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Why Coaching Doesn’t Work - a conversation with Clare Norman
10 Plays5 days ago
Clare Norman, is the author of Cultivating Coachability
In this episode of the Abecederpodcast The Independent Minds, Clare explains the challenges organisations face when trying to make coaching work successfully, to host Michael Millward.
Clare explains the advantages of coaching as part of the training mix, especially as a way of helping people transfer what they have learnt on training courses into their everyday work activities.
Both Michael and Clare are fans of coaching, but they are also realistic about the challenges of using coaching.
Clare introduces new ways to describe the different roles and activities in the coaching process.
Using their different experiences, Michael and Clare to identify and explore the reasons why coaching does not work, how to avoid those problems and how to improve the way an organisation implements a coaching programme.
Find out more about both Michael Millward, and Clare Norman at Abeceder.co.uk
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr, because as the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms, Zencastr really does make creating content so easy. Try podcasting yourself using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Travel
Clare is based in Hampshire a county in Southern England. Members of the Ultimate Travel Club, can travel to and around the UK at trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, package holidays and all sorts of other travel purchases. You can become a member at a discounted price by using my offer code ABEC79 when you join-up.
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Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on The Independent Minds, please contact using the link at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Host and Guest Introduction
00:00:23
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. Today, i will be learning why coaching often doesn't work from Claire Norman, the author of Cultivating Coachability.
00:00:37
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process, including publishing and distribution, so easy.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida.
Podcast's Purpose and Philosophy
00:01:06
Speaker
All the details are in the description.
00:01:09
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:21
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest independent mind is Claire Norman, the author of Cultivating Coachability.
00:01:37
Speaker
Claire is based in Bewley, Hampshire, which is as fantastic as its name suggests. I have been. I've been to the National Motor Museum, which is there. had a great time.
00:01:48
Speaker
And I suggest if you have the opportunity to go as well. If you do, book your travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club. and like me, gain access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, even package holidays.
00:02:01
Speaker
There is a link and a membership discount code in the description.
What is Coaching?
00:02:05
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Claire.
00:02:13
Speaker
Hi. How are you doing? I'm really well, thank you, Michael. And I love how you introduced this podcast as being for people who want to think outside of the box.
00:02:24
Speaker
It's the best place to do your thinking, to be honest, isn't it? Definitely. And, you know, coaching, which we're going to talk about today, is all about helping people to become independent, critical thinkers.
00:02:37
Speaker
So, yeah, we're in a good place together, i think, today. Very much so. Could you start, please, by just explaining a little bit about your career and what led you to be doing what you're doing today?
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah. So I started coaching 2012. tea 24 years ago and the reason I got into coaching was because I was heading up our leaders
Coaching vs. Training
00:03:02
Speaker
of all levels strategy and a big multinational that I worked in and was recognizing that people were having these wonderful aha moments in our training but then falling back into their old ways when they got back into the workplace so I wanted this to find
00:03:23
Speaker
support mechanisms, scaffolding that would help people to transfer the learning out of the classroom and into the real world of work. And that's when I stumbled on to coaching and have been in love with it ever since.
00:03:38
Speaker
You know, as you were describing that, i was thinking as a someone who used to run and corporate training department covering least a third of the world from Pakistan over to Iceland and from the top of Finland down to South Africa,
00:03:53
Speaker
what you described in terms of having aha moments in training courses, and then those aha moments being lost as people get back into work and catch up and all those sorts of things. It's, it's a amazingly difficult sometimes with all the pressures of work to people put to implement what they've learned on a training course back in and on the day job when they've got all sorts of other pressures. on Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
And there's been some research, well, a while ago now by Olivero and Bain, who ah found that training alone may lead to about a 20% change in behavior, whereas training followed by coaching is more like 88%.
00:04:36
Speaker
So, yeah, it's worth us thinking about how do we transfer this learning? If training alone only creates a 20% change in behavior and the percentage for, if you add coaching on after the training, how what's the percentage then?
00:04:53
Speaker
88%. 88%. Wow. Right. And of course I could argue as well that it's useful to coach people before they do the training so that the training is positioned into the ah longer term learning journey as well.
00:05:12
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And coaching can be standalone too. And most of the coaching do today is standalone. ah But that was how I came into this space in the first place.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, it becomes an alternative to the the training course as such. Well, yes, but and let's make sure that your listeners understand the difference between training and coaching, ah because there there is often a lot of misunderstanding of this word coaching.
