QUT Research: The Science of Coaching Culture

By Dr. Fran Finn & Dr. Geoffrey Abbott

Over 15 years ago, HBR published Daniel Goleman’s seminal article Leadership that Gets Results.1 The essence of his argument is:

When you strip all the noise away, there are around six fundamental styles that a leader can use;

Coaching is one of the six (the others being coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic and pacesetting);

Effective leaders use all six, but to keep people motivated they should apply the brake pedal on coercive and pacesetting (the latter being associated with micromanagement)

Emotional intelligence is a critical leadership characteristic that helps in messy decisions of what, where, when, why, how and with whom.

Regardless of the hype around flat structures, empowerment and collective decision making, a case can easily be made that the underlying assumption for leadership in most companies is still ‘telling people what to do’.

The assumption may be unconscious and wrapped in different coloured paper but you can still find it in titles, hierarchical structures, reward systems, duty statements, and the symbols of power sprinkled around organisations.

Coaching – which is in tension with the core assumption of telling - is not deeply embedded in the DNA of most organisations, though there are signs of a shift, and even more signs of a need to.

We look at why coaching seems to be becoming more embedded with leadership in a VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and what implications this might have moving forward.

He wrote about coaching that, ‘Although the coaching style may not scream bottom-line results, it delivers them’.

Since that time, executive coaching has proliferated and leadership development programs are increasingly embedding coaching in different ways, including teaching leaders how to coach.

Effective leadership development programs typically will have a mix of workshops, 1-1 executive coaching, action-learning groups, group coaching, peer coaching, coaching skills, mentoring, and some kind of on-the-job project.

What seems to work best, and what companies are asking for, are multi-pronged approaches consistent with the Lombardo and Eichinger’s 70:20:10 model of leadership development. The basic premise of the model is that most learning happens on-the-job.

Arguably, the emergent element is a ‘coaching methodology’, which is creeping into the seventy percent ‘on-the-job’ and into the ten percent content elements of the model.

‘Although the coaching style may not scream bottom-line results, it delivers them’.

There is a shift in the meaning of coach - a shift from something one is to something one does.

It’s hard to capture the exact nature of the underlying assumption of coaching – a possible’ in contrast with ‘tell people shopping list rapidly appears. For now, how about, ‘explore what is what to do’.

The question we are currently considering is, ‘Why is a coaching methodology getting into everything in this way?’

Here is the explanation that we’ve been working with in the QUT Graduate School of Business, Brisbane, Australia. The world is undoubtedly getting more VUCA-ish every day – i.e. more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

One of our CEO mentors recently commented that a regional CEO role he took on was described by the chairman as ‘ambiguous’. Needless to say, he wasn’t sure what that meant, and neither was the board. Two years and a regional CEO redundancy later, none of the players had gained any more clarity!

Many leaders are coming to us in various states of confusion, denial, overwhelm, stress, isolation, and disillusionment and (although we may not hear about them) – depression, drug dependency, and chronic family dysfunction. At the same time, others are coming with elation, passion, and excitement – literally sharing joy in the world.

We don’t yet have research that proves it, but our observation is that leaders who are using a coaching methodology generally come with a more functional profile – happier, healthier and more effective – and much nicer to be with!

They are taking an exploratory approach with due regard to context and a good sense of what is important to them. Instead of drowning in the turbulence, they’ve found a way of surfing the energy of the waves. VUCA is engaging and even fun to this group; while admittedly hell to others.

Research done by The Australian Centre for Coaching in Organisations gives us some insight. They found that while executive coaching was valuable by all the participants in a leadership development program, what made the program work was a systemic approach that evolved with the context within which it was designed and conducted.

Dave Snowden and Mary Boone have developed a decision-making model that provides insight to the way in which a coaching methodology or mindset could be helping leaders to stay on the bright side of life. Their model proposes that different problem situations require different approaches. Complex problems require a perspective that views the situations as a complex adaptive system with characteristics such as interrelatedness, non-linearity, phase-shifts, and emergence. Leaders are advised to ‘probe’ as a first response, which then provides opportunities to work to influence the system using appropriate forms of analysis and problem solving. Here is the link to coaching. If VUCA-ating is happening – and we believe it is – then more and more problem situations are going to be complex. Therefore, leaders who are probing/exploring are more likely to be successful on a range of measures across personal and professional domains.

