Building Strong Coaching Partnerships

The starting point for a coaching assignment is typically (but not always) a problem or “gap” which threatens to derail the client’s career. Therefore, upon engagement, the client’s focus of attention and initial expectation are typically centred on their problems and weaknesses. There are two reasons for this. The first is that they have learned through bitter experience that their career success depends largely on overcoming “gaps” and remedying weaknesses to fit into the normative competency standards prescribed by their employer.

Secondly, like most of us, clients are conditioned throughout their lives and careers to focus on remedying their weaker area, as this is assumed to be the quickest path to success. Parents, grandparents, teachers, social leaders, managers and other agents in their development all reinforce this deficit-based mindset. It is hardly surprising then that clients obsess and fear their weaker areas and want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Coaching provides a seemingly ideal way for them to get help with these weaknesses in a confidential, reflective environment.   

Similarly, the coach’s own beliefs and associated practices are jaundiced by weakness-based beliefs and assumptions. Most are brought up in the same deficit-based way as their clients. Like their clients, they also operate in a wider society that favours bad news stories and failure over positive ones. This is fuelled by the inherently sensationalistic and negative nature of today’s mainstream media. In recent times this has been accentuated by the turmoil in world financial markets. However, even before this, when a strong bull market prevailed, problems and failure usually triumphed over opportunity and success.

To shift away from this deficit-based mindset, a coach needs to first reflect on and challenge their underlying beliefs about human growth and excellence. There is broad agreement that executive coaching is by definition facilitating improvement of a client’s performance, development and personal fulfilment. However, there is typically too little appreciation by the coach of the unique strengths, positive action routines and enabling relationships of the client which have contributed to past and current successes. Clients are rarely psychologically impaired or flawed. They are simply imbalanced in the characteristics they have been endowed with, in the same way we all are as human beings.

At Titan Talent, we have developed a strengths-focused coaching process, called the ©Strong Partnerships Model, which seeks to emphasise the centrality of strengths and successes in facilitating the client’s performance improvement and growth. Experience with a growing number of clients suggests that focusing on their strengths does indeed unlock and focus energy and effort. Individuals start seeing old problems and performance blockers in a new light – through a strengths ‘lens’. For example, in a recent assignment, we were asked to help a senior manager of a large Pharmaceuticals company overcome what was described as belligerent and overly critical behaviour in team meetings. He had undertaken several communication skills training courses without success. Upon closer analysis, it became clear that the manager’s clearest strength, and source of some of his greatest career milestones, was his critical reasoning ability. However, when the manager overplayed this strength or used it inappropriately, he was perceived as pouring cold water on co-workers’ opinions and of being obstinate in defending his points of view. We worked with the manager to help him develop positive action routines to use the strength more selectively, balancing critical reasoning with appreciative feedback, open inquiry and commitment-based influencing techniques. Toxic routines gradually dissipated and stakeholders noticed a significant change in the manager’s behaviour and results.

It is clear that personal and organisational transformation often occurs when beliefs and assumptions are brought into full awareness, constructively challenged and translated into new action repertoires. If the beliefs and assumptions are wrong, everything else that follows is flawed. I would suggest that many coaches are still straight-jacketed by a deficit-based mental frame and approach assignments with the aim of ‘fixing’ the client. They are essentially colluding with the dark side of their client’s identities and mental frames, exacerbating their fears and self-limiting beliefs. If they choose to replace this with a more strengths-focused, appreciative mindset and approach that builds upon the person’s natural strengths and talent, the client’s full potential and resourcefulness will almost certainly be unlocked.