00:05:40
Speaker
It is not teaching or telling or advising or mentoring. It is actually tapping into the individual's own wisdom. about their situation, given their personality, their context, their stakeholders.
00:05:56
Speaker
So enabling them to apply what they already know deep down inside of themselves about the leader that they want to be, for example. It's certainly not a substitute for training. And, you know, one of the things that I find is often people ah sent to coaching to learn how to be a better leader when actually they do still need some training around how to delegate, how to give feedback, how to motivate, etc, etc.
00:06:28
Speaker
Because that is new new knowledge that they perhaps don't know innately. ah But the coaching is about bringing out their innate wisdom about who they want to be as a leader or as a, you know, insert word.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yes, however you want to be. Totally agree with you. i think that training is about the processes involved in a role. Yeah. Whether that is delegation, dealing with a problem, whatever it is, the training course is about dealing with the how to do it.
Overcoming Systemic Barriers with Coaching
00:07:01
Speaker
Yes. The coaching is more about, like you say, drawing out the fact that other people have said that you can do it. Other people have seen the potential in you to do it.
00:07:13
Speaker
there's this element of doubt in you or there's this element of confusion. And yet when you talk about how coaching is about drawing things out from people that is already there, that's a really good way of describing coaching from my perspective in that we all have it within us.
00:07:34
Speaker
It's just that either circumstances, situations, opportunities aren't there. all at the same time. And when they are, sometimes we just need a little bit of help to bring those skills to the fore. Yeah. That confidence to actually put all the skills that we learned on the training course into practice. Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
And there's ah not to say that there might also not be some systemic barriers to making change that need to be addressed at an organisational level. yeah When we're working one to one with somebody, it it is about enabling them to tap into their own wisdom.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yes. But we're both fans of coaching as part of the learning mix. yeah Yes. We started off this conversation with me saying, I'm going to find out why it doesn't work. And we just sort of described what it is and the best way to make it work. But it's not cheap.
00:08:27
Speaker
It does take time. And it is both physically and emotionally draining to be coached sometimes because you are looking deep inside yourself to burn bring those things out yeah why doesn't it work what's what's the big problem the big issue with with with coaching when it doesn't always work why not no exactly i'm with you in terms of being a go-to solution and it almost seems to be thrown at everything these days when actually it's not appropriate for everything so i've already alluded to sometimes training might be necessary first or maybe it
00:09:07
Speaker
on-the-job challenge or stretch assignment that is going to support the person to step up or step in get feedback on the job about how they're managing something.
00:09:22
Speaker
Or perhaps it's a therapeutic need. or i mean, it could be so many alternatives. And so this is one reason coaching doesn't always work is because it's used in the wrong instances.
00:09:36
Speaker
So we need to get much clearer, organisations need to be much clearer about when are they using it? Why are they using it?
00:09:46
Speaker
So, you know, what is the strategic intention for coaching? Just as you will have done heading up a learning organisation, would have always made sure you looked for You know, what is the end goal here? What's the problem we're trying to solve or the opportunity here? And rather than starting with coaching as the solution and then throwing it at everything, starting with what is it we're trying to achieve as an organisation? And what's the mix?
Individualized Learning in Coaching
00:10:19
Speaker
What's the portfolio of learning interventions that can support us in achieving that? And coaching is just one of those. It is not the panacea for everything.
00:10:33
Speaker
So this is where we, organisations need to start. Organisations will have some kind of coaching custodian. They might not call themselves that, but whoever is responsible for the success of coaching in an organisation needs to think really carefully about what is the strategic intention.
00:10:54
Speaker
of the way that we use coaching around here as part of our portfolio of interventions. I agree with you. And I think one of the issues sometimes is that if you have a trainer who likes to deliver teamwork courses, you're going to get a lot of teamwork courses.
00:11:10
Speaker
yeah If you have a trainer who likes to coach, you're going to get a lot of coaching, yeah regardless of whether it's right for either the organization, the team, or the individual, yeah you're going to get what people deliver. And that's not just trainers.
00:11:24
Speaker
That could be someone in marketing, likes a particular type of marketing. So that's what the is right for the organization. yeah It takes a lot of courage sometimes for people to stray away from what they like, what they're comfortable doing.
