When I started coaching 15 years ago in Spain, the problem was that nobody knew what coaching was. coaching. They didn't even know how to pronounce this Anglo-Saxon word that has its origins in sports coaches. Now the problem I find is that everyone has already done coaching, as if it were just another task to tick off a list to brag about.
Closely linked to this is our definition of what is leadership. Because, if being a good leader consists of having the highest score on a list of behaviours or skills defined by the company, then coaching becomes a service that serves to increase the evaluation score of these behaviours. How? Well, how? anyhowIf you look at the fictional coach of the series "Billions", she's a scary lady!
The old cowboy and Indian movies show many references to the weirdness of the Indians who were loinclothed and primitive. They didn't want written papers to justify whether the land belonged to one or the other, and they didn't measure a man's strength by the size of his gun. What looked like ignorance in the eyes of the cowboys was, however, another, more authentic way of measuring a person's leadership. For them leadership was presence.
And of course, drowned as we are in the collective madness of the hyper-connected presenteeismIt is hard for us to imagine what some old sages mean when they talk about being truly present in conversations. Instinctively, however, it is very easy to distinguish a person who is present from one who is not, since presence is not understood, feelsA serene and warm look, not a furtive glance - which is probably directed at the mobile phone or the wristwatch vibrating with alerts of what is happening on the mobile phone.
We are sorry clearly when we are faced with someone who hides nothing about the way they are, while others go out of their way to impress us in order to hide what they don't want us to know. The truly present leader conveys calmness, confidence and a constant desire to grow, while others generate uncertainty and nervousness.. They dance faster than the music, as they say in French - "plus vite que la musique" (faster than music) -. We are sorry how the present leader helps us to get the best out of ourselves, while the others squeeze us to our maximum performance until we are completely worn out.
But becoming a present leader requires a very long road of coaching, self-exploration, rest, and then more coaching. The focus of the effort is never a series of external measures or a list of achievements to boast about, but the inner self, or as Carl Jung said, "those who look outward dream; those who look inward awaken". In order to stay in the present with all our brains and all our energy, to move from presentism to PRE-SEN-CIA, we have to make peace with our past and stop asking the future to save us from it.
What I find is that the vast majority of coaching in companies is cosmetic, i.e. it is like putting the manager on a diet. While on the diet, with their coach making sure they stick to the prescribed habits and disciplines, their appraisal score improves in their chosen skills. Very good. The coaching ends, the evaluations are all positive. Everyone is happy. The coach gets paid and goes home even happier.
Paternalism
The diet is over and the lost kilos return in a few weeks: the improvement in behaviour disappears as soon as the manager's life becomes more complicated. Of course, "people don't change". This is what I call cosmetic coaching. It only fools the HR professional who coughed up the dough in exchange for improved evaluations.
But a diet and discipline is not a solution to lose weight, but a shock measure for emergency situations that is difficult to sustain over time because it requires too much effort. And for me, if something requires too much effort, there is a failure of approach. The interesting question is why a person has lost interest in eating healthy, taking care of themselves and feeling fit. If the answer - always emotional and unconscious - to that question is found, and the underlying problem is solved, there is no need for self-flagellation with annoying diets and disciplines. The person changes the way they eat and exercise without having to think about it or argue with themselves. They do it because he feels like it. He feels it.
Those who say they are losing weight say they are communicating better in public, negotiating better exchanges of value in the company, making themselves more visible or spending less energy on paternalism that never really delegates the work. Behaviour change is only a success when the person does it without having to think about it. When it has become instinctive, normal. When one is surprised that one has wasted so many years doing things in this other, complicated way, and tells everyone about it, laughing at oneself. Thus making an impact with its transparency and its PRE-SEN-CIA.
People do change, gentlemen. And if they don't, do yourself a favour and change your coach.
Pino Bethencourt
Coach and founder of Club Comprometidos