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Coaching The Whole PersonThe Secret Of The Three-Legged StoolBy Laurie Ann Stetzer, LSI Certified Coach |
I am a firm believer that even though I am a business leadership coach, effective coaching involves working with the whole person, not just the business leader that they present to be at work. How does this work? I would like to talk about the three components that affect a person’s leadership behavior that must be addressed while coaching good leaders to become great leaders.
My goal as a business coach is to ask insightful questions so that the coachee, the person who is closest to the problem, may discern the most appropriate answer for their specific situation and role. I take the time to learn about my coachees in order to understand his or her role as a leader and listen to some of the concerns that are keeping them up at night. In my coaching practice, I have the advantage of teaching a three-day leadership course. We focus on core leadership skills and I get to listen to and observe the behavior and speech patterns of the leaders under normal conditions and under stress. During the course there is a short period of time that includes a stressful exercise with time limits and consequences.
After the course, I coach several of the leaders over a period of a year. We work on developing specific leadership skills based on their results from a 360-degree feedback process, as well as several other personality profile instruments. By the time we have spent three days together, reviewed their feedback and their personality profile, and created specific development plans together, I have a good start on beginning to understand how this coachee behaves and specifically which leadership behaviors they would like to develop. This is where the real work begins.
The Three-Legged Stool
The three-legged stool is a concept that I learned from a colleague many years ago. I feel it applies when understanding a person, their behaviors, and what will encourage them to make changes in their life. Every person’s life is made up of three parts, to which I compare to the legs of a three-legged stool. These legs represent their professional life, personal life, and spiritual life.
LEG ONE: The Personal Leg
Each of my coaching conversations begins with: “How are you and how is your family?” I always start here so I can listen to what the coachee is willing to share about their family, their significant other, their pets, their hobbies, and what is most important to them. I want to learn about how they spend their time outside of their job. I begin to get to know not only what they do, but also what they value most in life. I begin to understand their “why” when it comes to who they work for and why they work. I also begin to understand them as a person and not just a client.
I am sure you have heard the saying “what happens in your professional life will affect your personal life and what happens in your personal life usually affects your professional life.” Many of us have experienced a co-worker going through an illness, the death of a loved one, or family difficulty. This can take a toll on their work life. There are also times when transitions happen at work, indirectly affecting how you feel when you get home and interact with your loved ones.
By understanding a coachee’s personal life, I am able to make personal analogies that show them they can apply the same principles to making a work change that they have already applied to other changes they have made in their personal life.
For example, I was coaching a young CFO, who was new to his company, on how to become more confident in his presentations to Senior Executives and the board. Through getting to know him personally, he shared with me that he loves to run and was training for a half marathon. I asked him, “How do you go about training for that long of a run?” He replied, “The only way to do it is to get out there, run and work at it as much as you can until you know you can run that many miles confidently without hurting yourself.”
I then asked him, “How can you compare your training process to developing your confidence in presenting to the board?” He thought about the question and replied, “Well I guess I can look for opportunities to present as much as I can in front of groups until I feel more confident in front of an audience of people that I don’t know that well.” I asked him how he might go about doing that and he came up with a few ideas consisting of joining toastmasters, speaking at town hall meetings at work, and looking for opportunities to speak in his personal life. His ideas made perfect sense to him when he compared them to training for a long run.
LEG TWO: The Professional Leg
Before addressing work challenges with a person I am training, I ask the coachee, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you just won 10 million dollars, how do you feel today?” People always take a moment to think before they give me a number. Then I follow up with, “Tell me why you chose that number and what you can do to get it closer to a 10.” This conversation usually reveals what is really going on at work, what is bothering them, and how they are working their way through the political landscape. It also shows me their organizational agility skills.
I once coached a young woman who was recently promoted to the Senior Director level and was transitioning to a new international role. I asked her the 1-10 question and she replied with a 4. She is a very positive, intelligent enthusiastic woman who would usually respond with an 8 or 9. Therefore, her answer to this question made me believe something must be causing that low of a score. She then told me that as soon as she was promoted, her boss who she knew very well was also just promoted, leaving her with a new boss with whom she did not have a previous relationship. In the first meeting with the entire department, her new boss made two very sarcastic jokes about her promotion in front of the group. She felt embarrassed, humiliated and angry. She shared that this experience made her question if she should even take the new position and relocate her entire family to India.
