ICCOSpeak
Bridging the gaps in conversationsArchive for March, 2009
A Window into Coaching in Central America
- by Agnes Mura
Are you a Spanish-Speaking Coach or Consultant?
Latin America needs coaches. Let’s look at a vehicle that allows us to make a big difference.
Most coaching conferences you have attended in the US or developed countries have been replete with coaches, and only featured a smattering of organizational representatives. But in most of Latin America, there is more corporate need and curiosity about coaching that there are coaches to fulfill the need, so educational events there have a very different ratio of participant groups. Coaches, educators, researchers are needed.
The International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations (ICCO) seeks to bring together HR, OD and learning managers responsible for coaching programs in organizations, with executive coaches, coach educators and coaching firms, in “conversations that don’t happen anywhere else”(our motto).
One of the formats most conducive to creating such a climate and a safe, stimulating container, have been the Symposia ICCO launched in 2005 across the US, Central America and northern Europe. Imagine a group of no more than 35 people, working on cases – or more plainly said, helping organizations whose representatives are in the room to explore, re-think and sometimes resolve coaching challenges their firms face.
In Central America, the ICCO Symposia had to activate lots of personal connections to bring together enough experienced coaches with the numerous companies who wanted to join us for a limited-attendance event. Once we met, though, the level of engagement, passion, eagerness to learn and experiment rewarded us each time in spades.
All symposia are based on live case-work, which in Mexico, at ICCO’s first symposium south of the US border, meant helping executives from Bayer Crop science, Exxon Mobil and Banco Santander (the host) reflect on how they can introduce and leverage the use of coaching against their leadership development challenges. Look at the industries that raised their hands to get help working on their issues: they are among the most successful but also pressured and controversial in the world. Their leaders need fresh thinking approaches, fresh ways to collaborate laterally, new methods of working through influence vs. directives. In Guatemala, about a year later, other Human Resource and business line executives proposed their cases, always with this same objective: to understand coaching better and to learn how to infuse their leadership with this developmental approach. In Costa Rica (October 1-2, 2009) we are helping companies understand coaching as a change (and crisis) management tool.
During the symposia, we first, need to present a whirl-wind introduction to how organizational coaching works. While most Latin American HR managers and executives have a sense of the promise of coaching, few know what the coaching conversation is like, and they have little idea of how programs can be implemented on a broader scale. While in developed coaching markets, symposia attract very senior leaders and executive coaches, who work on the tough issues that the implementation of organizational coaching pose, in Central America we are building from the ground up:
- What does a truly effective coaching conversation and coaching process look and sound like?
- How do you design a coaching program that links into the performance management and the existing deployment initiatives of the company?
- How do you align it with the strategy that’s on the mind of senior executives, so that it becomes a more compelling “sell” to them?
- What sort of preparation do the managers need who will run such programs?
- How do you source coaches? Is it worth building a parallel approach of using external coaches as well as building internal capacity – often using those same coaches?
- How do you introduce coaching differently in large global corporations vs. a medium-sized local business?
- How do you sustain momentum and patience? – The culture won’t absorb this overnight.
- What measurement and evaluation systems work and don’t work?
…And much more.
ICCO has a sense of mission that envisions many countries “leapfrogging” the expensive trials and errors so many excellent companies have learned from in their coaching programs. We envision Eastern Europe and Latin America (you may like to work with us on connections with Asia!) establishing coaching programs that are even more economical, more strategic, and more efficient… sort of going straight to cell-phones without laying first laborious phone lines across the region.
There is a need not only for personal coach training programs but for programs that teach consultants, former business people and other graduate professionals how to help companies large and small leverage coaching in their cultures. There is a need for internal coach training programs that don’t just teach coaching skills and the business of coaching for the solo practitioner, but that teach the management of coaching programs: A lot of unsuspecting, often young HR people are thirsting for guidance, having found themselves saddled with creating and implementing something they know little about. There is a huge need for better disseminated research literature, newsletters, hands-on educational conferences produced by consortia, vs. by individual vendors.
And last but most important, there is a need for a major adjustment in the coach approach to the cultures involved. We have worked with executives and teams of managers in the US and in LatAm, and have experienced the temptation of imposing the western corporate cultural values and modus operandi on organizational systems (i.e. communities of people) that have a totally different set of concepts of hierarchy, expectations of leadership, sense of identity and life priorities. Regionally home-grown practitioners need to be thoughtful, original, and intentional about re-creating coaching in their clients’ worlds, not just based on imported models… and that’s hard when you have been trained in and look up to US coach training models.
