COACHING FOR PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL MASTERY

Article by Herb Rubenstein
CEO, Herb Rubenstein Consulting

Introduction

Julio Olalla is a leader in the field of coaching. He is a lawyer from Chile who has changed professions to head up a world-renowned school of coaching operating in North and South America. He has coached over 35,000 people and certified over 1,000 people as Master Coaches through his programs on two continents. His work centers on fostering improved communication, supportive learning environments and improved productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. His address was sponsored by The Georgetown University Certificate Program in Training and The World Bank.

Improving the Ability to Work Together

An "organization" is a conversational network. In order to work effectively in improving organizations one must become attuned to the conversation that is going on in the organization.

A second critical area to learn about in dealing with organizations and promoting learning in organizations is the biology of cognition. How people learn in a physiological sense is as important as how they learn intellectually and emotionally.

The role of how people interpret the past and the present is also critical to the learning/coaching/improvement process. Clearly we have more information today than we have ever had before. However, the interpretations we have are insufficient to deal with the issues we face. Many interpretations of the past are barriers to learning.

Most people think of learning as a collection of information and fail to grasp that the purpose of learning is to create wisdom. Learning itself, when it is successful, creates wisdom.

Learning has been given a role in life today that is inconsistent with the history of its role throughout generations. Today, learning has been placed outside of the fundamental concerns of our lives and outside of the major concerns of the organizations in which we work. When issues arise, people and organizations seek to devise technical solutions to the issue, and often fail to address the issue and how it arose. The technical solution does not generally create the learning necessary to resolve the issue in a way that improves the individual or organization's capacity to deal with the next issue as it arises.

Learning Environments

Today there is a strong emphasis on the learning organization. What will create effective learning in an organization? We know the keys to creating a learning organization. They are:

• Enthusiasm
• Respect and dignity for each individual
• Pleasure being derived from work and the relationship with the organization
• Focus on the language/mood/body relationship
• Unleash new conversations
• Address issues in ways that were previously unthinkable
• Create and support a hunger for learning and questioning
• Identify the barriers, or lack of interest, in creating great questions
• Stop rewarding explanations and reward questions
• Expand the space of "I don't know" as part of the conversation

We also know that learning cannot take place in an environment of fear and uncertainty. Where there is fear and/or distrust, learning is impossible. Where there is respect and dignity, learning is inevitable.

People often go into organizations as workers wanting to serve other human beings but after time this desire to serve others dries up. In order to become effective coaches and to improve the inner workings and productivity of organizations, we need to understand the dynamic behind why this desire to serve others dries up.

Coaching is the discipline designed to promote effective work at the individual level. Effective work is a function of a purpose, a commitment to realize a strategy to recruit, manage, organize and deploy the resources to accomplish the tasks necessary to achieve the purpose.

Teaching differs from coaching in that the typical model of "teaching" is where one person delivers information to another.

Training differs from coaching in that the goal of training is usually to impart some skill or system to another person or organization who will master this skill through repetition.

Explanations can be powerful to take an idea to the next level. One must be very aware if an explanation is a gateway or barrier to an idea or concept at a higher level.

The Model of Coaching

When coaching takes place, there is an observer, action and results. The observer is also the "doer" who sees and assesses the results, uses this feedback and revises the action. A critical question for the coach is to understand how the observer (the individual or organization to be coached) observes the world. In order to address that question, the coach needs to understand "How did the observer become the type of observer he or the organization is?" Coaches need to listen carefully for the ways that those they coach (and themselves) understand the world.

In order to change the action, the result, we must change the observer in fundamental ways, otherwise we are merely working on the symptoms. It is never enough, if we want to improve results, merely to give information. If we give information and even if that information is acted on, the change in results is temporary. When there is teaching, the giving of information, and there is no permanent, useful change, the person or organization experiences resignation which is a predisposition toward no positive action.

