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Coaching and business context

By Navigator member Chris Farrance, Chris Farrance Associates

Do we really expect too much of our leaders? After all they’re simultaneously tasked to be charismatic like Churchill, Six Sigma steeped like Jack Welch, emotionally engaged like Jim Collins and occasionally brutal like Al ‘chainsaw’ Dunlap.

But is the role of a leader even more complex now – are these examples of the good old days?  There’s a growing sense that no one stakeholder group - be it shareholders, senior executives or investment bankers - should prosper disproportionately at the expense of others. This modern tapestry would include being sensitised to the needs of customers, staff and the broader communities a company does business in.

So, there’s a case now for a more holistic view and understanding of a business and its trading environment. Why?  Because it provides a more informed context and background to an executive leadership coaching intervention. The focus here is on coaching rather than an exploration of the coaching/mentoring dynamics.

The Business Perspective
Coaches inevitably come from a variety of backgrounds and with a range of compelling – if not competing - skills sets and experiences. In his book ‘Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching’ (Open University Press, 2006), Peter Bluckert identifies business competencies as one of the critical success factors in executive coaching. He describes this as:

‘corporate awareness and ‘savvy’, understanding of organisational dynamics, leadership, strategy, culture and politics along with the general ability to move in corporate circles with a fair degree of comfort and surefootedness.’

More recently, concerns have been expressed by Myles Downey – author of ‘Effective Coaching’ and founder of The School of Coaching. He warns that coaching is becoming almost exclusively focused on the learning and development agenda and that coaching for performance is being neglected. So the thrust of this chapter is unapologetically on the business context.

It’s worth remembering that businesses come in many shapes and sizes such as:

Budding start up entrepreneurs grappling with the challenges of taking a product to market as well as developing more broadly based management skills;

So called ‘lifestyle’ companies where growth per se may not be the imperative but usually there are some interesting interpersonal dynamics amongst shareholders and the executive team – they may of course be the same.

Heavily rules based models such as licensing and franchising;

And of course the more established companies - perhaps trading internationally with the challenges of risk, complexity and responsiveness to change.

Increasingly strategic alliances and partnerships too - such as out sourcing - are important components in the 21st century business mix.

Sizing the Elephant
From our broadly based business experience both in the UK and overseas together with extensive desk research, the Partnership has developed a diagnostic tool which offers a framework for scoping the business landscape. To some extent the model reflects the business bias that we at the Partnership have on the Technology of Leadership and broader people development issues – in a sense it has been contextualised to our business needs.

Nonetheless, we believe it offers a robust framework

Clearly this is a very broad canvas but there are some underlying rules for companies who want to succeed in today’s particularly challenging marketplace and some associated leadership behaviours which coaches can look out for.

If we deal then individually with the components of the framework:

Understanding the External Environment
Customer’s needs are a function of the world they inhabit and a maelstrom of competing influences. Good leaders stay close to their customers - and their people as well - by making a point of even, say targeting a specific proportion of their time to be with customers and staff.

What to look for
* Time spent out of the office
* Management by walking about
* Accessibility of time, style and language

Strategy
This is the marriage of customer needs and organisational capabilities to ensure the longevity of the company. Good leaders will make a point of ensuring that there is a healthy and robust dialogue internally as part of the strategy development process. There needs to be an effective balance of the ‘top down, bottom up’ approach so that hearts and minds of the people who will have day to day responsibility for delivering the strategy are engaged. You might feel that some analysis of the competition might be appropriate here also.

What to look for
* A balanced 'top down, bottom up' process
* Understanding and commitment to the strategy at all levels
* A shared view on what makes us different
* Energy and Engagement
* A regocnition that we don't know it all

Governance
Just recently this has proved to be the ‘coup de grace’ for many corporate leaders. Fundamentally the issue has not been one of a lack of specific knowledge. It has been more a process of wilfully shutting out the sage advice that comes from experts who may not be telling the leader what he or she wants to hear.

