Coaching the Teens !

All caring parents want their children to grow up to be happy and successful adults.

Daughters who become good, strong women.

Sons who become good, strong men.

But making this happen is a Herculean task.

There was an article recently carried in Times of India , Mumbai Edition , dated 13th Nov 13 , “Need parenting help , call a coach”. When I went through the article I was reminded of a chat with a young kid, son of my friend, few months back. I carried out this conversation, which is typically of 10-15 minutes duration, in a coaching structure. What exactly is a coaching structure? Coaching is defined as “facilitate positive change through improved thinking”. Coaching is not about giving advice or solutions but about helping the person develop insights & then bring about new thinking and actions to achieve  results.

Well, as a parent (me included) we tend to believe that our children need answers, solutions and we go about “telling” our children what to do and how to do. Parents, generally, do not engage in a dialogue to understand them, understand their thinking process. This could be for a host of reasons. Parents believe that their own experience can be useful, that the child needs to be protected, and that they are just “kids”.

Well coming back to the article in Times of India, the writer talks about how there are these times when the parents need to learn the art of coaching & derive lessons on parenting. For the interested & initiated, I am reproducing the Face Book Chat conversation that I had with a teenager (17yrs). While reading through , I would like readers to carefully notice the response of the Teenager.

Coaching Conversation

Hello Uncle, How are you?

I am good, how about you?

I am good, thank you! Just struggling with studies these days?

Could you talk more about it?

That is the question of the hour. You please give me some tips to handle this struggle?

What is the question?

That, how can I overcome this struggle?

Question is "what is the struggle" you are facing.

Not able to concentrate on studies.

Which areas of studies you would like to improve your concentration?

You mean the subjects?

Yes, the subjects and topics within subjects.

Economics and Business.

What do you want to change about the way you understand these subjects?

No, I want to improve the duration of the self-study time of these subjects. I understand the subjects very easily.

So, your struggle is time and not concentration. Good, how do you schedule your day?

Well I have made a schedule.

Wonderful, so when you follow your schedule, how does it make you feel?

It makes me feel good and in control. I feel I will be highly successful.

Great, shall we discuss further on how you can work towards it.

Yes.

Thanks, would you share how you fare on your schedule?

Yes! I am trying, trying to follow it.

What could you do to ensure that you follow your schedule 100%?

Control Phone, TV& Friends

Who can help you to control TV, Friends & Phone?

No one,except me. I have to control it myself

Great, what all you can you do to manage your schedule and time better?

I guess my schedule is okay. I have to start saying no to the little things in life now to achieve big things. So the fault lies within me

Beautiful, No fault , you have realization now.

Yes, Thanks for making me realize it

So, what actions will you take now?

Will switch off the phone will studying?

Great, what else?

You tell me?

 

In your sport, is there any learning which you can apply when you are studying in concentration?

Well my sport requires great perfection & precision. So, yes that I can apply in my day to day working.

These 2; perfection and precision. How and what do you do to achieve them?

Practice hard and sometimes meditate.

How do you ensure you adhere to practice time?

By waking up early in the morning. I wake up at 5 whenever I have to practice.

So do u think it can work for you by applying this learning here

Yes I do. Thank a lot for telling this will really help me

So what action will you take now to ensure you are concentrated on studies

So now I am going to get up at 5. At 5 there are no distractions and secondly I am going to switch off my mobile phone while studying and thirdly I going to strictly follow my time table

What else can you do to ensure strict timetable adherence

I can ask my mother to keep a check on me

Great!

Thanks a lot for your guidance

Great let me know if you want to talk about same, 10-15 days from now after implementing the action.

Sure , I will.

In this conversation as you see my role was to guide him with my questions into finding his own way towards succeeding in achieving his goal. A similar issue handled by / as a parent could have meant that the child on raising the issue would have been “told” that he should get up early & switch off mobiles.

The conversation I had with the teenager differentiates itself just by the fact that all answers and solutions came from the child. There is a high probability of his achieving the outcome, as all actions came from his own thinking after the realisation that “he could think and do it all by himself”.

