CHAPTER
24

Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach: Amber’s Story

PEOPLE COME TO EXECUTIVE COACHING FROM MANY DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUNDS. THE USUAL PROFILE INCLUDES EDUCATION IN HELPING PROFESSIONS OR IN ORGANIZATIONAL DISCIPLINES AND EXPERIENCE in leadership development, talent management, or human resources. Less frequent is the line manager or executive who aspires to become an executive coach.

In order to illustrate the range of backgrounds that coaches come from, this chapter profiles the experience of one of those line managers who felt a calling to become a coach and found a way to make it happen in her career.¹ We hope Amber’s story helps you understand and anticipate what you may experience in becoming an exceptional executive coach.

Amber had many years of experience as a manager in a large corporation and enjoyed her career, although not always the work itself. She had known from an early point that she got more satisfaction from helping a staff member learn and grow than she did from her own technical assignments. People at work seemed to gravitate to her when they had a problem or a quandary, and she had developed a reputation as an excellent listener and idea generator. “I knew my style and interests were different from other managers,” she said, “and I had a reputation as a talent developer, but I didn’t think much about it in terms of my career.”

Over the years, these qualities and skills became integrated into her managerial style, and she had more recently embraced the mission of nurturing and supporting others in the advancement of their careers. This mission was even more pronounced outside of work in organized activities she enjoyed in her community. In those organizations she was often called upon to resolve sensitive interpersonal and leadership challenges.

Amber had heard about executive coaching at work and at times she wondered, “Am I doing coaching or is it just my need to help others?” That question sparked her to learn more about the profession of executive coaching. She became convinced that what coaches did was what she now wanted to do. Synchronicity was in her favor since she expected to be offered a package as her employer cut staff.

Amber targeted coaching as a second career and investigated various executive coach training courses. Since she didn’t have the usual background of coaches, Amber decided that she wanted an in-person class experience where she would be provided with a coaching approach to channel her natural helping style and a managerial client to gain practical experience doing actual casework. As she noted, “At that point, I was actually hoping for some type of magic formula for how to coach and keeping my fingers crossed about whether I would be good enough to use it.”

She took a deep breath and signed up for such a course. She dove into the pre-reading, including books on executive coaching, and she completed several self-assessment instruments and reflective questions. The appeal of that content was counterbalanced by doubts that became stronger as the program approached: “Can I actually do the type of coaching work described in the books? What can I bring to a client I have never met before? Who would hire me to help a client change? Am I just fooling myself?”

These doubts and anxieties are not unique to Amber. To varying degrees, they are part of every new coach’s experience. In fact, the anticipation of meeting a client can spur a new coach on to becoming serious about learning. Amber channeled her anxieties into a search for the definitive guideline for effective coaching, but she hadn’t found one when the course began.

Amber’s anxiety increased when she met her classmates on the first day of the program. They were an impressive group with many years of corporate HR or professional helping experience. There were even therapists and counselors who had graduate training and deep understanding of personality and change. They were gracious and interested in her technical background and business career, but she definitely felt less prepared than they were. She was convinced that if this group represented the norm in new coaches, she would never measure up.

However, the course included one-on-one time with a faculty member who served as Amber’s case supervisor. Meetings with her supervisor allowed Amber to share her initial fears. This was helpful in easing her concerns and reminding her that she had many practical organizational and managerial assets to bring to coaching.

In the early class sessions, Amber was surprised to discover that everyone had doubts about their ability to become an executive coach. Even the experienced HR people were worried that, stripped of the credibility of their usual roles, they would have no leverage with clients. Each student seemed to have areas of self-perceived deficiency, but all could be summed up under the heading, What makes me think I can help anyone else, let alone a manager or leader I have never met? Everyone in the class felt very insecure about providing value to a client and dealing with the complexity of sponsor agendas and organizational dynamics.