00:11:39
Speaker
and actually answer the question that you pose, what is right for the organization? What is right for the individual? What is right for the team? How do we make it work? And yet there's increasing trends where organizations are doing more learning on an individual basis and thinking about the trainee, the learner, what is going to be best for them to get them to the level that they need to be rather than the sheep dip approach of everyone's going to go through this course because one person needs it so everyone's got to have it yes yeah so the individualized approach is is by far the better one compared to that sheep dip because yes yeah we can make sure we we are meeting the individual or the team where they're at ah rather than as you say yeah having a food brawl but spending so much money
00:12:34
Speaker
on something that you know might be useful for a small proportion of the people, but not everybody. The first reason why coaching often fails is that it's not the right strategic choice for the organisation or the individual. Yes. You've written a book called Cultivating Coachability, so it can't just simply be organisational strategic decisions. What other reasons are there why coaching often fails?
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, so the next one I would mention would be around whether the individual wants coaching, whether they understand what they're signing up for, but whether they're willing to do the hard work of thinking for themselves and of changing.
00:13:20
Speaker
So they have to want it because if they're coming into this feeling in any way coerced, then they're not going to put their all into it. I want to know that I'm working with somebody who is all in because I'm all in for them.
00:13:37
Speaker
If I'm all in, I expect them to be all in as well. So this means, again, there is a role for the coaching custodian to play before I, as the coach, get involved, which is screening for coaching readiness.
00:13:51
Speaker
So making sure this person understand what they're signing up for, what it means for them in terms of how They will get the most out of it and whether they actually want to make change in their life or their work.
00:14:07
Speaker
It is a big, big commitment on their part, as you alluded to earlier on. It's tiring for the thinker to do. I call them a thinker rather than the coaching clients.
00:14:19
Speaker
Well, there is an awful lot of thinking about yourself within the coaching process, which people are not really used to because we spend most of our days thinking about other people, whether that's that they've annoyed us, they've upset us, or we are doing things for other people. A parent goes to work to have the money to be to feed and clothe their children, that sort of thing. So there's always
The Coach-Thinker Relationship
00:14:43
Speaker
that pressure. It's like, are you ready to to separate yourself from all of that for however long it takes every week yeah in order to go through that process? exactly
00:14:55
Speaker
Listening to you there, I remembering back to times where people have come in saying that they want coaching. It's the fashionable thing to do. yeah It's the... the fear of missing out it's uh almost if you're being coached then you are you're a high flyer you've got potential because and a coach is being provided for you which gives us back to the the image that is portrayed of coaching within the training mix that it's for the special people and yet it can be for absolutely everyone but
00:15:28
Speaker
What we're really talking about is the preparation for the coaching process, making sure that the you have everything in order before you actually even start from an organizational perspective.
00:15:42
Speaker
The training function, learning functions perspective, the line manager, the thinker, as you call them, which I think is a great term, much better than coachee. You are asking someone to think about this and you're supporting them through guiding them through.
00:15:59
Speaker
a thinking process in order for them to come out the other side stronger, more capable, more competent and better to deliver. So yeah, I get the whole landscape needs to be set properly from my everyone's perspective. Yeah.
00:16:18
Speaker
But what happens when people get into the coaching process? Why does it go wrong then? Well, at that point, it may be that something happens in life let's say, and it's throwing them a bit of a curveball and where the timing might have been right to start the coaching, perhaps it's thrown off course a bit. So there may be something about timing that isn't working for the individual or for the organisation. Something else might have happened in the organisation. So that might throw things off course a bit. What i'm thinking you mean is that if somebody is ready for coaching and then all of a sudden their partner decides they're going to leave,
00:16:57
Speaker
work-related coaching is not going to be effective while someone has got things that they are more interested in sorting out their priorities are have to be focused on something else well here's the thing if the organization sees individuals as human beings as as whole human beings who have a life outside of work as well and are in agreement that it's okay to work in the coaching on things that are happening outside of work that may be having an influence or an impact on their work, then fabulous. We can carry on coaching.
00:17:40
Speaker
So, for example, I've had somebody in the past say, is is it OK if if I talk to you about the divorce that I'm going through? Because I, you know, it's front and centre for me.
00:17:52
Speaker
And i really feel like I need to talk this piece of my life through in order to be able to. focus back on work. So I see that as part and parcel of the work. I can see the sense and the logic in that. Yeah.
00:18:06
Speaker
And some organisations don't, though. They, you know, they want to be purely about work related stuff. But, you know, we we learn more and more and more about the human psyche. And we cannot split ourselves into home bod and a work bod.