The secret is that no matter how hard it might be, parents need to start all interactions with their children with understandings and patience, even if you don't fully agree or even quite comprehend what they're talking about. We also need to take the emotionality out of the equation. Emotion is an obstacle 

when you're trying to get through to your teen. Remind yourself that what he says and does is not a reflection on you.

We do not want our kids to give up and quit when they face challenges. Focus on the behavior, and don't tag them with a label. Instead it's better to ask pointed questions to bring your child to a specific solution. Don't ask loaded questions that put your teen on the defensive like, "why can't you get up on time? What's wrong with you?" Instead, opening the conversation with, "Do you have any ideas for how you might get up on time?" If he can't think of any, suggest some options and let him chose what works best for him. Let him have the confidence that you believe in him and that you are not mad at him for struggling in his life. When you let him see the faith in his abilities and he has the space to work things out on his own, you will begin to develop true confidence in him.

The trick lies in guiding them to find their own calling. With teens, I think it’s best to remind them of things they themselves have said. To a certain degree, you’re allowing them to co–author certain things.

Coaches can help parents in developing skills to have “meaningful conversations” with their children. Coaches are available to have meaningful conversations with children to resolve their dilemmas and help them through challenges in any part of their lives. 

So as a parent, I think it’s important to know what your kid’s dilemmas and goals are. There is an opportunity here for child to understand himself better. Use these situations and dilemmas, because then you can use that as a tool to motivate them.

Happy coaching your kids.

Are you investing in yourself ?

I had written a piece in “my ascent” a publication of times of India. It was published as a winning entry in “Voice of HR” in March 2013. It was a satisfying moment with messages and compliments from people around. However my big moment came up when I got a call from an ex- colleague of mine around 4 weeks back. He shared that he was inspired by one of the thoughts I had put forward, not a new one though. I had suggested that professionals should start investing in themselves through training. They should allocate a certain percentage of their salary towards their own training, wherever and whenever they assess they need new skills & competencies & their organizations are not planning or proposing to provide him with that. My ex Colleague, to improve his chances at an aspirational company and role, enrolled himself in a 6 month program to improve his knowledge & skills.

Since that call, I have been for long thinking about writing my thoughts on learning & training by professionals. For long I thought about how to structure it. I searched for quotes on “learning” on Google and a website link gave me a list of 797 quotes. These are just in English. I am sure there are many more in different languages.  I particularly like this one by Mahatma Gandhi.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Employers & in particular HR heads in most organizations are striving to develop “learning organizations”. They wish to build leadership pipeline. To create career paths and succession planning. HR wishes to nurture & groom talent to take on new challenges and growth plans.

There seems to be a dis-connect as most professionals at mid to senior level do not seem to get these opportunities of help in form of training, mentoring or coaching at workplace. To be fair large companies, very few though, today have plans in this area and they execute it well. Even in these large organizations the coverage is not high and inconsistent. However there is large no. of organizations that do not create definitive plans and yet whine the fact that their employees are not smart enough to manage market challenges.

It leaves me wondering where the problem is or challenge in marrying these objectives, people and organization development. In my view the answer would lie in responses to following questions, by professionals who have had minimum 15 years of work experience.

Q .In the organizations we have worked with, how many and which ones really prepared you well to take on new roles & invested in you through the process of new skills, learning’s and knowledge?

Q. Which organizations supported you with help in form of training (mentors, coaches) when you were asked to take on a new challenges  which demands you to stretch , explore more & learn new behaviours?

Q. When choosing a new job, do you specifically check on how the organization helps employees grow their learning’s and development of new skills?

Please do not be surprised by your own responses to these questions.  Do not feel discouraged too. Perhaps ask yourself something you have not yet asked yourself.

Q. What do you need to do about our own growth in next 3-5 years to be in your aspirational role and / or company? Does this “need to do list” account for new and better skills and competencies?  

Q. Are we thinking or planning to invest in ourselves in absence of investment from our employers?

Q. Have we identified the areas in which we should be improving our skills to be more successful in future?

Laurence J. peter said -- Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.  The challenge therefore to rise & improve further, professionals have to raise his level of incompetency.  If the company does not and you do not as well , one can be consigned to a level and role which may outgrow importance and criticalness and the professional may be left stranded in his career.