What ICCO envisions is an unprecedented enrichment that will start flowing both ways, when coaching finds its voice in the companies that are the life blood of countries outside North America and western Europe. Join us in this exploration at www.coachingconsortium.org.
WHERE in the developing world do you think we should gather next with these different stakeholder groups and work on live cases that teach everyone what they need to learn?
Agnes Mura, founding president of ICCO, is a multi-lingual leadership coach and facilitator, who works in Los Angeles, Europe and Latin America. (www.agnesmura.com)
Coaching in Times of Crisis
- by Agnes Mura
Coaching in times of crisis has become all about resilience, for me.
As we know, true resilience comes not from looking away but from looking reality squarely in the face and avoiding denial. So, more than ever, as an executive coach, I help clients interrogate reality, questioning the assumptions of their businesses: what are they learning from the market today? Asking three to five levels deep, what is likely to come next? With what purpose and end in mind are they staffing down and what are they staffing UP for? What products/service, structures and bureaucracies should not survive this cycle?
Once we courageously look at all the implications of the current changes, we work on what story we are telling ourselves and others about it. Most leaders I work with “know” that they have to have a mind-set of seeing the opportunity underneath the crisis. Many will tell stories of how people “made it” during the worst of times. But what mind-set do their actions convey? Just the other day, a division VP showed such physical signs of dejection when being informed in a meeting that another account was lost, that the whole team’s spirit fell noticeably for days. Nobody expects unnatural poker faces in the work-place, but it’s important to coach intensely around the deep-seated conviction and optimism of the executives, because in times of immediate stress the truth of their attitudes will be visible. We can’t control Amygdala responses, we can only control the overall mood and philosophy with which we hold and meet set-backs.
The third component my coaching sessions seem to revolve around a lot these days is visioning. This is a learned skill, not natural to too many people (and those who have it a lot, seem fly like kites at times). re-invention, playful brain-storming, talking to the young, to the lowest rungs of the hierarchy, to other industry colleagues, to artist, reading great literature and history… these are ways to wash one’s brain of prevailing paradigms. VISA’s CEO is quoted to have said something to the effect that it’s much harder to get rid of the old than to introduce the new. (That’s why the new is introduced often on top of the old, which makes for fascinating archeological layers of processes and products in organizations.) Listening to different music, learning new physical skills, how fun it can be to refresh the whole being.
The challenge is that all this occurs against a mass-generated background of anxiety and fear. Acknowledging that in every moment when it shows up, looking fear in the face and smiling anyway – that’s where our sessions usually lead.
Agnes Mura, MA MCC
Santa Monica
Top Ten Sleep Thieves
by Ramiro Ponce
Next time someone desperately comes to you asking for some “sound advice” during hard times, beware. The person may be suffering from “Sleep Thieves”.
The” Top Ten Sleep Thieves”, as I call them, are derailed, tempting thoughts/behaviors we all have during hard times of perceived or real loss – times of anxiety and stress. Far from being abnormal, they are very natural ways in which our mind tries to deal with uncertainty when there are no clear signals or direction indicators “outside” about what’s best to do in the face of it (uncertainty).
Overcoming them usually requires increasing self- awareness, and some kind of re-framing of the context/situation, re-sizing it and daring to ask for help. Phrases like “There’s life after “X” – fill in your organization-, “there are more fish in the sea” or questions like “what’s the worst that could happen? are colloquial, practical ways to stimulate this re-sizing of the problem. Almost always immediate relief is experienced because we touch base with reality again.
The arguments presented in the “Reflection” part of the section below may be useful for you when you –as leader or team member – are confronted with questions which look for certainty in uncertain times. E.g. “Look, they’re offering me this job, but I’m afraid to leave now. On the other hand, things here are just worsening. What should I do?” Because anxiety caused by uncertainty doesn’t necessarily decrease with certainty, you must NOT answer the question, but rather stimulate the other person to look for the indicated context.
For example, you could answer: “Well, what would you say your scenarios are? Leaving / Staying? Things go wrong / things go OK.? Try mapping your options on a 2 x 2 table, analyze them and decide”.
When the Thieves are active, day to day managerial interventions of this type can make all the difference between the success or collapse of the transition process in the organization. Of course the concepts underlying the “thieves” presented here are not new. But systematizing them in an accessible, practical, and usable way may add real value to you in your daily role as a coach, leader or team member.
Thieves and Reflections
1. Rush decisions: “I’d better leave at once…”
Reflection: What if things improve around here? Imagine scenarios, don’t decide immediately
2. Extreme “Love”: “I won’t be as capable as I’ve been here at any other place…”
Reflection: There’s life after “X” (this organization)”. Write down your skills inventory/look outside
3. Clogged brain: “I can’t even think…my mind is in blank” …”
Reflection: What’s the simplest scenario I can visualize?