The shift in thinking towards a coaching leadership style is also one of moving from an individual competitive mindset to a collective collaborative mindset. Probing, exploring and creating are lonely and dangerous business on one’s own.

REFERENCES

1. Goleman, D. (2000). ‘Leadership that Gets Results’. Harvard Business Review. March

2. Lombardo, R.W., Eichinger, M.M. (2000). The Leadership Machine (3rd Edition). Lominger Ltd. In their survey of successful managers, they found that 70% of learning came from undertaking tough jobs; 20% from colleagues – especially the manager’s own boss; and 10% from traditional learning methods such as reading and training courses.

3. Snowden, D. J. and M. Boone. (2007). ‘A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making’. Harvard Business Review.

4. Peterson, D. (2015). ‘Coaching Leaders in Turbulent Times’. Conference Presentation. Harvard Medical School, Boston

In complex systems, the energy is generated at the connection points in the form of rich conversations across silos that engage the heart and the head.

At our Graduate School of Business at QUT, the response to this observed direction and connection in the leadership-coaching-VUCA nexus has been to increase our educational offerings that provide guidance on how coaching works best in turbulent environments and in particular how leaders might adopt a coaching methodology as a default.

Our Executive Graduate Certificate in Business, Leadership though Coaching and Mentoring, delivers advanced thinking and competencies for leaders who are using or are intending to use coaching and mentoring approaches to develop the full capacity of their staff. It uniquely addresses a gap in the executive education market: skilling senior leaders in the art of coaching and mentoring to enhance their leadership and decision-making capabilities and is designed to equip participants with the skills and confidence to develop a coaching culture within their organisation.

We build our programs on a premise - leaders are working in complex contexts that require a capacity to think systemically and to have very strong interpersonal skills that will enable them to collaborate to thrive, rather than just compete to survive.

We’d like our programs to be consistent with Maya Angelou’s view.

‘My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style’

Dr Geoffrey AbbottDirector, Executive and Organisational Coaching, QUT Graduate School of Business

Geoff is an experienced executive coach, coach-trainer, consultant, educator and author. His expertise is in global coaching, people development, and leading in complex business environments.

Geoff is Director of Executive and Organisational Coaching in the Graduate School of Business with Queensland University of Technology in Australia. In this role he coaches high level executives and uses coaching methodologies to facilitate leadership development in corporate leadership development initiatives and the QUT MBA program. Geoff and the QUT team has developed a suite of leadership through coaching and mentoring education programs including an Executive Graduate Certificate in Business.

Geoff is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to International Business Coaching (Moral and Abbott, 2011).

Independently, Geoff coaches executives and provides coaching education across different industries and cultures.

Dr Fran Finn

Course Coordinator, Executive Graduate Certificate in Business (Leadership through Coaching and Mentoring), QUT Graduate School of Business

Fran is passionate about developing exceptional leaders. She is an Executive Coach and Course Coordinator for QUT's Executive Graduate Certificate in Business (Leadership through Coaching & Mentoring), and works extensively in leadership development, providing individual and group Executive Coaching for senior executives, and facilitating executive development programs. Fran commenced in Human Resource Management in 1990 and has combined HR practice with delivering adult learning in academia for more than 20 years; she has been a past recipient of Innovation in Teaching awards, and was previously named University Mentor Coordinator of the Year.

In 2000 Fran designed an Executive Coaching program that she trained a team of specialists to deliver to industry. In 2008 she completed a PhD examining Executive Coaching as an Alternate Leadership Development Tool, for which she was awarded the Dean’s Commendation for Excellent Doctoral Thesis.

Fran’s research is widely reported within the coaching field and she is called upon by media to comment. Her research focuses on leadership development in the workplace, with a particular interest in executive coaching. During her PhD she was successful in winning an addendum to the ARC Linkage Project between QUT, QHPPS, DIR, ADSM and Queens University. The outcomes of this research have been presented internationally.