Case Study: Extract from the diary of an executive coach

Transitional and Transformational Coaching

The coachee was one of three Heads of Department reporting to a Divisional Director. He had been in the organisation for 22 years and had been promoted for his technical knowledge and expertise.

He wanted to move into the Divisional Director position that was to become available within six months. The issue was that he had very little leadership presence and lacked confidence. In my work with him I established a working alliance in order to build trust and enable me to both challenge and support him to grow into a strong enough position to be considered for the post.

Once the working alliance was established I utilised my experience of him to feed back his impact on me and the limited impact I saw him having within the organisational system. In both cases his impact was non-assertive and lacking in leadership presence.

An example of this was that he spoke very quickly and would fill any space, so that he spoke at people rather than listened and responded. I suggested an experiment where he stayed silent with me for three minutes, in order for him to experience his internal process when being silent.

Through the trust that had been established he reluctantly agreed to the experiment, which he was nervous about undertaking. He managed to stay silent for three minutes and I asked him to share his experience and the sense he made from it. He recognised that his anxiety rose dramatically in the first minute and then gradually dissipated over the next two minutes.

He made the connection that he would talk at people because he always stayed within the first minute of extreme discomfort around silence. As a result of this he began to experiment with not speaking continually and began listening.

This had an immediate positive effect on those around him and he was able to report this in subsequent sessions, and led to a significant change in his communication style.

An underlying issue was his anxiety and lack of confidence, which would be particularly intense at executive board meetings he would be invited to make presentations to.

I asked him to imagine himself at an executive board meeting. I invited him to go round the table and identify how he felt in relation to each of the board members. In general he didn’t feel he was an equal to the people around the table. I asked him who in particular did he feel uncomfortable with, he identified Mr A. I then suggested an experiment where he sat in a chair as Mr A would sit and imagine himself as Mr A.

I explained the purpose was to enable him to see the world through the other persons eyes and gain some empathy and balance to his relationship with Mr A. I then spoke to him as Mr A and asked how he saw the world, what pressure he was under, what were his main concerns etc.

He was able to respond as Mr A and answer my questions. I also asked how he viewed my client and what did he want from him. The outcome was the coachee felt significantly able between sessions to meet with Mr A and have a frank and open discussion which led to him receiving positive affirmation from Mr A and a significant improvement in their relationship and my client’s confidence ( they eventually played golf together!).

The above are two examples of how I worked with this coachee over a period of a year. As a summary the work involved creating a working alliance, utilising my signature presence to raise the coachees awareness of his lack of impact within the system and utilising experiments to enable him to begin the process of change and growth through owning and becoming more of who he was.

As a result he undertook a transformation in his communication style, understood himself and had access to tools and tactics to support himself, and gained in confidence. The change was noticed within the organisation and he was promoted to Divisional Director.

Overview

Overview