Coaching is fundamentally and initially concerned with the observer, the doer more than with the results. Coaching enlarges the vision of the observer in order to enlarge the things that will be seen as possible that previously did not seem possible. By seeing something as possible that one, at the individual or organizational level, did not see as possible previously, there is growth of the individual and there is the increased, the substantially increased likelihood that what one now sees as possible will become a fact in the future.

Innovation

Generally we "explain" phenomena, but we need to be able to understand the observer/doer's relationship with the phenomena (as cause) in order to coach effectively.
Innovation is impossible if we believe the ways we explain the world as the way it is. Effective action, innovation, is not the result of our explanations or our views of what is true. Truth is a static concept. Innovation is a dynamic concept. To the extent we are stuck in our explanations, "this is the way it is", and focus on that, we are not able to innovate.

Risk

The key to success is the ability and willingness to take intelligent, entrepreneurial risk. An individual or organization's view toward risk and their predisposition toward risk will be a great factor in determining its ultimate level of success.

The Role of Language/Linguistics

• Language has several dimensions:
• Language as distinction
• Language as commitment, the speech act
• Requests
• Demands
• Offers
• Declarations
• Assertions
• Assessments

An assessment is not an assertion. An assessment is a judgment that generally retards new ways of thinking about something that in turn retards change. Coaching is constantly bringing in distinctions that challenge the current assessments that an individual, or a collective organization, holds.

The role of linguistics is essential in coaching. Language gives us the ability to make distinctions. The distinctions we make create or limit our ability to make observations. Our language creates or limits our ability to listen (listening is an audible observation that impacts on the individual or organization). The distinctions and observations we make create our culture, since culture is the common set of distinctions and observations made within an organization and society. Culture results from a sharing of distinctions in a manner that a group of people experience the same observations and listening and look at and see the world in the same way.

Coaches must be aware of the lack of distinctions and the lack of ability to make distinctions among those they coach. Language both reveals and conceals.

Effect of Language and Physiology on Emotion/Moods

There are emotional levels within individuals and organizations.

Emotion is our fundamental predisposition toward action. Some emotions do not work in support of some actions. Some emotions even prevent some actions. Emotion is the fundamental basis of relationships. We need to deal with emotion at the organizational level because before learning can take place, the emotions of an individual or organization must be assessed and addressed.

People develop over time regular moods, regular dispositions toward life, which predispose them toward certain behaviors and away from other behaviors.

One's physical body is an important part of their environment. How we stand, how we walk, posture, etc. all affect our mood and our ability to learn. There is a coherence/congruence between our ability to formulate certain concepts (our conceptual territory), our physiology, our mood and our use of language. In order to shift the conceptual territory, we need to shift our body.

Several emotions explained:

• Resentment-a secret promise of revenge
• Fear-a concern regarding an anticipated loss
• Sadness-concern over actual or perceived loss

Fear causes actions not to be taken when there is doubt. The key problem today with fear is that we are afraid of our fear, afraid to act in the face of fear.

Fear and sadness are great fields of learning.

Emotions give organizations pain and cause organizational suffering. We must correctly diagnose the root cause of the pain and suffering before we suggest treatments, improvements or corrections. Emotions are the shift in your mood that you experience in response to a certain event. Most people blame the event for the emotion via an explanation. However, no event or outside source causes any emotion or shift in mood. It is our interpretation of that event, the meaning that we attach to the event that affects our mood or the mood of our organization. So it becomes very important to understand how the organization interprets events in order to know what events/coaching to bring into the organization or to the individual.

The art of leadership is to align the predispositions of all participants in support of reaching the vision / goal. When one alters the emotionality of an observer/doer or organization, great results are often unleashed.

In distinguishing between the ways things are (the unchangeable things in the short run) and possibilities, Olalla uses the words "facticity" and possibility. Often people and organizations oppose what is, oppose facticity.

If we oppose what is we create resentment and if we create resentment we are predisposed to not being able to see possibilities. If we accept what is, facticity, endorse it, then we have the emotion of peace. The emotion or mood of peace is the inner sense of acceptance and a great promoter of creativity.