Amber was able to explore her concerns with her case supervisor. She knew from her other helping experiences that she tended to be reactive to other people’s problems. Sometimes this tendency led her to be overly helpful and to take action on another’s behalf. Given how committed she was to helping, she saw herself becoming frustrated when others didn’t act on her well-meant advice. She didn’t know how to fix these tendencies, which added to her worry. “I knew I had some natural abilities I could apply to coaching,” she observed, “but there were so many unknowns: the client, the organization, and how to conduct myself as a coach. It was intimidating!” Still, she pressed ahead and took on faith both the guidance she was receiving and the prospect of working with an actual client.

The initial client meetings were surprisingly gratifying to Amber. She was struck by how unique her client’s challenges were—a complex mix of skills, gaps, aspirations, and situational constraints, all in an organizational culture that was completely unknown to her. She lost interest in a coaching “formula” and began to see the wisdom of more genuine responses within the context of the coaching engagement. Instead of working to adhere to a predetermined path, she was able to focus her full attention on her client. Her confidence was bolstered by her keen listening skills, which led to moments when her questions made her client pause to think, or when her observations were a useful reframing of what the client was experiencing. With her supervisor’s encouragement, she found that she could draw on her business experience to ask incisive questions. Her grasp of organizational dynamics and corporate politics informed her understanding of the client’s challenges. As she noted, “I was discovering my own way of helping my client; it was me, but tailored to fit within the boundaries of the coaching relationship. I was surprised at how freeing that was.”

When new coaches begin to apply their listening and interpersonal skills in the context of a coaching process that has structure and goals, they begin to feel they are making progress in learning to coach. It confirms both that they can be an agent of change with their clients and that there is no one right way to do it. This can be a liberating moment even though there is still much more to learn. Doubts begin to ease and are replaced by the challenge of becoming more intentional about choices with clients.

Amber and her supervisor examined those choices and expanded her range of options: “I was feeling more confident in the role, but I knew I still had a lot to learn—about my own blind spots, such as my tendency to help too much, about how to handle sponsors and get to a development plan that everyone could support. I had to accept that my learning would have some dips.”

Amber also realized that the ups and downs of her confidence level contained clues to her Personal Model. Reflecting on these fluctuations would enable her to articulate her approach to coaching. When she saw the client getting excited about insights or behavioral progress, she got confirmation that what she was doing was effective. On the other hand, when she felt herself trying too hard, feeling unsure, or saying things she regretted, she would analyze why those moments had happened to target what she needed to do differently. While the task of articulating her Personal Model still felt quite daunting, she was beginning to accumulate insights that would inform it.

To Amber’s credit, she was open with her supervisor about ineffective tendencies. As she had anticipated, she did talk too much when nervous or unsure of what to do next with the client. More challenging was not going into savior mode in response to requests for help: Her habit was to solve the problem. “I was always the go-to person at work, but I was learning that it wouldn’t fly in a coaching relationship,” she observed. Since her client would have been happy to have her solve his problems, Amber faced significant pressure in avoiding that entrenched behavior in herself.

She and her supervisor had rich conversations about that struggle. Amber’s first challenge was to change her attitude about jumping in to help by accepting that it conveyed a lack of confidence in the client’s own abilities and reduced his commitment to what he would do differently. As Amber incorporated these ideas, she grew less focused on solving the client’s problems. Instead, she tried using inquiry to facilitate the client’s ideas and keep the lines of responsibility clear. She also found that when she ignored the implied demand to provide solutions, she had more time to think creatively about the client, making associations between the specific problem they were discussing and others, helping him voice his doubts and fears, exploring payoffs and risks in making a change, and reframing specific challenges as opportunities to make progress on his development goals. She was surprised to find that this way of thinking turned out to be more exciting than trying to satisfy his need for help.

It also allowed her to discover that her intuition about the client’s mental state, and why, was usually on target. Encouraged by this feedback, Amber took more risks in making observations about how he might be feeling, how she experienced the client, and what the client did in their sessions that reminded her of his development needs. She hadn’t known that she could use her self so actively, and it gave her a stronger presence with her client. She realized that other characteristics—her warmth and optimism particularly—worked in concert with her intuition, providing a nurturing environment in which the client was safe to consider Amber’s sometimes pointed observations.

