result in a default to the “checklist” approach to coaching. The competency-driven approach is based on the assumption that if people understand what to do, they will do it. Although people may understand the skill set and even possess the skills, they are less likely to actually use them.Building a culture. This is using coaching to drive a specific cultural initiative such as engagement, accountability, or innovation at the team, business unit, or organization level. This gets more traction because it gives a clear reason to use the skills being deployed.Producing a specific business result with coaching. The most successful deployments make the clear connection between coaching and critical business results. Defining some kind of burning platform, an overarching need and business result that must to be achieved and using coaching as a way to deliver on that result is when coaching will gain most traction and have most impact. When your coaching program is delivered in the context of a specific purpose or goal, the people you are coaching know what they are working towards and, as a result, their targeted actions and behaviors lead to specific outcomes. Reason #2: You’re not holding people accountable Accountability is one of the most desired things in any organization—and one of the hardest things to create. Everyone wants to work with people who do something I call “SayDoCo”: say what they’ll dodo what they saycommunicate to the stakeholders when they are unable to do what they said would do.Case in point: I asked 34 leaders of a global company, “How many of you think that you SayDoCo?” Thirty-four hands want up. When I asked them, “How many of you have witnessed your colleagues in this room more than occasionally not SayDoCo?” Thirty hands went up. There was an awkward silence as they realized the implications: there was a gap between what they thought they did and what they actually did. Bottom line: everyone evaluates everyone else based on how well they SayDoCo. Leaders evaluate their followers by how consistently they SayDoCo, and followers evaluate their leaders the same way. When people aren’t accountable, in other words when they don’t SayDoCo, it has a major impact on things that are critical to every organization. Everything from executing a competency, to changing a culture, to driving results are all affected when people don't SayDoCo. Before he rose to fame as a golf writer and broadcaster, David Feherty was a very successful professional golfer. He and I worked for many years on unleashing his best golf. At one time, David was struggling with his golf game. He wasn’t committing his shot when there was trouble in front of him. This issue was the result of fear of hitting the ball out of bounds when there was trouble on both sides of a fairway—a common fear among golfers in general. One day in practice, I asked David if he could commit to every shot if he absolutely had to, if his life depended on it. He said he could. I then asked David if he could commit to every shot if it meant he would receive $250K. He said it was more money than he would get for winning the next tournament, so again he said he could. I then changed the question a bit: “Do you think you could commit to every shot if not committing on any one shot meant you had to give up $2500?” Again, he said yes—wondering where I was headed with these questions. So, I suggested to David that he write a check to his favorite charity for $2500. I told him that if he committed to every ball in the next tournament, it would not be mailed. However, if he pulled back on even one shot, I would send it. He agreed. The following Sunday, David called me from Italy. He had committed on every ball, won the Italian Open and said, “Mail the check anyway!” Like many of us, David already possessed the skills to achieve the goal. What ultimately made the difference, though, was creating a mindset of accountability for his actions. By helping David frame what he was doing in a simpler more meaningful way (for him), I helped him be more accountable for what he had agreed was important—to be able to do what he said he was going to do. The more you move from deploying coaching as a competency to deploying it to drive a business result the more leaders will be engaged in supporting the deployment. Reason #3: You’re over-complicating the process of coaching When the process of coaching is overcomplicated or seen as one more thing they have to do, people become much less likely to do it—particularly when under pressure. The most effective coaching experiences are ones that are simple, timely, and match the readiness of the person being coached. When the process of coaching is seen as complimentary to what people already do—helping organize and use skills they already have more effectively, they are much more likely to “coach.” The pattern of effective questioning has to be simple and repeatable to a large degree, so that there is no mystery about how to do this effectively. In fact, when both the coach and the coachee know the questions, it can dramatically accelerate the whole process of coaching. I was once involved in coaching a world-class concert violinist through performance anxiety, a condition he has never faced before. Clearly, he didn’t require my help in learning how to play the violin. It wasn’t a knowledge issue; he already knew that, far better than I ever would (plus I know nothing about how to play the violin). Instead of overcomplicating the situation with unsubstantiated tips and advice, together we watched a recording of him playing in concert. I asked him to tell me what he noticed as he watched. As it turned out, simply asking him the question of what he saw and heard gave him the answer he needed to make immediate changes. He noticed a change in his breathing at the moments when he “stumbled” (a relative term for him!). In light of this discovery, he began to focus on his breathing when he approached those particular bars of music and was able to reduce his anxiety enough to play unencumbered. From golfers to violinists to corporate professionals, improving performance is ultimately more about doing what we know than knowing what to do. Freeing people up to do what they know is what coaching is all about. Next time you’re in the coach’s seat or looking to hire a coach for your team, remember the most effective approaches to coaching are to tie the program to a clear business result; hold people accountable for saying what they’ll do, doing what they say, and communicating when they can’t; and simplify how coaching is done.