I knew that she had worked with her former boss for several years and had developed a deep trust with her. She was not comfortable with her new boss and was not sure how to approach the next conversation with him. I asked her how long she had worked with her former boss to develop the relationship she had today, for which she told me 8 years. I then asked her how she went about developing a relationship with her old boss and how she would approach her if she had made the comments that her new boss had made to her. Knowing that she trusted her old boss she was very clear how she would approach her in this situation. I then asked her how she could tweak that approach to create a plan on how to approach her new boss.
She created a plan and I role-played the conversation with her in order to prepare her for the conversation. Using her skills in relationship building that she had learned with her old boss she worked through her anger and fear to handle her new boss in this difficult situation.
LEG THREE: The Spiritual Leg
I do not ever claim to be a personal coach or a life coach. I am strictly a business leadership coach. However, when coaching a leader, you cannot ignore the third leg of the stool. When I refer to the spiritual leg, I am referring to whatever your definition is of “spiritual life” may be. It could be your personal meditation practice, your yoga practice, your organized religion, or the study and practice of other spiritual beliefs. We all have a spiritual side and how we care for ourselves internally is very important to our wellness as a leader.
The way I usually introduce the concept of the three-legged stool is to ask the question, “If your life was represented by a three-legged stool with one leg being your professional life, one being your personal life and the third leg being your spiritual life, would you be able to stand on your stool?” One client I was coaching quickly answered, “No way could I stand on that stool.” This led to a conversation about how he was working 14-16-hour days, was not making time for his personal life, and was feeling that his inner spiritual life did not exist.
This led to me asking what he felt like he was neglecting in his personal and spiritual lives. When he recognized these things, he was able to create strategies in order to make time for his personal life and fulfill himself in his spiritual life. He wanted to “balance his stool” so that he could have time with friends, dating, and his own spiritual practices. After 8 months of working together, we had a coaching call where he proudly reported that he could confidently stand on his stool. He had learned to delegate more and gotten his work hours under control, made time to meet friends, had a new girlfriend, and returned to his personal spiritual practice.
Coaching is an art that is perfected through using a strong methodology, practicing active listening, and asking the right questions to your client. It is a journey that you take with someone as you get to know their life, their challenges, and their dreams. I love the sense of accomplishment that my clients get when they have learned a new skill, stood up to a challenge, or even conquered a fear. The relationships I have developed with my coachees are purposeful and rewarding. That is why I believe coaching the whole person is a must in developing new leaders for the future.
My goal as a business coach is to ask insightful questions so that the coachee, the person who is closest to the problem, may discern the most appropriate answer for their specific situation and role. I take the time to learn about my coachees in order to understand his or her role as a leader and listen to some of the concerns that are keeping them up at night. In my coaching practice, I have the advantage of teaching a three-day leadership course. We focus on core leadership skills and I get to listen to and observe the behavior and speech patterns of the leaders under normal conditions and under stress. During the course there is a short period of time that includes a stressful exercise with time limits and consequences.
After the course, I coach several of the leaders over a period of a year. We work on developing specific leadership skills based on their results from a 360-degree feedback process, as well as several other personality profile instruments. By the time we have spent three days together, reviewed their feedback and their personality profile, and created specific development plans together, I have a good start on beginning to understand how this coachee behaves and specifically which leadership behaviors they would like to develop. This is where the real work begins.
The Three-Legged Stool
The three-legged stool is a concept that I learned from a colleague many years ago. I feel it applies when understanding a person, their behaviors, and what will encourage them to make changes in their life. Every person’s life is made up of three parts, to which I compare to the legs of a three-legged stool. These legs represent their professional life, personal life, and spiritual life.
LEG ONE: The Personal Leg
Each of my coaching conversations begins with: “How are you and how is your family?” I always start here so I can listen to what the coachee is willing to share about their family, their significant other, their pets, their hobbies, and what is most important to them. I want to learn about how they spend their time outside of their job. I begin to get to know not only what they do, but also what they value most in life. I begin to understand their “why” when it comes to who they work for and why they work. I also begin to understand them as a person and not just a client.
I am sure you have heard the saying “what happens in your professional life will affect your personal life and what happens in your personal life usually affects your professional life.” Many of us have experienced a co-worker going through an illness, the death of a loved one, or family difficulty. This can take a toll on their work life. There are also times when transitions happen at work, indirectly affecting how you feel when you get home and interact with your loved ones.
By understanding a coachee’s personal life, I am able to make personal analogies that show them they can apply the same principles to making a work change that they have already applied to other changes they have made in their personal life.