She and her supervisor labeled this her tough but caring style, and it became the organizing principle for her approach to coaching. Having an awareness of it was the beginning of articulating her own Personal Model of coaching, and it buoyed her confidence more than any formula ever could have. According to Amber, “I remember starting to feel that, if I could be my best self, then effective coaching would follow. Suddenly it started to feel possible.”

Looking back on this process, reflection, discussion, and experience combined to create insights. In the early stages, as Amber became more accepting of herself as a coach, she became aware of experiences, values, and abilities that she could bring into the role. Some of these qualities have been mentioned, but one that emerged later was a strong emphasis on understanding the client’s motivation. She had taken a psychology course in college that emphasized the motivational roots of all behavior, and she had applied this model in her own life. She found that she was naturally inclined to use a motivational viewpoint to better understand her client: What did he really want? What were the hidden forces shaping his motivation, or lack of it? How might she explore those variables with him? By putting a motivational lens in her model, she felt more empowered to use it in her questions.

In addition, a message from her childhood kept coming back to her: Never forget how hard it is to try something new. Her father had been particularly patient with her when she was learning a new sport or skill. When she later asked him about it, he explained that he had wanted her to experience both the challenge and the excitement of learning, and that meant he had to back off and let her succeed and fail at her own pace. Recalling those past interactions helped her shift her usual push for results to a pull toward learning. Both curiosity about motivation and an appreciation of how to empower learning became aspects of her Personal Model.

Shaping a Personal Model also includes insights about fears, gaps, and ineffective tendencies. Amber believed that there was more to be gained in fostering discovery than providing answers, but at first this didn’t ease the pressure she felt when she sidestepped the client’s clear request for more direct help. In the past, when she heard “What should I do?” from a colleague, it would have brought out all of her problem-solving resources. Now as a coach, that question, whether overt or implied, made her hesitate and look for a different direction. Sometimes the client’s distress or dissatisfaction made her doubt she could provide help in a new way. As a result, she wasn’t always able to do what she intended. However, these situations were opportunities for reflection and her courage and versatility increased over time.

Amber also found that she needed to build more skills in how to involve sponsors appropriately in her client’s coaching. She needed to find ways of listening to sponsors neutrally so that she could more fully understand the client’s context and put aside her inclination to protect or advocate for her client. “It surprised me how defensive I felt when my client’s boss told me she hadn’t seen much change. But I took a deep breath and asked more questions.”

Her client also challenged her in unexpected ways. As is usual in executive coaching, she and the client had been meeting in a conference room near the client’s office. Unexpectedly before the next session, he sent Amber an e-mail requesting that they meet in a local coffee shop. While Amber’s tendency was to accommodate this request, her intuition told her that she should be careful. She had learned that clients sometimes test boundaries, drawing coaches into topics or relationships that may not be appropriate for executive development.

When they did meet in the coffee shop, Amber wasn’t surprised that the client requested her help with his interviewing skills because another firm was recruiting him. Her preparation allowed her to reflect on how she felt about this request and how not to simply comply. She had decidedly mixed feelings about what he was requesting and she was able to voice her concerns clearly but empathetically. She told him that she appreciated his confidence but was not comfortable taking a position on his interest in another job. At the same time, she brought their focus back to making the most of his learning opportunities in his current job. “That was a very tough moment for me,” Amber recalled. “I thought, ‘What’s the harm in helping him with interview skills?’ But I couldn’t do it. My worst fears flashed before my eyes: Would he storm out of the coffee shop if I refused? Would he reject me as a coach? I guess I chose the lesser of the two evils in keeping our focus where it was.” Amber felt proud about how she had handled the situation, and her supervisor summed it up: She hadn’t let her drive to help overwhelm the importance of keeping coaching boundaries clear.