Start with ANYTHING.
4. Dejection: “What’s the use of going on?”
Reflection: Has giving up on oneself ever brought something good to anyone? Begin picking up your own pieces. Pay attention again to those “little things” (personal appearance, punctual again, and so on)
5. Hostility: “I won’t strain myself anymore… to hell with all this…”
Reflection: Is this the way I want to be remembered here? How you leave is more important than how you arrived.
6. Detachment: “This is business as usual…no need to be dramatic”
Reflection: It’s OK to feel and be even-tempered. It’s not OK to be indifferent and lower one’s performance.
7. Denial: “Me?… I’m just trying to help!”
Reflection: Dare to ask your team mates: How do you see me? Am I sometimes part of the problem?
Ask for specific examples.
8. Bargaining (with life, God, your boss…): “If they only gave me more money, training, time…”
Reflection: Is there a chance to drive forward sensibly if you look always at the rear mirror? Go; move ahead, even if the scenario is far from ideal.
9. Temporarily going down: “Maybe it’s me, I’m not good enough. Oh my… oh my…”
Reflection: What’s the worst that could happen?
How did I get out of similar situations?
Who can help me?
10. Control Need “I have to turn this around (on my own)”.
Reflection: Is this really under my control?
Look around you, verify common symptoms of loss in other people, find a shared positive goal.
Ramiro Ponce is ICCO Board Member, Executive Coach, Engineer-Psychologist and develops leaders and their teams throughout the Americas.
www.ramiroponce.com
e-mail: rpf54@intelnet.net.gt
Beyond Extreme Makeover: Coaching for hard economical times
Derived from my work with managers and their teams when they are striving to make it during hard economical times, when leaders insist on “pushing hard” – when pushing hard makes no sense anymore- and burnout is at the gates of the organization, I have found the following line of reasoning very useful and practical:
1. Organizations and individuals also, we love to think we really can control everything.
2. Leaders have been taught consequently that main organizational priorities are results and very often (though not so loudly declared), control.
3. Changes and crises, by their own nature are not controllable. (Though we also like to think they are)
4. So the usual speech: “We’ll continue doing business as usual, just focus on results, here’s a great opportunity, we are a great company” really begins to sound painful, as things get worst. This is NOT to say that change doesn’t bring opportunity, but just to emphasize that this rationale must be used timely and wisely by managers with desperate employees.
5. Reality: Business is not as usual, nothing is. “I’m sick of hearing about results, I don’t see where the **** opportunity is, and if we really are such a great company, why we all feel so angry?”
In this extreme context, you may find useful to orient the coaching process toward helping people understand to:
a. Let go of the illusion of control. It sounds easy. It’s not. But it’s healthy and possible.
b. Admit they don’t feel well. Nobody really does.
c. Results are really delivered during these hard times, as a side- effect of healing aching “casualties of work overload”, not from stubbornly and naively insisting that we must deliver – what by simple pure reality is NOT possible right now.
d. Recognize that their bosses many times are clinging to past glories -like ex-wealthy families insisting on maintaining a standard no longer validated by reality- and that bosses do so, most of the times, simply because they don’t know what else to do. After all they are bosses becauses they delivered results, not because they really listened to people (at least in most cases).
e. Making them aware a temporary hurting/loss process is taking place, that the “good old days” are gone
f. Accept they have to take care of themselves and their teams, and suggest concrete activities for doing this.
g. Make a stop on the road, re-think, re-schedule and re-prioritize what they are doing.
In short it’s about stopping in yourself -even if your boss doesn’t- the denial process, and awakening to real new possibilities by focusing on what’s really going on inside you, what your real possibilities are NOW, and what you’re feeling. Yes…feelings are important in these times.
It’s about recognizing that during crises periods, an external locus of control becomes useless, since outside nothing looks well. That’s why your new senses of purpose must be looked for inside you, in your history, in your prior losses and how you surmounted them, in your inner sense of self-confidence, in our strengths inventory and ultimately in your ability to defend your right to enjoy – yes, enjoy- even while going through the crisis period.
This denial stopping and search for an inner sense of purpose, as opposed to the “everything’s OK” so common posture, bring a very healthy sense of relief. You don’t have to worry anymore for those things which are out of your control.
You can begin planning on solid real bases and begin building again. The only difference is that you’ll do better this time, and emerge stronger from the process.
Ramiro Ponce is an ICCO Board Member, senior executive coach, engineer and psychologist who works throughout the Americas.
www.ramirponce.com
E–mail: rpf54@intelnet.net.gt