So go out and invest in yourself. Do not wait for your employer. 

Train yourself. Learn more.  Invest time & money on yourself. 

  

Game Changer : Coaching leaders in small & Mid size organization!

Coaching is such a new phenomenon in Asia , that to all practical purposes, no one knows what it is. So at any given time less than 1 in 10,000 people are actually looking for a coach. 

(According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) , Organizations spend over $200 billion on training and development each year, and It's a widely held opinion within the training industry that between 50 and 90% of training is utterly wasted. Coaching is a much better solution to many situations.

Each year people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on books they never read and workshops whose content they quickly forget. Just look back at the library at home & you would find a self-help book adorning the shelves. Has it helped you change & improve? Not very likely. 

Many of the traditional approaches of imparting new knowledge do not translate into changes in behaviour. Coaching is a far more effective solution. Coaching engages the uniqueness of the individual. Coaching is an on-going relationship that raises awareness, connects the client with their passions and deepest desires and holds them accountable to get the results they want. People grow and change with a coach. Coaching doesn't just get results; it gets the most meaningful results. These results are in business, sales , revenues & even personal areas too.

In my journey as a Learning & development professional & as an Executive Coach in past 3-4 years, I have noticed a clear trend in Indian companies. 

1.  The Major IT companies use coaches (Internal and external) extensively for working with their technical leaders who to be effective & aligned to their client needs, need to develop social & emotional skills as well communication style.

2.     There are these large Indian companies who have built academies to nurture and grow their talent and retain them. Each Year the cost of hiring new talent is growing. These companies have used coaching “ as a perk” to groom their high potentials and also make their leaders move from “ good to great”

3.     Then there are some companies who get funded / PE investments from abroad. Since Coaching is quite prevalent in US/UK, these companies insist on talent development and therefore coaching is introduced by them as a tool for achieving desired new behaviours.

It may be debatable to say but let me hazard saying that these companies could well do without coaching. They can still get the desired results with traditional ways of people development. Some may argue that these organizations can afford it. My counter argument is that while they can afford it, they very well could do without it too.

Let us see now whether coaching could help the smaller companies, owner/promoter driven listed & non listed companies in meeting their challenges like:

a.      Hiring best talent. Small organizations can either not afford them or this talent is not willing to move to either company and / or the city

b.      Old loyalists. They have served well over the years but in this age of competition and innovation they are unable to change and in fact resist and dissuade and drive away new talent. Some promoters even share that these old loyalists do not recruit teams who are better than them, fearing a challenge to them.

c.    Leadership behaviors at workplace continue to be hands-on driving away talent who would like to have freedom along with accountability

d.      Promoter’s family members joining the business. Generally these are youngsters and need to be up & running quickly. However they are put under some mentors where because of proximity to power, their mentors tend to be soft. They are unable to manage their way through, unless they come with great education. In fact even those from promoter’s family who come with Engg. / MBA degrees from rated colleges do get frustrated with organization culture and people (b & c above).

Large organizations with deep pockets create systems and processes in people management space which smaller companies cannot afford. These systems are best in talent acquisition, management and development. They understand people quality impact top & bottom line.

The argument for smaller companies is therefore that even in absence of best & bench-marked systems you would do well to address some of the challenges that I talked about earlier. These are addressable without elaborate investments in HR automation. All you need are expert coaches who have the ability to identify the solutions holistically including some bit of support training for change management but mostly to work with each of senior leaders to help them develop new behaviours aligned to expectations and market requirements. The Coaches must be selected carefully. I say this because there could be a tendency to hire an old senior retired employee. While they may be good, they are not coaches who are specially trained and certified to work with people & help them move from where they are to where they want to be or their organizations desire them to be.

It is an idea worth exploring by the smaller companies who should never spend a single rupee without seeking to know the return.Coaching is the only tool whose impact can be measured. Perhaps the only people development tool to help you calculate the return on investment. Is that not what matters?

"How we think" & not "What" Determines our Success

In one of my early executive coaching assignments, I had the opportunity to work with and support my coachee on a health related goal which was one of the three goals identified by him. The coaching engagement was for a period of 3 months. When the coachee reflected on his health area and focused, his goal read out like this.