Shaping a Personal Model of coaching serves many functions. In Amber’s situation, it served as a quality-control mechanism on the boundary challenge that her client made. She had accumulated insights about use of self, acquired the learning that she needed about coaching practices and choices, and considered the type of coaching she aspired to deliver. Although her model had not yet been written, the process of creating it had given her important guidelines for what she needed to do in handling a difficult situation. “I was so glad I didn’t get off track,” Amber said. “In the end, I think I had a stronger relationship with my client because I stayed the course. He respected my decision and maybe it gave him an anchor to have a more reasoned response to being recruited.”

A Personal Model has many other practical implications. It can serve as a source for statements about what distinguishes Amber as a coach. “I bring a wealth of real-world organizational experience to inform the discovery process I use with clients. I also bring a willingness to provide direct feedback in a safe relationship that supports tangible progress on development.” Sponsors and clients expect coaches to be articulate about their approaches, but it is also important to present approaches in distinctive and engaging ways. There are also times when awareness of her model may help Amber avoid engagements that do not suit her—for example, if the time frame is too short for her or the opportunities for coach-client relationship building are limited.

After coaching for a period of time, Amber understood that these public dimensions of her model would not exist without a lot of private work. Her Personal Model is much deeper and more faceted than clients or sponsors need to hear, but the sample of it that she shares with them is tied directly to those variegated roots. As she has observed, “Personal Models reflect a lot of influences and contain many elements, and I guess I will always be honing mine. But even as a work-in-progress it has increased both my personal self-awareness and my outward confidence as a coach.”

Amber also appreciated the broader philosophical benefit of creating her Personal Model. Every client can be thought of as having his or her own implicit model for leadership or change. Having shaped her own coaching model, Amber is more attuned to exploring the components of her clients’ mental models of how they see the world.

Amber did eventually draft her model: her approach to executive coaching, her practice plan for getting more coaching work, and her development plan. She had mixed feelings about formally writing it down because to do so felt too final, whereas she, and the model itself, remained works in progress. The discipline of actually having to describe her model to others, however, was beneficial in pushing her to take the articulation of her model, and therefore her coaching, to the next level.

Amber found that there were similarities between her model and those of other students in the class. For example, many people drew upon their experiences of leadership in the real world of organizations, their core facilitation skills, and the newfound facility in using their own reactions to the client as part of the helping relationship.

However, there were important differences among models, too. Some were grounded in particular theories of adult change, such as cognitive, behavioral, or emotional intelligence. Some emphasized a structured process; others were more emergent. Some took an activist role in facilitating the client/sponsor relationship. Of course, the internal and external coaches had very different plans to get more coaching work.

In the end, having a tangible Personal Model was both an appropriate benchmark for Amber’s learning experience and a foundation for launching her new career as an executive coach: “I guess we all expect clients to beat a path to our door, but that isn’t realistic. Coaching is a competitive field, and I won’t stand out if I don’t know what I stand for. My Personal Model helps me meet prospective clients, size up engagements, work with sponsors, and most importantly, be a change agent in my own way in my role as coach.”

All executive coaches have unique ways of approaching the challenge of helping clients change. For the reasons reviewed in this chapter, it is valuable to make these conscious and intentional choices. However, that is not an easy task and Amber is a case in point.

Hopefully this book has fostered your thinking about your own unique blend of knowledge, experience, and intuition as they might apply to becoming an exceptional executive coach. The book has been designed to reflect the process that Amber and others have gone through as they create Personal Models of coaching. Its content should allow you to begin creating your own Personal Model and start or expand your coaching practice.

Ultimately, your model will always be a work-in-progress. It is iterative, based on formal learning, coaching experiences, case supervision, and your own career interests. Nonetheless, in the spirit of every journey beginning with a few steps, we hope that the principles we have provided here start you toward your Personal Model, so that you can become the exceptional coach you are capable of being.