Category: The Coaching Habit

Create Great Work

Posted on by jabittan
A real challenge across the globe in the coming decades will be helping people find ways to do meaningful work. A lot of our work today really is not that meaningful, and as more jobs can be automated, we will find ourselves with more people looking for meaningful work. Helping people find meaningful work will help preserve social order and cohesion and will be crucial for democracies, companies, families, and societies as a whole as we move forward.

 

Michael Bungay Stanier looks at the importance of meaningful work in his book The Coaching Habit and suggests that coaching people is easier and better when you are helping someone with meaningful work. When you give people tasks and ask them to do meaningless jobs, you will never get the most out of the people working with or for you. He writes, “The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are. The less engaged we are, the less likely we are to find and create great work.”

 

The company I work for makes a real difference in the medical world. Our work leads to better health outcomes for patients and families and it is easy to see how our work has real purpose. But even within the work that I do, there can be tasks and items that seem like extra and unnecessary steps. These little things can build up, and even within a good job they can begin to feel tedious and disengaging. To combat this, my company encourages efficiency and automation within the important things that we do. We are encouraged to think about ways to improve systems and processes and to find new ways to do things better. It is the autonomy and trust from our leadership that helps us stay engaged by allowing us to continually craft our jobs to an optimal level.

 

Not everyone is in the same situation that I am in. Many companies hold people to specific processes and inefficiencies, perhaps just to see how conformist and loyal individuals are to the firm. This holds back growth an innovation and demotivates and disengages employees. As this happens to more people and as meaningless tasks are displaced to robots, we will have to find new ways to motivate and engage employees, because our employees are our fellow citizens, and because motivation and engagement can be thought of as a public good. We all rely on an engaged citizenry for our democracy, and work helps us feel valued and engaged. How we face this challenge as individual coaches and as companies will make a big difference in how engaged our society is in the future.

Professional Coaching – Its About Them!

Posted on by jabittan
I am not currently in a leadership position in my career and I am not currently doing any real long-term coaching in either my career or with colleagues, friends, students, or interns. Nevertheless, Michael Bungay Stanier’s book The Coaching Habit, has been helpful for me when thinking about professional growth and development. In the future I expect to be in leadership positions and to have the opportunity to work with people in a coaching capacity. In addition to gaining insight into how I can be a good coach, the book has also helped me learn how to be coachable so that my coaches be successful.

 

Bungay Stanier focuses on aspects of coaching that we often get wrong and fail to approach in the most constructive manner. I think for many people, particularly men in the business world, the kinds of images that come to mind when think about coaches are sports figures like Bill Bilechick (representing the genius strategist who knows how to pull the right levers for success) or Bobby Knight (representing the relentless enthusiast who has a drive that won’t stop or let anything stand in the way of good performances). Bungay Stanier however, has a vision of good coaching that is less about the coach, and marabout helping the individual become the best version of themselves. The first step in Bungay Stanier’s coaching vision, is not lever pulling or inspiring, but more of door opening and aligning. Regarding a successful coaching mindset he writes, “Building a coaching habit will help your team be more self-sufficient by increasing their autonomy and sense of mastery.”

 

Good coaching empowers those who you lead and opens doors for them to think creatively, take on new challenges, and grow and develop with new skills in new situations. The coach in this view is not absent, but the focus of the relationship and coaching is on the individual being coached and not on the skills, strategies, and demonstrations of the coach. Bungay Stanier’s successful coaching relationship gives authority and autonomy to the individual so that they can become independent and grow in the direction that makes sense for them.

 

Coaches who make the coaching relationship about themselves find that they absorb responsibility themselves and create dependent followers rather than more talented teams. Coaches who don’t empower but instead create dependence ultimately end up with poor outcomes, “Everyone loses momentum and motivation. The more you help your people, the more they seem to need your help. The more they need your help, the more time you spend helping them.” Empowering by placing the individual at the center and giving them the guidance necessary to develop skills allows coaches to do more and be more impactful than if the relationship is about the coach.

The Essence of Coaching

Posted on by jabittan
While I was working on my undergraduate degree at the University of Nevada I spent some time coaching cross country and track and field at Reno High School. I really enjoyed coaching and had a great time working with the runners, helping them compete for state championships, and compete at their best. What I never really asked myself, however, is what I thought coaching was all about.

I tried to be a good role model for the kids and show them how to work hard and improve their running, but I never thought deeply about what my role as a coach should be. In his book The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier takes a deep look at coaching (mostly from a professional workplace standpoint rather than a sports standpoint) to understand what coaching is truly all about. “The essence of coaching,” writes Stanier, “lies in helping others and unlocking their potential.” A coach is committed to being helpful and focusing on helping others become the best version of themselves that they can be. This is something I think I understood at an intuitive level, but I never really stepped back to think about my role as a coach in this way, and it certainly was not at the front of my mind ever day when I arrived at practice.

Coaching was partly a way for me to continue getting good workouts in with people I enjoyed. It was partly about me demonstrating something positive about myself in terms of leadership, loyalty to the school form which I graduated, and my ability to serve as a positive role model. These hidden motives were not the only drivers of my coaching decision, I really did enjoy working as part of a team toward a big goal and I appreciated having the chance to help our head coach and help our athletes improve and push themselves. But I am certain that I would have developed a different coaching style if every day before practice I through to myself “the essence of coaching lies in helping others and unlocking their potential.” Everything from my conversations, to how I participated in workouts, and to who I spoke with at practice would have shifted as I tried to unlock the most potential in the most kids.

I don’t think I was a poor coach because I partly participated for my own hidden motives (hidden even to myself). But I certainly don’t think I was the best coach I could have been, and that is because I lacked self-awareness and my coaching focus was not dialed in on what is the most essential element of coaching. What coaches must remember is that while they benefit personally and may have hidden motives of their own, coaching needs to be about another person and about unlocking greater potential in the world.