If we oppose possibilities, our resultant mood is resignation. Coaches produce acceptance of facticity. Only once facticity is accepted can learning take place. The coach creates the context for acceptance of what is and promoting success as defined by the observer/doer. The coach does not define success for the observer/doer. There must be alignment between the coach and the observer/doer as to what constitutes success.

Context

Context provides meaning to language and actions. If an organization punishes mistakes or teaches not to act when in doubt, it will create a context of fear, a context that heightens the focus on the potential negative consequences over and above the potential positive consequences.

Diversity

We must go beyond tolerance, which is simple delayed rejection. We must promote full acceptance of those who in some ways are different from ourselves and our organizations. In order to do this, differences must be viewed as possibilities and not problems. We must recognize that the way we, including the observer/doer and organization, see things is not the way they are. Each person has a different set of eyes, a different lens through which they observe the world. (Einstein's Theory of Relativity applied to every day life). We must ask of each other to "lend me your eyes so I can see the world as you see it?" This is essential for effective coaching.

Differences create energy, which can be turned into creativity if there is dignity and trust. Different people and different types of people equal different assets. The tensions created through differences can energize and need not create conflict. If we live as if we know the right way, we can never accept diverse peoples as equals.

We must remember different people do not, cannot see the world in the same way physically. According to Ollala, the world is different to each person.

The Big Picture & Big Questions

People and organizations are now beginning to look at the big picture and ask big questions. This is in direct response to a current crisis in meaning as we have more and know less what makes us happy and what makes organizations work in this commodity filled world.

Vision/Realism

Vision means to see and by the word we mean in the business or coaching context the ability to imagine possible worlds. Our ability to imagine these possible worlds is an aligning force to making the possible world become a world in fact. The "ground" or infrastructure to make vision a reality is strategy.

We can not be so realistic as to kill dreams. The only way to be the author of our own lives and the author of the future of the organizations that we work with is as a result of our shared dreams.

How do you enlarge vision and possibility? You share meaningful distinctions.

Effective Action

Effective action is the result of good coordination, communication, consideration and conversation between people. We must focus on the ontological, the foundation of effective thinking. Positive thinking is an overlay over a different base view of reality. It is our view of reality, itself, that must be changed.

Effective action will result when we bring into being a new kind of observer/doer. In order to promote effective action there must be an ease of conversation about everything in an organization. An organization's inability to achieve effective action is a function of its inability to have a successful conversation.

"Conversation" means to change together. When one engages in a real conversation, one does not know in advance where it will arrive or where it will conclude. Today, we are full of answers and information. What is needed for effective action and for learning environments is that the participants be full of questions. Effective action is the result of living out of both creativity and certainty (vs. scarcity).

Leading is partnering. Effective action requires completion of tasks and our relationship with the tasks.

Trust

Trust operates at two levels:

• Assessment of sincerity, truthfulness--the ethical side
• Assessment of capacity-the management side

People fail the trust test in the area of sincerity when we believe the public conversation they have and the private conversation they have (and they are) are not consistent, congruent. Credibility is a key element of trust on both the ethical and the management sides. Without trust there can not be an effective learning environment.

We must not confuse trust with being naïve. Prudence must not be confused with distrust. At the organizational level, we must find ways to overcome distrust and resignation.

Failure

Understanding a person or organization's relationship with/attitude toward failure is critical in coaching. If a person or organization blames some external event or force, or if a person or organization blames some form of differences between people or if a person relies on "excuses" as the explanation for failure, then the person is attempting to make themselves superior to their failure "for free." These explanations serve as a dodge. These explanations use language to hide rather than reveal. These explanations stop learning.

Conclusion

Mr. Olalla will return to the United States early next year to start workshops and offer students an eight month course in coaching. Mr. Olalla is a principal in the Newfield Network. His U.S. Representative is Terrie Lupberger who can be reached at 301 439-1662, terrie@newfieldnetwork.com.

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