Coaching for Action: A Report on Long-term Advising in a Program Context

Victoria A. Guthrie

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781604917871
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

The Center for Creative Leadership developed the role of process advisor in order to provide a long-term coaching solution within the context of its LeaderLab program. Process advisors encourage and enable individuals to take more effective action in leadership situations, action that develops those individuals and others in the pursuit of goals that benefit all. This report tells the story of CCL's experience with process advising and the lessons drawn from it, and will benefit professionals responsible for creating developmental programs in an organizational setting.

Creating the Process Advisor

Now that CCL had created a baseline understanding of the seven competencies necessary for the development process, it proceeded to consider a name and a definition for the role that was necessary to play within the LeaderLab program as participants were guided and helped through their program endeavors.

Naming and Defining the Process Advisor

Given what we knew about developmental action learning, we felt that the word process—defined as a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result—was at the core of programs like LeaderLab that emphasize development or training programs for future action. We wanted the role to be a blend of advocate, partisan, and adherent. And the best word to combine the support, assistance, fidelity, loyalty, and help in keeping the process we envisioned going would be advisor.

We also knew it would be important for the advisors to help individuals move from an event-focused perspective to understanding and operating from a process perspective, that is, to help them develop a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of the various aspects of leading and organizational systems and their own impact and effect in their leadership situations. The name we gave to our particular view of this advocate captured both of these goals—process advisor.

One issue that arose during this naming process was CCL’s desire to maintain the distinction between process advisor and coach. Clients’ actual needs in training indicated that the tasks in the PA role would call for the talents of the coach, counsel, consultant, mentor, and feedback provider in various combinations. So it became necessary to sort out the various reactions to the term process advisor for those who were used to using the above terms (especially coach) to define people in development support roles.

Table 1
Five Leadership Competencies in the Process Advisor Experience

Competency	Components for Mastery
Deal effectively with interpersonal relationships.	Manage the face-to-face interactions; manage systemwide interactions; and deal with people very different from oneself and effectively handle those differences.
Think and behave in terms of systems.	Recognize that an organization is an organic whole and even “minor” change in one part of it affects it as a whole.
Approach decision-making from the standpoint of trade-offs.	Understand that even though traditional maximization approaches can be useful in understanding the complexity of decision-making, decisions always involve multiple competing points of view and conflict; to focus each decision on what the situation calls for, be able to accurately weigh the ethical dilemmas faced when leading.
Think and act with flexibility.	Moderate and adapt one’s thinking and action quickly and effectively as new information or situations arise.
Maintain emotional balance by coping with disequilibrium.	Recognize the leader’s need for emotional competency; develop the ability to see conditions realistically; learn to be aware of one’s own emotions and the feelings of others and to actively build support in one’s situation.

For some the PA label is more palatable than coach, but for others, coach is a generic term that blankets any type of relational process within the context of development work. This became very clear at one organization when the president immediately dismissed the idea of coaching, stating that when he heard the word coach he thought of teaching someone something—like a sport or how to sell. He saw coach as meaning overseer or someone charged with telling others what to do successfully. However when the concept of the PA was explained, he felt that was exactly what the organization needed.

When CCL considered the definition of the PA role in LeaderLab, the image that consistently emerged in discussion was of someone who is a key advocate (see Table 2) for an individual in a real-time developmental relationship during a multisession, ongoing program that officially spans a specified amount of time (in this case, approximately six to nine months). This is the premise we have used throughout our experience with the program.

Table 2
Process Advisor as Advocate

Advisee	Process Advisor
Decides on action plans and development needs.	Helps clarify strengths and potential blocks.
Evaluates progress and learning.	Provides perspective and gives feedback.
Owns the situation and finds own solutions.	Inquires, probes, supports; does not provide answers.

The Tasks of the Process Advisor

The goal of the six-month LeaderLab program is to encourage and enable individuals to take more effective actions; the PA’s major job within that context is to continually focus participants on asking themselves important questions, the two primary ones being: (1) What does the situation call for from me as an individual, as a team/group leader, as a contributing member of an organization? (2) What is the ideal or purpose I am striving for?