3 Strategies to Maximize the ROI of Coaching

Golfers say that the game of golf is at least 80 percent mental and less than 20 percent physical or technical capabilities. Yet to improve their game, what do most golfers spend their time working on? They practice the 20 percent or less that’s physical. They spend far more than 80 percent of their practice time on what they know is only 20 percent of the game. Why? What compels golfers specifically (and human beings in general) to continue to behave in ways that are opposite to what they know? It would be much more logical to focus on the 80 percent—on the behaviors that will actually make a difference and lead to change. But more often than not, we fail to do what makes more sense.  This principle of 80 percent was driven home by a recent experience I had with a CEO I was coaching. This executive (we’ll call him Bob) was wrestling with his organization’s inability to “walk the talk” around customer service. He had diagnosed that a significant part of the problem was that senior managers were spending more time at their computers instead of leading and coaching sales people. When I asked him what made it so difficult for him to change that behavior, he described being buried at his desk with everything he had to do. In other words, he was modeling the same behavior he was describing as a problem in his senior managers. As we continued our conversation, he eventually volunteered, “I know if I lean right, the whole organization will lean right.” At this point he sat back in his chair and said, “So I’m the problem?” I replied, “And therefore you’re part of the solution.” Humans are funny. At our core, we are creatures of habit. Once we are comfortable, we lose awareness of our patterns and behaviors. But not only is it possible, but it‘s simple to free ourselves from the patterns that continually trap us. An easy starting point is to ask ourselves what is the one thing I could do more—or less—of that would make me more effective. More to the point: What is the simple, obvious thing you can do to free up your best self? Most likely, it is something that you already know about, but have been ignoring. Interested in more insight? Join Alan for his presentation, Unlocked Potential: You Already Know How to Be Great, part of ASTD’s Career Week and sponsored by Citrix GoToTraining.

Are You Focused on What Matters?

Implementing a successful coaching program within an organization requires a thorough understanding of the current culture and identifying areas where coaching can be most beneficial. Organizational culture shapes how work gets done and influences everything from decision making to interpersonal interactions. Here’s a concise guide to assessing organizational readiness, analyzing culture, and identifying where coaching could be integrated.Understanding Organizational CultureOrganizational culture is the set of shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape how work gets done within a company. To effectively understand an organization’s culture, it’s crucial to consider several key aspects:Core values and beliefs: Examine the organization’s core values and beliefs. How are these values communicated and reinforced? Do employees understand and align with these values? Understanding the foundational principles that guide behavior is essential for identifying how coaching can align with and support these values.Behavioral norms: Consider the unwritten rules that govern behavior. How do employees interact with each other and with management? Are there specific behaviors that are encouraged or discouraged? Understanding these norms can reveal areas where coaching can help modify or reinforce behaviors.Leadership styles: Leadership styles play a significant role in shaping organizational culture. What leadership styles are predominant? How do leaders communicate and make decisions? Identifying these styles can highlight areas where coaching can develop more effective leadership practices.Employee engagement: Employee engagement is another critical aspect. How engaged are employees in their work? What motivates them, and how is their performance recognized? High levels of engagement often indicate a readiness for coaching initiatives aimed at enhancing job satisfaction and performance.“Leadership has a profound impact on an organization’s culture, shaping the environment and influencing employee behavior. Leaders set the tone through their actions, attitudes, and communication styles, which employees often emulate. When leaders model coaching behaviors such as active listening, these values become ingrained in the organization’s culture.”  —Alan Fine, Performance Coach and Bestselling AuthorAnalyzing Organizational CultureTo gain a comprehensive understanding of the organizational culture, a combination of methods should be employed:Surveys and questionnaires: Conduct surveys and questionnaires to gain insights into employees' perceptions of the organizational culture. Questions should cover job satisfaction, leadership effectiveness, communication quality, and overall workplace environment. This data can reveal patterns and areas needing attention.Focus groups and interviews: Engage in focus groups and one-on-one interviews to explore cultural dynamics more deeply. These conversations can uncover underlying issues and provide a more nuanced understanding of the culture. Direct feedback from employees can highlight specific areas where coaching could make a significant impact.Observations: Observe day-to-day interactions and behaviors within the organization offers a firsthand view of the cultural landscape. Pay attention to how meetings are conducted, how decisions are made, and how employees collaborate. These observations can reveal discrepancies between stated values and actual practices.Document analysis: Review internal documents, such as company policies, training materials, and communication memos, can reveal the formal and informal aspects of the culture. This analysis helps identify the alignment between stated values and actual practices, providing a clearer picture of where coaching can be integrated.Identifying Areas for Coaching IntegrationOnce the organizational culture has been analyzed, the next step is to identify areas where coaching can drive improvement and support cultural alignment:Leadership development: Coaching can be a powerful tool for developing leadership skills. Focus on enhancing emotional intelligence, promoting effective communication, encouraging adaptive leadership styles, and fostering collaboration. Developing leaders who can inspire and engage their teams is crucial for a healthy organizational culture.Employee engagement and motivation: Coaching can help boost employee engagement by providing personalized development plans, offering support for career growth, and addressing individual motivational drivers. Engaged employees are more likely to contribute positively to the organizational culture and achieve higher performance levels.Team dynamics and collaboration: Improving team dynamics through coaching can facilitate better collaboration and teamwork. Focus on enhancing problem-solving skills, building trust within teams, and fostering a culture of open communication. Effective teams are the backbone of a successful organization.Change management: Coaching can support employees and leaders through organizational changes by helping them adapt to new processes, manage resistance, and build resilience. Ensuring alignment with the organization’s strategic goals during times of change is critical for maintaining a positive culture.Performance improvement: Addressing performance issues through coaching involves identifying and overcoming barriers, setting clear goals, and providing ongoing feedback. Coaching can help employees achieve their full potential, leading to improved overall performance.Assessing organizational readiness and analyzing the current culture is crucial for successfully integrating coaching. Organizations can create tailored coaching programs that drive meaningful change and enhance overall performance by understanding cultural dynamics and identifying areas where coaching can have the most impact. With a well-planned implementation strategy, coaching can become vital to the organization’s growth and success.Following these steps, along with the right tools and resources, organizations can create a coaching culture that fosters continuous improvement and sustained success.

