By Gary Markle
“What if someone doesn’t want to be coached?”
It’s a question I’ve gotten more than a few times over the years, most recently from a manager of a large group of blue collar employees. “Can they opt-out?”
Instead of the expected direct answer, I asked if he’d ever played sports. “Absolutely!,” he offered. “I played college basketball for four years on a partial scholarship.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Imagine telling your head coach that you wanted to opt out on his coaching. How do you think he’d respond?”
“I wouldn’t be crazy enough to suggest something like that,” blurted the manager. “In competitive sports, coaching is not an option.”
“And why do you think business would be different?,” I continued. “We’re paying both you and your teammates to work together and ensure we all win.”
Perhaps it’s a problem of vernacular. In recent years, coaching in the business world has become equal to giving advice. “Executive coaches” are hired for their sage counsel, but there’s no real obligation to adhere to the guidance we pay for. If we don’t like what they're saying, it’s even easy enough to replace them with someone more pleasing to our ears. There’s no shortage of advisors hoping to get paid for their constructive insights.
Catalytic Coaching isn’t like executive coaching. It’s more like playing sports. Coaching is less an option and more a mutually beneficial obligation. This is the organization’s way of ensuring that straightforward, impactful conversations take place to help fulfil our shared obligation to win.
Not only is participation in coaching imperative, it's important to understand that it isn’t all sunshine and kumbaya. Yes, Catalytic Coaching is something you do FOR your team members. It’s not like traditional performance management that you do TO them. And yes, you start the coaching process by listening actively to the employee to understand how they see the past and their future. That absolutely does not mean that it must override the areas for focused development that the organization needs that person to work on.
"Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it's going to be bad for the pitcher" ~Don Quixote
While a direct report’s needs should be carefully considered in creating any foundation for development, conflict between what the employee wants to prioritize and what’s being advocated by the manager won’t end in a stalemate or prolonged debate. The manager’s direction is stone. The employee’s preference is a ceramic pitcher. When in doubt, it must be made clear which takes precedence.
“What’s up with my boss? He’s completely out to lunch!” I remember the chuckling grin that accompanied those words. It was the early stages of the “360 feedback” revolution. This confident young manager was thrilled to tell me that his own manager was “out of touch” with reality. He even had evidence of this, pointing to favorable grades that he was given by himself, his peers, and his direct reports.
“There is only one person on this report who can fire you,” I had to remind him. “Perhaps you’d be wise not to dismiss these low marks so quickly.” It’s a sobering truth that all employees must understand.
I’ve seen this in action during coaching too. It’s not uncommon for a highly assertive person to talk over their less aggressive manager when given a blue Coaching Input session they don’t especially like.
This is one reason we have the “Job Threatening” message available in the Catalytic Coaching process. It describes a focus area that must be rapidly and successfully modified to prevent job loss. We double check that the message was received properly by having someone in HR (preferably a Coach2) follow up after a Job Threatening meeting. “Please be aware that this MUST be corrected for you to retain your job. Did you understand the message as intended? Do you have any questions? Assuming you wish to try to do better, would you like some help in creating a campaign to get yourself out of this predicament?” This is the operational definition of when the stone meets the pitcher.
How do you help the pitcher meet the stone without shattering?
No Opt Outs – Avoid giving anyone the impression that coaching is something an employee can elect not to receive. It is a required activity for anyone who wishes to serve on our team, the same as any other job function.
DANGER! – Be excruciatingly clear about what constitutes a Job Threatening focus area. If you don’t use Catalytic Coaching, create a similar way to separate optional constructive developmental changes from mandatory behavioral modifications that impact employment.
RIP PIP – Avoid the use of a Performance Improvement Plan, unless contractually obligated. These negatively skewed legalistic documents fan the flames of righteous indignation and often lead to more lawsuits than they prevent.
Downward Feedback First -- With all due respect to the importance of looking at your performance from all angles, make sure you get the most important angle covered first. The boss has the biggest say on an employee’s retention, advancement, and pay. Don’t lose that perspective in the big data shuffle.
Are you treading the all too fine line between caring and asserting? Questioning when empathy may go to far? Wondering when is it time to remind the pitcher of the stone?
Join me for a free webinar tackling the dynamic between The Stone and The Pitcher in the workplace.
Garold (Gary) Markle is the creator of Catalytic Coaching and author of Catalytic Coaching: The End of the Performance Review. He brings real world experience from 17 years in HR leadership in major corporations coupled with 20 years of teaching small and mid-sized organizations how to cultivate their leadership and ditch their detrimental performance reviews for a proven Coaching process.
Book Gary to speak to your audience about speeding your pace of significant change.
