COACHING - DEALING WITH OBSTACLES

 OBSTACLE IN COACHING   

Your objective when coaching someone is to get them to change. That objective can sometimes be achieved by means of constructive criticism alone, provided it is sufficiently specific. But what if they remain unwilling or unable to change?

A common reaction is to increase the pressure, raise the voice, argue, threaten, in other words, attempt to achieve change by force. Sometimes it works. But usually it results in making people even more resistant.

What it fails to do is take account of the obstacle. If your first attempt didn't achieve the desired change, it is unlikely that you will succeed by repeating the same method, however loudly. What you need is an entirely new method. Why not stop forcing, and, instead, analyse the obstacle?

Obstacle analysis gets better results with far less effort. Once the obstacle has been understood it is not normally difficult to overcome it. Change will occur faster and without friction. Obstacle analysis is therefore a much subtler and more economical method of achieving change than force. It is based on listening, not telling. So here is a suggested plan for coaching:

Step 1 - Give constructive criticism. Motivate them to change by giving praise and criticism.

Step 2 - Analyse the obstacle.  If, having accepted the criticism, they show signs of being unwilling or unable to change, switch to listening/counselling, and find out exactly what is preventing them from changing.

Step 3 - Overcome the obstacle. If you have done a good job of obstacle analysis, the way to overcome it is usually not hard to find.

Example

Step 1 - criticise constructively

Mgr: "I'm impressed with your attention to detail. This is a very thorough report."
Sub: "Thanks. I enjoyed doing it."
Mgr: "There is one thing that worries me about it."
Sub: "What’s that?"
Mgr: "There’s no summary. So I had to keep going back over the report."
Sub: "Oh, I see. Sorry about that." (Frowns.)

Step 2 - analyse the obstacle

Mgr: (Watching attentively and using empathy) "Something's bothering you."

Sub: "I'm not sure about summaries."

Mgr: (Open question) "What worries you about them?"

Sub: "Don't people find it patronising if you spell out the obvious?"

Mgr: (Reflecting back the underlying assumption) "You seem to be making an assumption there. You're assuming that if it's obvious to you it must be obvious to others."

Sub: "Yes, I suppose I am."

Step 3 - overcome the obstacle

Mgr: (Correcting the false assumption) "How sound is that assumption? After all, they have probably got other things on their mind, and in any case they're probably not as familiar with the subject as you are."

Sub: "Good point. I never thought of it that way. OK, I'll put summaries in from now on."

Mgr: "Now I’m satisfied."