For example, I was coaching a young CFO, who was new to his company, on how to become more confident in his presentations to Senior Executives and the board. Through getting to know him personally, he shared with me that he loves to run and was training for a half marathon. I asked him, “How do you go about training for that long of a run?” He replied, “The only way to do it is to get out there, run and work at it as much as you can until you know you can run that many miles confidently without hurting yourself.”
I then asked him, “How can you compare your training process to developing your confidence in presenting to the board?” He thought about the question and replied, “Well I guess I can look for opportunities to present as much as I can in front of groups until I feel more confident in front of an audience of people that I don’t know that well.” I asked him how he might go about doing that and he came up with a few ideas consisting of joining toastmasters, speaking at town hall meetings at work, and looking for opportunities to speak in his personal life. His ideas made perfect sense to him when he compared them to training for a long run.
LEG TWO: The Professional Leg
Before addressing work challenges with a person I am training, I ask the coachee, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you just won 10 million dollars, how do you feel today?” People always take a moment to think before they give me a number. Then I follow up with, “Tell me why you chose that number and what you can do to get it closer to a 10.” This conversation usually reveals what is really going on at work, what is bothering them, and how they are working their way through the political landscape. It also shows me their organizational agility skills.
I once coached a young woman who was recently promoted to the Senior Director level and was transitioning to a new international role. I asked her the 1-10 question and she replied with a 4. She is a very positive, intelligent enthusiastic woman who would usually respond with an 8 or 9. Therefore, her answer to this question made me believe something must be causing that low of a score. She then told me that as soon as she was promoted, her boss who she knew very well was also just promoted, leaving her with a new boss with whom she did not have a previous relationship. In the first meeting with the entire department, her new boss made two very sarcastic jokes about her promotion in front of the group. She felt embarrassed, humiliated and angry. She shared that this experience made her question if she should even take the new position and relocate her entire family to India.
I knew that she had worked with her former boss for several years and had developed a deep trust with her. She was not comfortable with her new boss and was not sure how to approach the next conversation with him. I asked her how long she had worked with her former boss to develop the relationship she had today, for which she told me 8 years. I then asked her how she went about developing a relationship with her old boss and how she would approach her if she had made the comments that her new boss had made to her. Knowing that she trusted her old boss she was very clear how she would approach her in this situation. I then asked her how she could tweak that approach to create a plan on how to approach her new boss.
She created a plan and I role-played the conversation with her in order to prepare her for the conversation. Using her skills in relationship building that she had learned with her old boss she worked through her anger and fear to handle her new boss in this difficult situation.
LEG THREE: The Spiritual Leg
I do not ever claim to be a personal coach or a life coach. I am strictly a business leadership coach. However, when coaching a leader, you cannot ignore the third leg of the stool. When I refer to the spiritual leg, I am referring to whatever your definition is of “spiritual life” may be. It could be your personal meditation practice, your yoga practice, your organized religion, or the study and practice of other spiritual beliefs. We all have a spiritual side and how we care for ourselves internally is very important to our wellness as a leader.
The way I usually introduce the concept of the three-legged stool is to ask the question, “If your life was represented by a three-legged stool with one leg being your professional life, one being your personal life and the third leg being your spiritual life, would you be able to stand on your stool?” One client I was coaching quickly answered, “No way could I stand on that stool.” This led to a conversation about how he was working 14-16-hour days, was not making time for his personal life, and was feeling that his inner spiritual life did not exist.
This led to me asking what he felt like he was neglecting in his personal and spiritual lives. When he recognized these things, he was able to create strategies in order to make time for his personal life and fulfill himself in his spiritual life. He wanted to “balance his stool” so that he could have time with friends, dating, and his own spiritual practices. After 8 months of working together, we had a coaching call where he proudly reported that he could confidently stand on his stool. He had learned to delegate more and gotten his work hours under control, made time to meet friends, had a new girlfriend, and returned to his personal spiritual practice.
Coaching is an art that is perfected through using a strong methodology, practicing active listening, and asking the right questions to your client. It is a journey that you take with someone as you get to know their life, their challenges, and their dreams. I love the sense of accomplishment that my clients get when they have learned a new skill, stood up to a challenge, or even conquered a fear. The relationships I have developed with my coachees are purposeful and rewarding. That is why I believe coaching the whole person is a must in developing new leaders for the future.
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Laurie Ann Stetzer, is a certified Leadership Systems Coach and the Managing Partner of Loric Consulting in Atlanta GA. Laurie Ann coaches leaders at all levels from new managers to the C Suite in the US and Europe.
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