CCO White Papers: Recent Episodes
Paul
The Centre for Coaching in Organisations (CCO) publishes original research on coaching, leadership and change every two months - in the form of White Papers. As from June 2020 we now release podcast versions of our White Papers at the same time as paper versions. You can access our library of White Papers at www.ccorgs.com.au/thoughtleadership.
As a purchaser of coaching services – how do you decide whether someone is a good coach or not? If I move house and want a good GP, I make sure my new GP went to medical school. If I want a good lawyer, I check candidates to make sure they went to a reputable university. If I want a good architect, again I want to know they are properly qualified. The GP, the lawyer and the architect all belong to professions, and they all start their professional journey by attaining a university qualification. By contrast, coaching is not a profession and coaches are not required to go to university. Instead, there have emerged various coaching bodies, industry associations with their own systems of accreditation. Most accreditation systems are based on the evaluation of competence, an approach we will argue has serious limitations. In this paper we will review some of those limitations before offering up ideas as to what else we can do to make good hiring decisions.
How do you make the case for coaching in your organization? Many organizations feel uncomfortable investing significant sums in coaching services because the coaching relationship is private, and they don’t get to see or understand how their money is being spent. Others want to know all about what’s happening in the coaching relationship so they can assess what value is being derived – often placing inappropriate demands on the coach. Some regard coaching as a perk of the job and budget for it much as they do annual bonuses. In this paper we explore the quest for ROI through five different systemic lenses in service of provoking new ways of thinking about value and change.
In our April 2021 White Paper, we challenged the way that many team coaches describe their work as ‘systemic’ without explaining what they mean. This is a problem because there are multiple ways of thinking about systems. Many of these perspectives are quite different, leading to contradictory opinions as to what team coaches should be doing. Without burrowing back into the core ideas and theories behind each way of coaching, it is hard to decide which make sense, and which don’t. In this paper we encourage practitioners to start building their own team coaching models and we encourage purchasers of team coaching services to define their perspectives on team coaching, so enabling them to connect with team coaches who are most likely to add value to their organisations. We start by reminding you of the five ways of thinking systemically as they apply to team coaching. Then we pull apart existing team coaching models to show how we can get to the heart of different models and approaches. Finally, we refer to the 3Ps, a simple framework for building your own team coaching model.
In August 2020 we published a White Paper called ‘Learning to Listen’. In that paper we considered the business case for listening and how we can all help organisations become better at listening. In the Paper we described the ‘Listening Model’, four ways to listen. The purpose of the Model is to enable people to listen more purposefully and therefore more effectively in any given scenario. In this Paper we explore a fifth way of listening. The fifth way of listening is based on theories of change that acknowledge the social nature of meaning making, including the process through which we all decide who we are and who we want to be.
The term ‘systemic coaching’ is now becoming increasingly prevalent
in the team coaching literature, almost inevitably given that writers
in the broader team development literature have long acknowledged
that factors outside the team influence events taking place in the
team. Less explicit in the team coaching literature is a more nuanced
consideration of what it means to be a systemic team coach. Many
use the term ‘systemic’ simply to mean ‘holistic’ - taking a balcony
view - but use of the term ‘systemic’ also implies some kind of
theoretical perspective, a perspective not often made explicit. There
exist hundreds of different systems theories, many of them
incompatible and there exists a train of thought that says to think
systemically is not always helpful, indeed that it may limit our
understanding of the working of small groups.
More and more organizations are using group coaching. Some organizations
began using group coaching because they perceived it to be a more costeffective
way of making coaching available to a broader population. Increasingly
however, organizations are learning that there is more to group coaching than
saving money. Group coaching is a distinct methodology that has both
advantages (beyond saving money) and disadvantages compared to individual
coaching.
Whether it be as leaders, change professionals or coaches, most of us tend to gravitate toward a ‘telling’ mode. As a leader or change professional I know I am in a ‘telling’ mode when I find myself convinced that my way is the right way, and that anyone who disagrees is ‘resistant to change’. As a coach I know I am in a ‘telling’ mode when I find myself convinced I know the answer. When we find ourselves in these states – we are engaged in ‘monologue’. If we want to lead change more successfully, more often, we need to get better at engaging in ‘dialogue’.
Virtual teams are not new, but many leaders don’t have experience of leading in this way. The sudden emergence of COVID means that many leaders are having to learn quickly. Some teams shifted overnight from working together physically to working together only through applications such as Zoom and Teams. Available research on virtual teams, and the evidence of our own eyes, suggests that many leaders must adapt the way they work if they are to be successful. Where we see leaders failing to adapt, we see teams become disengaged, stressed and ineffective. In this White Paper Podcast we will look at what the literature says, connect that to our own observations, and suggest ways in which coaches can help leaders working virtually for the first time.
Though most people think they are good at listening, the evidence suggests otherwise. In this White Paper we consider the business case for listening and how we can help organisations become better at listening.
The leadership development industry is worth more than $350 billion, yet only 13% of organisations think this money is well spent. These sums may deliver much more value if clients were to reflect on the task of leadership development through a 'systemic' lens. In this podcast we review some of the latest research into leadership training and consider the results from a systemic perspective.