“Celebrations on reaching a BP level of 135 / 90”.

When we started the coaching conversation his Blood Pressure was fluctuating at 145-155 / 95-105. I myself had a BP scare just 12 months before this assignment.  I share this because in our relationship with our coachee, we have to steer clear of our own agenda. It could spell disaster for the coachee & his transformational coaching journey. I feared that I might end up pushing my agenda with him to control his BP. As Coaches, our agenda is only “Coachee”. Fully aware that I must as Coach, stay clear and remain focused on coachee, we began our journey.

When we began the coaching sessions, working on the strategies in this goal area, coachee was quite confident & courageous. It was quite evident that coachee was quite keen to reach goal and sustain it. He had “awareness” about his situation. He was also amply clear on the outcome / goal and that is the key to success.

I would not like to go into details of how this journey of 12 weeks was for us. Suffice it to say, he recorded a BP level of 138 /90 in 11th week of our coaching i.e. close to 3 months.

During the journey, coachee kept thinking of & executing actions each week. These actions & their impact in his life and health generated new insights & learning’s for him. He created new activities, threw out some. He experimented, he succeeded. He knew importance of support. Helped by his own insights, he created partnerships and dependencies towards his cause of health.  It was amazing that within first 4-5 weeks, he was sticking to his commitments and schedule agreed and continued till end of engagement. He created new habits. Habits stick.

Some would still wonder as to how an executive coach can help in health goals. THINK.

Well Coaching is about thinking on “how we think”. Coaches help you observe yourself “ thinking”. The change happens there. Coaching is creating a positive change, new thinking, new Wiring facilitated by coach & powered by coachee. 

Give yourself credit

We all tend to be hard on ourselves. We create results, we accomplish. Yet we believe there was nothing exemplary about it. The less we reward ourselves, the more stress we create on accomplishing something different, something dramatic. The stress impacts our ability to think, unless we learn to handle it creatively. Most of us are not at our best creatively with new ideas, when we are under stress.

In coaching assignments, as we work towards the goals, actions agreed are reviewed with the coachee. In doing so we seek from coachee the feelings and learning’s these actions throw up.

In one of my coaching assignment, I observed that there was not enough energy & excitement with my coachee, a young man in mid 20s. (Son of the promoter of company). As a coach I brought up my observation, with his permission, and sought his feedback. He surprised me. He told me that he suffers from low self-esteem. I must add here that a coach builds trust with his coachee which makes him comfortable to share almost everything. I asked him to tell me about the time or event which made him feel proud, something he had accomplished.

At first he thought hard but could not come up with anything. I kept pushing & persuading him. He almost apologetically shared that he had few years back lost 5 kgs through a disciplined fitness regime. He enquired whether it could be considered an accomplishment. “Yes! That’s quite an accomplishment.”

He had a surprise look on his face. He never thought of it that way. No one ever told him that. He never thought that it was actually a big deal. He said “ I just decided one day that I must get into this “Diesel” brand of Jeans. So for that purpose I started walk and gym and shed these extra kilos which helped me reduce around my waist to fit into my jeans”. He did mention, at home, no one really noticed it as an accomplishment. He was reminded of a remark by his father that this weight loss was something due to his eating habits & it was more a correction.

As his coach I again reminded him that it was the effort, the action & the discipline which was exemplary. It made him smile. I appreciated him and asked him to go and ask  people who struggle with their weight and even knowing what to do are not able to get into a regime and correct their weight / fitness.

My Coachee smiled & shared few more examples of what he has done so far. Believe you me all his examples were accomplishment and needed appreciation and reward. He perhaps never bothered to share with anyone close for fear of it being seen as bragging. Perhaps he shared and was told it is no big deal. Perhaps he was told you have done well, but we expected more.

Well you can imagine when we met next and reviewed his actions, his energy levels were infectious. He was smiling all through. Thinking freely. He was committing more, he was stretching more. I felt great for him. That’s where a coachee should be to accomplish his goals

We can address such issues quite early in life as parents for our kids. We as parents could be hard on our teenage kids. We all are good intentioned parents, we want them to do better. As parents we must celebrate and reward the efforts of our kids. It helps build their self-esteem which transforms their thinking and their ability to work out things in mind and then execute. The key is to find them doing things that they feel good about, and give them credit.