Assessing Organizational Readiness: Analyzing Culture and Identifying Coaching Opportunities

New edition of highly popular Career Moves: Be Strategic about Your Future now available.ASTD, the world’s largest association dedicated to the training and development profession announces a slate of activities for the 2013 ASTD Career Week, September 16-20, a week-long professional development offering for trainers. Publication of the highly anticipated third edition of Career Moves is featured during the week.“ASTD’s Career Week is a week-long, content-rich online event,” says Phaedra Brotherton, manager of ASTD’s career development community of practice. “Learning professionals have access to today’s leading career development experts. Through webcasts, podcasts, and new daily blogs, we have something for those looking to up their T&D career game as well as those looking for tips to help employees grow their careers within an organization.”Highlighting Career Week is the publication of the third edition of the bestseller Career Moves: Be Strategic about Your Future, by Caitlin Williams and Annabelle Reitman. The popular book is a practical resource, updated, and packed with materials to help T&D professionals advance their careers. The authors will also host a free webcast on Thursday, September 19.Other 2013 Career Week activities include this series of free webcasts: • Tuesday: New Professionals: How to Stand Out and Promote YourselfFeaturing Dan Schawbel, bestselling author and Gen Y expert• Wednesday: ASTD Career Navigator: Assess Your Competencies in TrainingFeaturing Cheryl Lasse, managing partner for Edutainment Media• Friday: [Unlocked Potential: You Already Know How to Be Great](http://www.astd.org/Digital-Resources/Webcasts/TD/2013/09/Unlocked-Potential-You-Already-Know-How-to-Be-Great)Featuring Alan Fine, New York Times bestselling author, performance expert, and coach to professional athletes. This webcast is sponsored by Citrix GoToTraining.In addition, new podcasts from Beverly Kaye, Julie Winkle Guilioni, Wendy Terwelp, and Nandi Shareef will be posted daily. The podcasts will focus on best practices for helping employees navigate and grow their careers and networking secrets for young professionals.To learn more about ASTD’s Career Week visit the Career Week website: www.astd.org/careerweek.Visit the Career Moves: Be Strategic about Your Future page to read a free chapter.ASTD Career Week is sponsored by Edutainment Media.

