This is “Not Your Mother’s” Coaching!
People often associate coaching in business with corporate executives receiving coaching, however, there are in fact many different types of coaching. Coaching can be defined as providing a safe space that allows people to be vulnerable and share things that they might not be able to share with others inside of the organization. We met with Melanie Morris, a coaching expert who relies on her 20+ years of change management experience, to explore three different types of coaching: executive, team, and change management.
Executive coaching
Empathy. It’s the number one trait from leaders that makes them the most influential, shares Melanie. In fact, Melanie made the shift into executive coaching when she noticed that leaders who had a better grasp on empathy were excelling. These leaders showed genuine interest in what their employees care about. Executive coaching includes helping leaders reach their full potential as empathetic, influential leaders in their organization.
Melanie uses a variety of tools to coach leaders, such as verbal 360-degree feedback, where she interviews the client and their chosen evaluators, and the Leadership Circle Profile (LCP), where she relies on the LCP tool to survey and compile data from the client and their evaluators. Melanie is a big fan of verbal 360-degree feedback which requires the leader to be vulnerable and gather feedback from colleagues on their strengths and development needs; everyone has blind spots, even leaders. The Leadership Circle assessment measures the leader’s ability to engage with others in a way that brings out the best in people, while highlighting the leaders’ creative and reactive strengths. Coaching a leader means understanding what capabilities a leader possesses to help them achieve growth and be more effective leaders. It allows them to help their organizations through continuous change and it's proven to improve employee retention and engagement because they're growing important capabilities like empathy and are more able to provide employees with autonomy, which is what employees crave.
Team coaching
Team coaching sessions take place to help a team grow skills or understand each other at a deeper level. Team coaching is about aligning the voices in the room and ensuring that everybody's contribution plays an important role in that journey.
Before the team coaching session:
Participants often complete an assessment (e.g., Enneagram, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Circle).
Assessments arm participants with vulnerable points to discuss and equips the session leader to walk participants through a model where they've already done some level of assessment.
Melanie is intentional about getting to know participants before the session to help people let their guard down so that trust can be established.
During the team coaching session:
Participants have vulnerable conversations about challenges within the team or individual obstacles that they’re trying to overcome.
Dialogue helps establish trust within the room.
The coach encourages that everyone’s voice be heard and discourages any interruption or redirection that takes the group away from the topic at hand.
Melanie shared that the most rewarding part of team coaching is that people come into the room and sit next to a buddy because they may not know everybody, but before long, you see people’s defenses come down as they start discussing their thoughts and beliefs. When walls come down as a team, the team can move forward with making big decisions about their road map and their team goals. From a change management lens, team coaching sessions often result in a change management road map because the team is aligned on their vision and what they need to do to achieve it.
Change management coaching
Like most change management experts, Melanie encourages her clients to bring her onto a change initiative as soon as possible. She incorporates coaching into the change management journey by asking questions about the change initiative to help leaders articulate the why behind the change and what is happening. This information is crucial for adoption because employees want to know what’s in it for them:
Why does the change initiative matter to you?
Why does the change initiative matter to your organization?
Why does the change need to happen at this time?
As change management practitioners know, asking questions is key for success. Similarly, trained coaches must develop powerful questions that will help clients develop solutions that they can be committed to as leaders focused on their own self development and/or as leaders developing their growing organization. The uniqueness of pairing coaching with change management is asking challenging questions that can often result in reshaping the change initiative for the better.
Each type of coaching—executive, team, and change management—requires boldness. Coaching is an art and a science and requires a significant amount of training for coaches to empower people to explore solutions for the challenge that they’re facing. Change management practitioners should use executive, team, and change management coaching to increase alignment and improve adoption with change initiatives.
Contact ChangeStaffing to learn more about coaching to optimize the change journey!
A very special thank you to Melanie Morris for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog.
Written by Kylette Harrison