Tools by Rob Kemme skybird 27204177988
Tools by Rob Kemme skybird 27204177988
One of the most common issues that comes up in my practice is how my clients—CEOs and other senior leaders--can provide more effective coaching and feedback to their execs and employees.
Early in a leader's career they typically offer advice based on their own experience or skills: "Here's how I'd handle this situation..." But senior leaders manage people who sit much closer to the problems being solved and who may have more expertise in their functional area than the leader. Directive guidance from a senior leader can be counterproductive by preventing execs and employees from making full use of their own knowledge or from taking responsibility for a problem they would rather leave to the leader. Such an approach also keeps senior leaders involved with tactical details and distracts them from larger strategic issues, which is a particular concern in rapidly growing or changing organizations.
An alternative approach for the senior leader is to employ coaching skills to help direct reports come up with their own solutions to the problems they face. To be clear, an internal manager is not a substitute for an external coach--the relationship between leader and employee is fundamentally different than that between coach and client. The leader who aspires to coach their employees must take great care to acknowledge and account for the power differential that exists in these relationships. Subjecting execs and employees to a "coaching conversation" that takes the form of a series of leading questions will rightfully be seen as a theatrical performance and appropriately resented.
This isn't to say that senior leaders who seek to employ coaching skills are precluded from sharing their opinions with execs and employees. But it's important for leaders to develop effective feedback skills and to build relationships with their reports that are conducive to meaningful feedback conversations.
The resources below are derived from my work coaching leaders in my private practice since 2006, teaching The Art of Self-Coaching at Stanford for seven years, and training MBA students in both coaching and feedback skills (in the Leadership Fellows program and Interpersonal Dynamics) for a decade. I've also appended a list of books that have had an impact on my approach to coaching and feedback and whose concepts are readily applicable to organizational life.