00:18:25
Speaker
We are human beings. Yes. ah Part of the whole equality, diversity, inclusion approach things is that you bring your whole self to work. Yes. And if you're going to have that type of approach within an organization, you come as you are, come as as the authentic you. Yeah. If the authentic you involves some sort of issue as well, you sign up for, as an employer, you sign up to employ people in their whole, 100% relationship.
00:18:55
Speaker
of that person, that's what you want to turn up. Yeah. You can't then say, well, actually, no, you've got a problem. That's nothing to do with us. Exactly. exactly it's everything to do with how they show up at work. Yeah, I'm totally on totally on board with that. So we've identified that preparation can be an issue in contributing towards the failure of coaching.
00:19:16
Speaker
And then also, some of these other things, which are once the process has started getting the actual matching the coach to the to the individual person, I suppose, and getting that relationship, right, so that people feel comfortable exposing themselves to a coach.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yes, because it's a big deal to expose yourself in that way. be vulnerable. We do need to get that matching right between coach and thinker to be sure that the coach's style of support will work for the thinker and enable them to bring the warts and all.
00:20:00
Speaker
vulnerability but also checking that the coach's style of challenge is going to work for the individual so harsh a challenge that they feel you know totally stressed but also on the other extreme not so soft that the individual just stays in their comfort zone because that's not learning at all we need to help people to step just outside that comfort zone into more of a learning zone a growth zone And so the matching process needs to take account of this the style of support of the coach, the style of challenge of the coach.
00:20:40
Speaker
Also, whether there might be any conflicts of interest that would preclude them from working together. Quite often in organisations, individuals are presented with three potential coaches to interview or have a chemistry call with.
00:20:58
Speaker
To me, that is really difficult for the potential thinker to assess the difference between these three people that they come into contact with because they don't know how to assess whether a coach is going to be a good match for them.
00:21:15
Speaker
They'll go with their gut reactions. their instinct, but will very rarely be able to say why they chose one over another. And sometimes they'll end up choosing the one who will be most lenient, who will be softest.
00:21:30
Speaker
And that isn't necessarily going to help them to get into their growth zone. Something else that I propose is that rather than us having this thing that we call the beauty parade of coaches, which the individual has a hard time figuring out the difference between these three coaches anyway,
00:21:48
Speaker
the coach and custodian could do that matching and allow the thinker to make the decision at the end of that compatibility call, do I feel that I can be vulnerable with
Strategic Integration of Coaching in Organizations
00:21:59
Speaker
this person? and If they can, then they go ahead.
00:22:02
Speaker
If they don't feel they're a good match or if there is a conflict between, the individual would meet a second coach. ah But we we can waste, organisations can waste an awful lot of money. Time that the potential thinker spends in screening these three coaches in a beauty parade, ah the time of each of those coaches, et cetera, et cetera.
00:22:27
Speaker
it's ah It's a lot of money wasted when actually the coaching custodian is in a better position to know what might be a good fit for this individual. There's an awful lot of sense in what you're saying.
00:22:38
Speaker
I can see the logic that when you're presented with the opportunity to have some coaching, I can see a lot of people being tempted to choose the person that they, that they want to spend time with rather than the person that they want to be challenged by.
00:22:52
Speaker
yeah Part of that I think is probably because the, actual the thinker themselves perhaps doesn't know what their best challenge strategy is. No, no. And why would they? They've never had, if they've never had coaching before, they don't know what would be a good fit for them.
00:23:08
Speaker
And there will be lots of questions posed to them that they will never have answered for themselves before. Mm-hmm. this This is new territory. If they've never had coaching, it will feel very different any other conversation they've ever had.
00:23:24
Speaker
Well, you've used various different words that I have not heard used in the coaching context before. One of them is thinker, which I think is a great way to describe somebody who is participating in a coaching process because it describes what the role of that person is. It is to do an awful lot of thinking about themselves and how they move themselves to a new place, new behaviors, new levels of success. So I really liked that word.
00:23:54
Speaker
Another expression that you've used is coaching custodian. yeah I've not heard that one before. in discussions about coaching but it does seem to be a role which is quite important a lot of the things that we're talking about as reasons why coaching fails is probably because there isn't anyone within the organization who's taking ownership of coaching as a learning device at a senior level who has real decision-making authority yeah in relation to coaching.
