Three Minute Wisdom Knowledge is not enough. True leadership is informed by wisdom. The ideas presented here are intended to arouse your curiosity, provoke your thinking and encourage insightful action to help you achieve the things that matter.
Three Levels of Coaching: Skills, Capacities and Fulfillment
When asked to describe the value of coaching, I sometimes answer by describing three different levels of coaching: skills, capacities and fulfillment. Each level gives greater benefit. Each also requires a higher degree of skill by the coach and courage by the leader being coached.
At the level of skills, a leader works on specific techniques to make improvements in a particular area. For example, imagine a fictional leader who has been unable to build a cohesive management team. Interviews with team members indicate that she lacks interpersonal skills: the leader talks too much about her own ideas, controls agendas and conversations, and has trouble accepting ideas from others. This is destroying innovation, morale and productivity on her team.
Does this imaginary leader sound familiar? And no, I have not been eavesdropping in your office! This situation is common with high-achieving executives everywhere. For our example, let’s say this leader recognizes the situation and wants to become a better listener.
At the skills level, the coaching will focus on teaching new behaviors. The person is expected to be able to do something new and different. A coach can teach the leader techniques like active listening and paraphrasing. On a good day, she will be able to demonstrate these new skills: she will stop interrupting, lean forward to show interest, maintain appropriate eye contact, restate her understanding of the person’s ideas and ask follow up questions.
But the sticking power of these new skills will vary greatly. On a stressful day with deadlines looming, she will likely revert to old habits, increasing the cynicism of her staff. Focusing on skills can bring temporary relief and make minor improvements in behavior, but without more, it will not create lasting change.
At the level of capacities, people begin to see things in a new way. They can view their goals from a wider context and recognize the larger impact their actions have in achieving or hindering their goals. Stated another way, when a person is able to step back and view the underlying assumptions that drive their behavior, they automatically increase their capacity for better in-the-moment actions. New behaviors become natural, not forced, and the sticking power increases.
Let’s imagine that our fictional leader is working at the level of building new capacities. She has begun to understand the underlying assumptions that cause her controlling behavior: an unwillingness to trust the competence or diligence of others. Her insights lead her to realize that her behavior stems from past occasions when she was let down by broken promises and vowed to never let it happen again.
With this new way of seeing her world, she can begin to try small tests of change to see where her assumptions are valid and where they are not. She is now operating from a greater capacity to learn and act effectively. She will now make in-the-moment decisions on how to listen from this higher vantage point, not from a memorized crib sheet on communication tips.
At the level of fulfillment, a person experiences coaching as a way to reach their aspirations at a deeper level. What is behind their desire to build a more cohesive team? Of course a cohesive team will be more productive, but so what? To what end is this team producing? When a leader can answer that question, she begins to speak and act from a place that is truly rewarding for her. She also becomes the type of leader that others want to follow.
What could our imaginary leader learn if she had the courage to work from the level of fulfillment? How would she be different? Perhaps she will realize that trusting and valuing others is a worthy aim in and of itself. She may recognize that trust is one of her core values and that her controlling behavior was a misdirected attempt to protect against betrayal. And she may begin to see that the people around her also want to trust and be trusted.
You can see why a leader working at the level of fulfillment achieves far greater results. This leader is primed to make lasting changes tied to deeply held beliefs and values. She has tapped into her core where the life and vibrancy of leadership reside. People don’t respond with fervor to a leader using skills, techniques, or viewpoints. But they will walk through fire for one who is living authentically from the heart of their convictions.
Each level operates within a different domain. The level of skill can be seen as the domain of doing, capacities as the domain of seeing, and fulfillment as the domain of living and being. As you read this article, reflect for a moment on which level you operate from most of the day.
How often do you perceive your leadership as a way of getting things done? How often as a way of learning and seeing things in a new way? How often do you embody your leadership as the vehicle through which you bring fulfillment to yourself and others?
Leaders who are willing to function at the level of fulfillment find deep and lasting satisfaction in their work. As they progress through the inner work of leadership, they begin transforming their team to function at this level as well.
Now that makes building a cohesive team worthwhile.
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