ASTD Announces Career Week Activities for Training and Development Professionals

Let me share something that might surprise you: Most organizations are getting performance management completely backward. They’re piling on more systems, frameworks, and “best practices,” yet 82 percent of HR leaders say their efforts aren’t working. Why? They tend to add more complexity when they should be removing interference—the stuff that gets in the way of people giving their best.Here’s my truth: Performance management isn’t about complex systems—it’s about conversations—simple, human conversations that clear the path between where someone is and where they want to go. In my work with organizations, they often tell me they need better tools, frameworks, and processes. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what they really need is to get better at having real conversations that matter.Whether we like it or not, every interaction between a leader and team member has an impact. Whether it’s a scheduled performance review or a quick hallway chat, these moments build trust and capability or create interference and resistance. What makes the difference? It’s all in how we navigate through each conversation.Let’s break this down into two scenarios we all recognize:The Formal Performance ConversationYou know these well—the structured reviews, the goal-setting sessions, the KPI discussions. Many organizations load these moments with so much process and paperwork that they create exactly what they’re trying to avoid: interference and resistance. The key isn’t adding more structure—it’s removing the barriers that prevent honest, productive dialogue.What if instead of focusing on forms and ratings, we approached these conversations with curiosity and partnership? When leaders adopt a coaching mindset, something remarkable happens:Goal-setting becomes a collaborative exploration rather than a top-down directive.Feedback transforms from a one-way broadcast into a two-way discovery.Development plans shift from prescribed paths to journeys of self-discovery.The Informal Performance ConversationThese are the golden moments—the “do you have a minute?” conversations that happen naturally throughout the day. They’re often where the real magic happens because there’s less interference from formal structures and expectations. These spontaneous interactions are always opportunities for:In the moment, course corrections that feel like support rather than criticismBuilding trust through showing up as caring, candid, and being constructiveBringing a growth mindset to everyday challengesHere’s what I’ve learned after decades of working with leaders: The most effective performance management isn’t about managing at all—it’s about creating space for people to access their own knowledge and capability. When leaders approach both formal and informal conversations with a coaching mindset, they remove the interference that blocks natural development and growth.Remember: Your team members already know more than they think they do. Your job isn’t to pile on more knowledge or create more complex systems. It’s to help clear away the noise, so they can access what they already know and connect it to what matters most—both for them and for the organization.The inclusion of a coaching approach into performance management is less about adding new tools to your toolkit and more about removing the barriers that make these conversations feel forced, formal, or threatening and more busy work. When we do that, performance management transforms from a dreaded institutional requirement into a natural, ongoing dialogue about growth and possibility.

Putting the Humanity Into Performance Management Conversations

In a word, yes.But if we have this conversation, we must dispel a few myths about culture, accountability, and change.First, holding people accountable is different from accountability. Holding someone accountable is something we do. But being accountable is something they do. Even the notion of “holding” someone accountable misrepresents accountability. They will only be accountable if they choose to be accountable. You will see it when people regularly state what they will do, do it, and keep us apprised of the progress.Second, culture is not a thing we create directly. Culture is the sum of the behaviors of a group of people. Culture is not a product of something we do but a by-product of what everyone does. Therefore, if we want a “culture of accountability,” we want the sum of the behaviors of everyone in our organization to represent them holding themselves accountable.Finally, change only occurs sustainably in a place of safety. Someone must be comfortable discussing their goals and progress, both high points and challenges, knowing the intention is to help them, not judge them.How can this happen? This is where coaching can be a game-changer.Just as we must think of culture and accountability differently, we must do the same with coaching. Traditional coaching paradigms suggest that coaching is a “thing we do” in conversations pre-defined as coaching. Instead, envision coaching as a way to do things that can appear in every conversation. It becomes more natural and changes the expectations of both the coach and coachee. The need for safety is met when the coachee realizes this is not about our desire to tell them what to do but their desire to achieve something. As an example, a great “accountability-and-culture-building conversation” might use four simple questions:“What is your goal?”This “way we do things” is markedly different from the start. When we begin, ask them what their goal for the conversation is. By doing so, we instantly reframe the perspective that they own the dialog and outcome, not us. We become a resource to help them solve their problems. By continuing to ask clarifying questions, we assist them in gaining even more clarity about what they want to accomplish, how they will know if they have done it, and how important it is.“What’s been happening?”Next, invite them to describe the current situation that created the need for the conversation. Often, just vocalizing the problem that has only been tossed over in their mind can result in a better perspective. Clarifying the gap between what they want in their goal and where things are will shed light on the value of closing that gap and its difficulty. It’s also a chance for them to unload potential frustrations with the situation while keeping the purpose of sharing those feelings aligned with the goal of your conversation.“What are your options?”With the foundation of their goal and current assessment of reality, ask them what ideas they might have to solve it. If nothing comes to mind, keep encouraging them with help like, “If you could do anything, what would you do?” or “If someone else were listening, what might they suggest?” Only when they have established a few choices of action do we ask if they would like input from us. This helps reinforce the intention that our primary goal is not to give them our solution but to help them create and own their solution."What is your way forward?"Finally, ask them which ideas work best for them and ask them to create a simple plan of how they will accomplish it.The approach and the questions are simple, and the impact is huge. Focus will improve, and they will naturally apply their best skills and abilities. Engagement will increase, creating a sustainable effort. Confidence to think through and solve problems will get stronger. Finally, they will feel ownership for what will happen next.To say it more succinctly, they, by choice, will become accountable.

Can Coaching Help Create a Culture of Accountability?

Whenever we help a company implement a coaching program or tackle issues with DEI, we understand that organizations are made up of people.

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