00:24:31
Speaker
So suspecting that one of the reasons why coaching will probably fail is if you if you don't have ah coaching custodian, then your chances of success with coaching are going to be reduced.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, you know, that coaching custodian role could be sometimes in some organisations, the really large organisation, that might be a full time role, in which case this will be bread and butter to them, what I'm describing here.
00:24:58
Speaker
But more often than not, it is part of, let's say, an HR manager's role or a an OD person's role or a learning and development function or, you know, it'll be a much smaller part.
00:25:12
Speaker
The people in those roles are spread across multiple pieces of work that they need to deliver. So it becomes more tick listy. Yes. Not so strategic. And that's where the organization can miss out because as you said, coaching is an expensive business. Organizations need to get a return on expectations from the money that they're spending on coaching.
00:25:37
Speaker
And they can only do that if a coaching custodian is putting more effort into it than I sometimes see happening. There are a lot of shortcuts being taken in today's corporate world, you know, because of budget cuts and time constraints and the drive for efficiency.
00:25:57
Speaker
You can see why it's happening. But that means that coaching will not be optimised and therefore at some point somebody's going to turn around and say ah we we ought to get rid of this coaching thing because it's really not doing us any good.
00:26:14
Speaker
That's because it hasn't been set up for success in the first place. It's not because coaching per se is bad, it's really not. If it's done well, if it's set up well by the coaching custodian and if the thinkers who come into coaching really do want it and set the time aside and understand what the process is really, I suppose.
00:26:36
Speaker
Understand what they're signing up for. Yes, exactly. It's not all about the coach. And unfortunately, that's where we've landed today is that it it seems like everything gets chucked over to the coach to take responsibility for success.
00:26:54
Speaker
They are one of the stakeholders here, but they are just one part of this system. Yes. And the other part is to step up as well to make sure that this is a good investment for an organis organisation. Well, let's be honest.
00:27:09
Speaker
The easiest option when something isn't working is to blame the supplier. You see all sorts of various different situations, but ultimately the reasons why some ah ah relationship with a supplier doesn't work is never really just down to one of the parties involved. It's a combination of those parties.
00:27:30
Speaker
But the feeling that I get to sum up all the different reasons, and we've really just scratched the surface, I think, you really need to look at each individual employee, each individual thinker to work out what are the risks involved with this person of them participating in a learning activity, coaching, and it not working.
00:27:54
Speaker
And if it doesn't work, the risk for... a training function, a learning and development function is that somebody has an experience, it doesn't work. They blame the supplier, either the coach or the training department itself.
00:28:10
Speaker
And that switches them off from all learning. And that then becomes a real risk, not just an issue, but I think a real risk for the employing organization.
00:28:21
Speaker
As we are in a world that changes so rapidly, we need to learn and unlearn at an increasingly rapid rate and be able to apply that learning in so many different ways that, you know, coaching is part of the mix.
00:28:37
Speaker
But the message is really, unless you're going to invest in working out how it's going to work best in your organization and best with your employees, probably best to leave it
Preparing for Effective Coaching
00:28:50
Speaker
alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you really do need to leverage coaching readiness so that thinkers can optimize the values from this and can this isn't as fantasyful an idea as it may sound to begin with.
00:29:06
Speaker
If you leave school and go to art college, the first thing that you would do would go on a preparation type course so that you can actually participate in the art college and learn things properly, do things the right way, learn quicker, because you've had the preparation for what art college life is going to be like.
00:29:25
Speaker
That essentially is the foundation on which a trainer within an organization needs to be thinking. How do I prepare the organization?
00:29:36
Speaker
the individuals within this organization for this style of learning in order to make sure that it's a success. And I suppose that takes me to one of my little so like soapbox moments about how training, like anything else, you can either do it to people or you can do it with people.
00:29:56
Speaker
And the doing it to people simply means you're telling them what's happening. and you're going to do it but they're doing it with people means you put the effort into preparing people for the approach that you're going to take yes i would thank you very much i really do appreciate your time i have learned an awful lot and i'm starting to think things through as to uh what we would be doing with this subject as well but uh today thank you very much i really appreciate your time i appreciate you having me as a guest It's been very interesting.
00:30:30
Speaker
Thank you. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Claire Norman, the author of Cultivating Coachability.
00:30:43
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. The Zencastr system has, as always, been very efficient and effective today.
00:30:55
Speaker
But if you are listening to the to the independent minds on your smartphone and experience technical issues, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:31:06
Speaker
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00:31:25
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have liked this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Claire and I have enjoyed making it. Please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:31:36
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:31:49
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.