Coaching for the Technical Professional: Don’t Go it Alone

Tech pro’s process data in a particular way but the structure of coaching is a universal foundation on which to build a bridge for effective teamwork between technical and non-technical thinkers

 

What Is Coaching?

Taking a journalistic view in asking questions helps get to the core of an issue.

You might engage a coach to help you address personal, professional, and business goals. Whether you’re working with an external coach, or providing coaching yourself to a team member, coaches take a similar approach: helping the client work through options and alternatives to address a situation, and then become the accountability partner for the plan moving forward. If you are feeling a little confused, think about it this way: Neither legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden or New York Yankees manager Joe Torre took a free throw or swung a bat, but they were able to guide their players and teams to greater results. Their ultimate goal, and that of any coach, is to help to the point that those being coached can process situations on their own and make reasoned and reasonable decisions.

If you decide to wade into the internet and start learning more about coaching, you will find every flavor and stripe of coaching—performance coaching, accountability coaching, executive coaching, life coaching, career coaching, business coaching—each with its own perspective. Not all of them will be for you, based on your needs, interests, goals, and temperament. Nevertheless, regardless of the kind of coaching, while the coach is an active partner in the process, the coach does not really do the hard work. The person who is being coached is responsible for advancing the process and achieving the outcomes.

(A word about language: In the context of coaching, the reference to a “client” is to the person receiving coaching as compared to a traditional view of a client as being the company or agency hiring you for a project.)

When I think about my personal outlook on coaching, as a coach and when I am being coached, there are a number of elements that rise to the top of the list in prominence:

Goal setting.

Coaching is a goal-focused (or solution-focused) approach, so the ability to elicit clear, well-defined, and emotionally engaging goals from a client is one of the most important skills for a coach to possess. The goal-setting process (the what, the how, and the speed of implementation) are all individual to the person being coached, and require that person’s buy-in and commitment, so the real work of goal-setting is done not by the coach, but by the client.

Looking.

The coaching process starts with looking and examining the person’s perspective about a current challenge, dilemma or opportunity, not by doing something immediately or fixing it right away. This is the act of holding up the situation for reflection and studying it from all sides. This could be in relation to performance or challenges around communications. As a coach, I might ask “How is this affecting you individually and the organization as a whole?” Or “What is the best possible outcome?” and “What are some solutions you haven’t yet tried?”

Listening.

I spend most of my time as a coach listening to my clients – actively listening. Active listening is not the same as hearing; it’s being invested and involved in the conversation even if your mouth is not moving. Active listening is the ability to listen for both what is and isn’t being said, noticing body language and facial expressions, changes in tone of voice, and even shifts of energy. it’s also about listening for the small stuff, the big stuff, and all the stuff in between.

Empathizing.

Empathy is not about feeling sorry for clients. Empathy is, in a very crude way, “sitting in the shit” with clients and acknowledging the feelings they are experiencing. Whether as the coach or client, we all recognize that life isn’t always a bowl of cherries and it can sometimes feel like all you are getting is the pits. Being willing to sit with clients as they work through a tough situation (perhaps losing a contract they expected to win, the loss of a key team member, or a project taking a bad turn) and not trying to fix their mood or minimize the situation is important in supporting clients to greater resiliency and resourcefulness.

Questioning.

Earlier in this book, I discussed how to use a journalistic view to ask questions to get to the core of an issue—who, what, where, when, why, and how—and that is applicable in coaching as well. In coaching, I ask powerful questions that encourage clients to go deeper, and that invite clarity, action, and discovery. For example, I might ask a client who isn’t getting the most effort out of a collaboration questions like: “What assumptions are you making about your team member?” or “How might you be contributing to this situation?” or “What approaches have worked in the past?” As the coach, you are asking the question, not answering it or offering an opinion or solution.

Giving feedback.

Feedback is often viewed through the lens of assessing performance. That feedback could be of a manager to a team member, a client to a contractor, or any other relationship. In the context of coaching, the feedback takes on a different flavor. The feedback we are talking about is reflecting the comments clients have made (think about it as a coach holding up a mirror) and acknowledging what has been shared. A typical example of this could be a coach starting a sentence with, “So what I’m hearing is . . . Is that accurate?” or “First off, congratulations on . . . ” That lets clients know they are being heard.

Intuiting.

Intuition can be a funny thing. Gavin de Becker is widely considered the leading expert on the protection of public figures and his work on the prediction and prevention of violence has earned him three Presidential appointments. He is also the best-selling author of The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us from Violence. As a security expert, de Becker cautions that most of us are not good about listening to our own intuition. We assume the best and ignore the risks. From a coaching perspective, this can take the form of listening to the various parts of the conversation, listening for what is left unsaid, and piecing together a bigger picture. While clients may not explicitly say “I have a value around hard work and a strong work ethic,” coaches may hear the description and the conversation and say “it sounds to me like you may not be taking time to recharge your batteries and do something just for yourself. What do you think about that?”

Checking.

The idea of checking can take a number of forms, and in my work as a coach, I often use this concept to check in with clients to make sure we are still on target or ensure I understand the situation as explained. This could be asking for examples of how the situation presents itself or for clarification, i.e., “When you use the word ‘integrity’, what does that mean to you?”

Is this the complete list? No, but by gaining a little understanding about what coaching is all about, you may be able to use some of these skills to develop a deeper relationship team, your clients and others in your life.

Coaching is highly personal, so I would not recommend you jump right in and start working with the first person you find. Most coaches, as part of an exploratory conversation, will actually provide some coaching so you can get a sense if there is a good fit. In addition to finding a good fit from a personality perspective, it is important to have a sense of what you are struggling to overcome (i.e., leadership, performance, management, communications) and ask potential coaches about their experience dealing with those issues as well as their understanding of your industry or organizational type.

 


Michael Riegel is a coach, speaker, trainer, author, and a technical professional who has built and led project teams to deliver large-scale projects and programs. He advocates for enhancing leadership and management skills with technical professionals.

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