The WHY of Executive Coaching

Why is it that some people are more successful than others? Is it because of their connections, or is that they are at the right place at the right time? Well, research shows that it is not about who they are; it really is about what they do.

Coaching was once viewed as an intervention aimed to better the performance of under performers; however, now it is seen as a support to top performers to sharpen their skills in meeting the ever growing business needs.

The goal for all Executive Coaching is on what the coachee needs to do, and do consistently, to achieve success. Please note – it is Executive Coaching that makes you successful, and not the Executive Coach. It is the process of coaching that will lead the coachee to deliver their results, in which the following 5 points of what the Coach brings in, are worth noting:

1.The Coach will help crystalize your goals, by helping reframe your otherwise vague goals, and perhaps even help you go for that extra stretch.

2.The Coach will hold you accountable, ensuring that you do not procrastinate.

3.The Coach will help set up agreed milestones and ensure an objective measurement of your progress.

4.The Coach will challenge you, motivate you, inspire you, based on what you may need at the different times in your journey, and help you get over negative or self-limiting thinking.

5.The Coach is in a great position to provide unbiased feedback, as he/she is not directly connected to your success or failure.

Executive Coaching does not attempt to change who you are, it only attempts to change what you do and how you do it.

It is therefore not surprising that Executive Coaching is now a growing practice to help successful performers to fast track their career progression. Further, more and more organizations are seeing the huge benefit this offers to organizations in their growth plans, and succession planning. The belief is a one-on-one coaching from a third party can provide a focus that other interventions cannot provide.

Post by Sanjay Dugar – C2C Director & Principal Consultant

5 Reasons We Shouldn’t Bury Instructor Led Training (ILT) just yet

It has become a very popular hobby among L&D professionals to bash Instructor Led Training (ILT) at the profit of social learning, self paced learning or even individual coaching.

There is no doubt that new technology based forms of learning are great in the way that they allow learners to use new interfaces that sometimes fit their learning style and lifestyle  better. There is also no doubt that coaching is an extremely powerful, highly personalised development approach.However, this does not mean that our ancient ILT was never effective or “just doesn’t work for digital natives”(sic) or “goes against adult learning principles.”(sic)

When I read or hear this, I really wonder what kind of ILT people have been attending or have been facilitating. If done properly, ILT can be a very effective part of someone’s development.

1. ILT allow participants to share experiences with one another with someone to facilitate the exchange and help them debrief these experiences in order to identify learning points. They can also sometimes learn by listening someone else’s question, and subsequent discussion,that they had not thought of.

2. ILT allow participants to confront their perspective to others. Someone from the HR function might discuss empathy very differently than someone from Information Security and they will both build a better understanding of the business by being exposed to each others perspective.

3. Being exposed to different perspectives and mental models also builds can also be a good way to build acceptance of diversity of others but also assertiveness when debating with people with different opinions.

4. ILT are a great place to network. Participants often get a chance to meet colleagues they would never meet otherwise or meet peers from other organizations.

5. ILT can also be a good occasion for intact teams to step back from every day operations and spend time together developing skills that will enable the team to work better.

So, is ILT only way to develop new skills? No.

Are technology based learning systems useful? Yes.

Are other forms of development like coaching, group process facilitation and mentoring also useful? Yes.

The only thing I hope the L&D community moves away from is the either/or mentality. Effective development initiatives are the ones that understand how to blend different  methods in order to achieve real development.

Post by Guillaume Gevrey – Director & Principal Consultant C2C

People don’t learn from experience; they learn from reflecting on their experience.

I am a firm believer that activities alone are not enough for most training participants to extract meaningful learning that they can then apply to the real world. In my view, activities are are just an excuse for a good debriefing discussion, not the other way around. This is why when our clients ask us whether their participants will play games, my answer is always “No, but they will participate in experiential activities from which they will be able to extract learning.”

Personally, I still think that Thiagi‘s 6 phases of Debriefing is the best way to structure this eminently important aspect of effective training. Here are the 6 phases below

Phase 1: How Do You Feel?

This phase gives the participants an opportunity to get strong feelings and emotion off their chest. It makes it easier for them to be more objective during the later phases.

Begin this phase with a broad question that invites the participants to get in touch with their feelings about the activity and its outcomes. Encourage them to share these feelings, listening actively to one another in a nonjudgmental fashion.

Phase 2: What Happened?

In this phase, collect data about what happened during the activity. Encourage the participants to compare and contrast their recollections and to draw general conclusions during the next phase.

Begin this phase with a broad question that asks the participants to recall important events from the training activity. Create and post a chronological list of events. Ask questions about specific events.

Phase 3: What Did You Learn?

In this phase, encourage the participants to generate and test different hypotheses. Ask the participants to come up with principles based on the activity and discuss them.

Begin this phase by presenting a principle and asking the participants for data that supports or rejects it. Then invite the participants to offer other principles based on their experiences.

Phase 4: How Does This Relate To The Real World?

In this phase, discuss the relevance of the activity to the participants’ real-world experiences.

Begin with a broad question about the relationship between the experiential learning activity and events in the workplace. Suggest that the activity is a metaphor and ask participants to offer real-world analogies.

Phase 5: What If?

In this phase, encourage the participants to apply their insights to new contexts. Use alternative scenarios to speculate on how people’s behaviors would change.

Begin this phase with a change scenario and ask the participants to speculate on how it would have affected the process and the outcomes of the activity. Then invite the participants to offer their own scenarios and discuss them.

Phase 6: What Next?

In this phase, ask the participants to undertake action planning. Ask them to apply their insights from the experiential activity to the real world.

Begin this phase by asking the participants to suggest strategies for use in future rounds of the activity. Then ask the participants how they will change their real-world behavior as a result of the insights gained from the activity.

Honestly, anyone with decent presentation skills and a bit of common sense can conduct a training program, and give participants a good time but that has never made it a relevant learning experience. Professional trainers focus on the discussions that they facilitate for learners to extract their own learning, and that is a skill that needs to be developed over time.