These two questions lead to what we call anchors, the baseline principles of the PA’s job that guide his or her activities. Table 3 details the anchors that moor the process advisor in a long-term developmental relationship with a client.

Table 3
Anchors for Process Advisors

Six-month process goal	Encourage and enable individual to take more effective actions in leadership situations, actions that develop individuals and others in pursuit of goals that benefit all.
Sense of purpose	Help individual clarify the vision for his or her specific leadership situation through review of his or her life biography. Help individual deal with the questions: What is the ideal I am striving for—as an individual, as a leader of a team or group, as a contributing member of an organization? What does my leadership situation call for from me?
Learning from experience	Help individual become a more effective learner by encouraging him or her to identify blocks to learning, and supporting efforts to overcome them.
Leadership competencies	Help individual practice five leadership competencies: have effective personal relations with people different from oneself, adopt a systems approach to his or her situation, deal with decision-making in terms of trade-offs, cope with emotional disequilibrium, and maintain flexibility in thoughts and actions.

The PA role is designed to help participants address problems that arise in the implementation of action plans and to provide encouragement with these plans. PAs are advocates for the work the participant is doing, offering fidelity, loyalty, and a steady and firm backing for that work. The PA role is a blend of expert, confidante, cop, cheerleader, champion, and counselor. PAs listen, recommend, encourage, inform, suggest, counsel, challenge, and support. Their roles will be described in more detail later in this report.

The Tools of the Process Advisor

PAs guide each participant’s development within the frame of the program. In this particular design, the program’s overarching goal is to encourage and enable the individual to take more effective actions in his or her leadership situations, actions that develop the individual and others in pursuit of goals that benefit all.

To help participants achieve this, PAs use the competencies-and-challenges framework, the program itself, and a prework package of data that participants complete prior to the program. Figure 1 shows how and when the PA comes into the long-term leadership developmental relationship.

The prework packet consists of a number of qualitative and quantitative surveys. Qualitative feedback instruments, such as situation audits, help individuals describe a sense of purpose from individual, group, and organizational perspectives; help clarify perceptions of various groups toward one another; establish operating norms for the group; and articulate the top ten issues facing the participant and identify whether each issue is an individual, group/team, or organizational one. Life biography and life-transition work are the focus of additional qualitative surveys. Advisees often reported back additional insight from these surveys that suggests a heightened self-awareness.

The quantitative feedback consists of a number of self-assessment surveys, such as FIRO-B, the Success Style Profile, and the Jones Inventory of Barriers; and 360-degree instruments, such as Benchmarks® and KEYS®. PAs prepare diligently by poring over notes and feedback materials, and participants often report a satisfaction with that preparation. As one participant put it: “[The PA] gave me a breathing image of the data from a static interpretation of the data. She had done her homework and asked excellent questions.”

Although working with the hard data is one portion of the first face-to-face meeting, PAs generally report that after the first session the individual moves to real-life situations and an analysis of actions that can be done and that need to be done. The instruments are used later only to challenge or confirm a participant’s self-understanding.

The learning journal is another tool the PA reviews and uses over the developmental process and relationship to better understand and connect conversations, actions, and discussions. We use the term journal rather loosely to mean any recording method that helps the individual keep a running account of daily thoughts and reflections. The journal allows the PA and the participant to examine the strategies, successes, pitfalls, and stress points that often accompany the learning process. Specifically, a journal provides three benefits: It is (1) a mechanism for reflection—a means for the participant to build the skill of learning from experience, (2) a means of building data that enable the PA to be more helpful and allow the participant the opportunity over time to look for patterns and trends in his or her leadership, and (3) a means to better self-understanding by bringing insight through reflection. (Appendix B provides more detail on why the learning journal is part of the PA process.)

Figure 1
LeaderLab/PA Design Flow

Participants are provided with journals for use during their on-site meetings and during the months between sessions. The intent of the journals is to help participants develop a systematic reflection process, to establish a routine whereby they capture not only what but how they learned and, further, periodically review and reflect on those reflections. Participants are encouraged to find their own time, place, and format for the learning journal. They are free to use a computer, a tape recorder, a paper outline, or any other method that is comfortable and familiar.

Although the benefits are well proven and the means of keep...