What to look for
* Openness and respect for differing points of view
* Candour and constructive challenge
* Any evidence of collusion in the senior team
* People with a focus on the detail

Structure
The guiding principle here is that ‘form follows function’ i.e. the structure is aligned to the strategy rather than vice versa. This is a difficult challenge for most companies and their leaders because it means from time to time that powerful vested interests have to be challenged. Ways of doing business have to be re-configured. It may be one of the underlying reasons why incoming leaders move quickly to re-build the existing executive team although it is recognised that this may not be a totally altruistic process!

What to look for
* Turnover in the senior team
* A positive regard for the capabilities of others
* Limiting beliefs about people and their roles

Understanding the Internal Environment
This is where the people dynamics start to come together and one gets some sense of the leader’s day to day style. At a leadership level, one of the critical issues is the leader understanding what space he/she is operating in. Good leaders build good teams who have complementary styles and skills. They are also masters at the art of delegation – one of my colleagues labels this ‘eyes in, hands out’. From The Partnership’s perspective, we would also look for an embedded coaching culture.

What to look for
* Appropriate levels of delegation
* Effective teamwork
* Leaders at all levels
* The value of mistakes recognised

Staff
Under the spotlight of surveys like the Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to work for, many companies now recognise the benefits of being an ‘employer of choice’ – what was once private is now very much in the public domain. The beneficial correlation between customer satisfaction and staff satisfaction is well documented and adds further impetus to the need to ensure that staff are firing on all six cylinders. Good leaders set the tone here and go beyond the mere rhetoric of ‘our staff are our greatest asset’. There is a clear definition of roles, performance standards and a general ‘felt fair’ feeling in the workplace which has much to do with poor performance being addressed in a positive manner.

What to look for
* HR at the top table contributing strategically
* A culture of continuous development and improvement
* A mix of external recruitment and internal promotions
* A positive belief in the capability of the individual

The Business Model and KPIs
This is an area we believe that consistently receives insufficient attention. In many companies we visit, the assumption is that whatever we are doing now is right – why should we want to do anything different - i.e. the ‘business as usual model’. In addition there is rarely any shortage of data – although whether it comes together as one version of the truth is another matter and it is rarely ‘sweated’ to deliver its full value. To be successful, a good leader needs here to meld a strategic perspective (are we fit for the marathon) with the tactical – are our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) the right ones and what are telling us about how we’re doing now?

Note: Wikipedia defines a Business model as a framework for creating economic, social, and/or other forms of value. The term business model is used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies.

What to look for
* A strategic perspective
* An explicit and measurable performance focus
* Dissatisfaction with the status quo
* Curiosity and enquiry

Total Business Performance
This in essence is the output/results of the previous input components. To offer a perspective, the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Business Excellence Model allocates 15 (%) points to this – as against 10 points for Leadership (and 20 points for Customer Satisfaction – which is their bias). It would be an interesting exercise for us (and perhaps for you as practising coaches) to apply a weighting (out of 100) across the diagnostic framework we have offered?

What to look for
* Alignment of stakeholder interests
* Performance data under people’s ‘finger nails’
* Persistent challenge to do better

Conclusion
It is not the intention here to suggest that all coaches need to be experts in business practice, rather that some coaches because of their provenance may come from a background that has a more explicit business orientation. This is offered as a valid contribution to the coaching profession in the same way that other backgrounds such as psychotherapy and psychiatry might be.

It still behoves us all, when actively coaching, to use any knowledge we might have in a way that is consistent with the principles and practice of the profession to support the client’s needs.

Since 1994,  Chris has worked as a freelance in many areas such as marketing, customer service, organisational design and leadership development. His professional management skills were honed during his 20 years with a major UK retail bank.

Chris Farrance, Chris Farrance Associates
www.businesscoachingthamesvalley.co.uk
01344 873833

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