A tremendous start to the week this week leading a two-day Manager as Coach workshop at United World College of South East Asia. Although I have led more of these events than I can number, across schools and corporates from the UK to Hong Kong and from the Philippines to Singapore, each workshop is different and each has its own rhythm. The one common element they have is the joy of sharing the skills and tools of coaching to a new group, eager to learn and eager for personal growth.
Each workshop leaves me with things to reflect upon. Sometimes to improve my own practice, sometimes a deeper understanding that arises from the shared work. This week, I was left with thoughts about metaphor and the power of using this device in setting goals and creating the ‘Pinocchio’ moment, the moment that unfocused aspiration comes to life as a GOAL. An effective coaching goal is something that a coachee can almost touch. They feel it in their hearts as well as their minds. They can describe what achievement will look like, what people will say about it and what will be different about their lives when they get there. The skill of the coach is to steady the hand that holds the paintbrush and to help bring colours, sounds, emotions – help to bring all five senses to bear in creating a better future.
In talking to the coaches during our workshops, I try not to fall into the trap of telling too many anecdotes – and yet stories can bring explanations to life and we are all programmed to want to hear the end of a story, even the uninteresting ones. Some of the coaches who have coached me over my career have left indelible marks on my thinking and these stories come readily to mind in workshop mode.
I was telling one such story this week to a friend over coffee and our conversation helped me to understand something. I was telling him the story of the first great metaphor that I ever co-constructed with a coach. I call it ‘great’ because I recount a conversation and a picture painted nearly 20 years ago. For something to remain as vibrant and relevant and to have been used by me to help others, I think deserves the accolade ‘great’.
I was working with a tremendous coach called Pippa Basan. In my second year of my first school leadership post, I was trying to make sense of what it is to be at the top of an organisation. I was stressed, too busy, entangled in relationships with their roots so far below ground that an industrial digger would not have been enough to unearth them. Generally, I felt that I wasn’t doing a very good job and I was referencing some of that sense of self from the opinions I perceived to be held by those around me. Not an unfamiliar picture for a new leader but I didn’t know that then and it probably wouldn’t have helped me if I had!
Pippa obviously sensed my inclination towards metaphor (the force is strong in me) and she helped me construct a ‘present reality’ in the form of a glass ball, reminiscent of those tacky snow scenes that populate cheap gift shops at Christmas. As you turn the ball upside down, everything within becomes chaotic and tumultuous. In the case of the snow scene, when you right the glass ball, everything settles back into place and calm tranquility returns. Pippa helped me to understand something absolutely fundamental about leadership: an organisation never ‘settles’, the ball is in constant motion, volatility is the norm. She helped me understand that the role of a leader is to manage turbulence, not to induce a magic statis where there are no problems. For me, this was a breakthrough moment.
Once this understanding of the school had been established, Pippa asked me a killer question: “If that is the school, where are you in this picture?” The answer, of course was right in the middle of the ball. Sleeves rolled up, sweat trickling from my shiny head, being struck by every sickness, complaint, resignation, rumour, judgement, fracas, scandal. It was less management and more self defence. I saw it immediately, with shocking clarity. I was the new leader full of self doubt trying to prove myself and my worth by being as busy as I possibly could and showing my (self) projected audience that I was one of them, up to it, strong and resilient.
This wasn’t entirely a bad thing but as I reeled on the ropes of self realisation, hoping the trainer would throw in the towel, she came at me again. “Who is looking at where the ball is going?” she asked with a casual innocence that failed to disguise the cold steel. Well, sheepish answer: nobody was and it was my job to do it but I was too busy being a ‘man of the people’ to be the leader the school needed. It was fantastic, challenging, liberating coaching. I felt punched in the gut and able to fly all wrapped in together. Chastised but also incredibly relieved and hopeful.
We finished the picture by creating the goal. The goal may sound a bit cheesy but it stuck: Be the Hawk. The Hawk doesn’t live in the ball. The Hawk flies above it, looking at the road ahead, alert to rock falls or floods, planning the route where the road forks, looking from on high at the horizon and the opportunities that lie around to be grasped and brought into the ball. The Hawk, of course, needs the ability to enter the ball, to understand what happens there, to work alongside those dealing with the turbulence – but not all the time and never leaving the road ahead unguarded: or disaster may follow (Kodak, Borders, Blockbuster, Pan Am, Toys R Us et al).
And my new insight this week? In telling this story to a friend, he said to me, “ah this is the balcony and the dance floor metaphor” (Adaptive Leadership. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky). I considered this as I had never thought of them together, although to be fair, they do seem similar. Then the insight came; no, it isn’t the same, not quite. From the balcony, all you can see is the dance floor. Strategic leaders need to fly higher than this and need always to look out and beyond as well as to look down and in. This is our job.
