Your Best Friend Could Be Your Best Coach

First and foremost, the planet in which we are living-in in the 21st century that started on January 1, 2001 and will end on December 31, 2100 seems to be a very dynamic period for all mankind – be it, in the private/public sectors, education, sport activities, national/International businesses.

By the age of fifty-five, the personalities of most of these top leaders have been stabilized and the behaviors of many of them would start to be very difficult in some situations. And it could be so hard for the senior executives to be doing everything alone as some of them might even be thinking that their behaviors and strategies are becoming dysfunctional and they would have no compelling reason to change or placing blames for failure on others… And even if they are willing to make efforts to change the situation, they might not get through so they would need others to give them some hands.

In this case, many executives would need the services of a coach. Coaching is somehow a kind of therapy which might take a little time to arrive at good results and during this period a lot of value might got damaged because of the executive dysfunctional behaviors. The best and immediate solution in this case would be to look for a group coaching intervention, because an expert coach can use the group context to leverage powerful (conscious and unconscious) psychological dynamics to bring instant change to the situation…

Let me give an example, as a case study: Some years back, one of these banks was at a state of going bankrupt and the board of trustee and the shareholders of the bank decided to hire a new vice-president to see and resolve the problems. Period! On the first day of this new vice-president in the bank, he talked to all the executives of the bank and almost at the end of this talk, he said to all these executives ‘’In the next thirteen days at exactly 3:00pm I would like everyone of you to be here in this same place we are having this conversation now to justify your existence in this bank. I mean every one of you!!!….’’ and he left.

After this, all the members of executive committee were speechless at first and after, they started arguing among themselves with turf fights for resources. Open, constructive communication was missing. They distrusted one another and everyone seemed to be falling short of reasonable ideas and couldn’t meet up the performance targets.

It was after the first day that the managing director of the bank suggested the idea of strategy consultants he had engaged then decided to bring the members of the committee and all teams in the bank together for what he called a high performance intervention as this apparent objective would be to reflect on leadership styles, organizational culture, interpersonal relationship, work practices guided by experienced group coach.

The coach began with a short lecture about high performance organizations and effective leadership and asked each member of the executive committee to draw a self-portrait, the picture of how they see themselves. The executives had no options but to collaborate perfectly with the task as the deadline for the speech of justification remaining few days ahead and they were still panicking. Thereafter the group coach asked each member of the executive team including the managing director to talk to the group about this drawing. And after all the coaching experience, they could realized that they were not working under the same umbrella – no trust among the top executives, no trust among the junior staffs and they realized that they were almost getting to the edge of loosing clients.

Having realized all the problems, they started thinking constructively and with the support of all members of the group to find new ways of reconstructing their banking system.

Just 3 hours to the meeting, then appeared the top executive of the coaching company -a lady- assembling all the members of the executive committee who are to justified their existence in the bank, said ‘’when you arrive at the meeting, no much talk, no slides. Just appoint a person and say this: ‘’We are excellent professionals, some of us have been working here for 10yrs, some more than 15yrs and we have all helped in the growth and development of the bank to the stage it is today …so we are competent, just give us a little time to proof this!’’

The new Vice-president was shocked and surprised with the brave attitudes of these executives. To date, all these executives are still in the bank working and contributing to the growth of the bank.

Intimacy: Getting close

Personal conversation that existed during the coaching becomes a culture and this makes all the staffs realize that they are working under the same umbrella so they are close to one another. Organizational conversation makes the leaders minimize the distance and where conversational intimacy prevails, the leaders will be able to trust the junior staffs and the junior staffs likewise, will trust their leaders.

The services of coaching will be successful type when an organization could realize excellent change/s in the organization.