What each of us do has value. Do not forget to give yourself credit too. Don’t be hard on yourself. Reward & Celebrate.

Why do we need executive coaches ?

When I embarked on my journey as an Executive Coach in 2009-10, I was asked a question “what do the coaches do”. My response was that coach’s help people do better and achieve more than what they are doing currently or hope to achieve with existing plan, actions & thinking.

Some other asked me why anyone would pay for a Coach. My response continues to be, even star athletes & sportsperson pay for their coaches even though they are at their peak performance. To sustain their success and continue to excel is their motto & here the coach helps them do that.

People, who engage coaches, experience a renewed power to think. They go through insightful moments with their coach, where they observe themselves on “how they think” which is quite distinct from just plain thinking.

There is some perception out there that a coach is only for when things are going wrong or there is some problem to be solved or goal to be attained. Many people consider coaching when faced with an obstacle or challenge which seems apparent. However by the time they finish coaching, they are much more firmly rooted in there Being. They truly realise few things.

The first realization a coach helps people make is to identify the areas and goals that truly matter. Most people when they approach the coach carry a dilemma or a challenge which they can’t define effectively. They tend to be either too simplistic or overly complex. Coach helps them resolve through a series of thinking and vision questions which help coachee think clearly and respond. This is the first insight a coachee has, he knew it all along somehow he did not see it the way he now understands his challenge. It is here a coachee starts to observe himself. He initiates his thinking about “how he thinks”.

The second realization is that to move forward we must stay focussed on future & solutions. Rather than asking questions “ why “ am I here or what did I do wrong to be here , they start asking themselves “ what do I do to create the outcomes that I have to & How do I do it”. Actions become the focus.

The third realization is related to our way of thinking especially people in corporate. They almost suffer from the challenge of doing root-cause of every single failure. Have you heard a manager ask his team “Why did you not take actions to….?”. We feel the need to understand reasons for failure. We don’t need to do that all the time. In same situation a Manager may ask, like a coach. “what do we do now ?” or how do we move forward to correct the situation”. We must learn to curtail our instinct to ask these unnecessary questions which evoke thoughts of failure, defence, denials and threats.

There are many more realization’s a coachee has in this transformational journey, which I will talk about in my next blog.

So let me go back to questions being asked to me and other fellow coaches. Why do people need coaches & why do we need to pay for them. Let me attempt a strong case for both these questions.

Coach helps people stretch themselves through improved thinking. The heartbeat of a coach’s work is to take the ordinary world and make it sacred for the coachee he works with.

MDs/CEOs/Promoters & very senior professionals know the areas in their life that they have to improve. Yet they don’t know where and to whom should they approach to get their resolutions. There are no training programs for these complex issues and challenges. They do not have trusted advisors or people with whom they can share. Coaches are useful who act as sounding boards apart from helping them think and align their learning’s to their pace and style in the confidential environment needed. Successful people deserve to reward themselves with a coach, as sportsperson does. This way he stays at top of the game always. To give comfort, let me share that even Jack Welch had Ram Charan. 

So , If you value exploring your own life and your own mind, if you value understanding how you work and where you get stuck, if you want to clarify what’s important to you and gain fresh perspective, and if you want a champion in your life, then you would want to engage a coach. The same as you might pay for a personal trainer if you wanted to take your fitness to the next level or pay for a holiday if you wanted relaxation. Coaching creates results in business (Revenue, sales. profits etc.), personal (relationships, social etc.) and skills ( listening , team , conflict management , time etc.).

This is generally how I answer the question now, about why professionals need to invest in themselves by investing in a coach.

Marshall Goldsmith book is apt. “What got you here, won’t get you there”. So to move ahead and higher we must invest in ourselves and in our thinking. New thinking. Coaching isn't just about fixing problems, it’s an idea, a type of conversation one has with one’s self and with the world, and your coach facilitates that conversation.

The coaching relationship can last a lifetime, and it only gets richer and deeper with time.