During the late 1960s, education leadership author Paul Hersey and leadership expert Ken Blanchard developed a leadership model called Situational Leadership.(1) This model’s premise is that leaders need to assess the people they are leading within the context of a situation and adjust their leadership style accordingly. It acknowledges that individuals and situations can change, and effective leaders must respond to these changes to achieve optimal results. In its own way, the same is true for coaching.
The themes and issues that people bring to coaching are varied. Many coaches have a limited understanding of the breadth of coaching, primarily because most articles and books focus on a subset of coaching issues and themes.
Further complicating matters are the coaches themselves, who often define the purpose of coaching through the prism of their profession and educational background. The fact is that coaching serves many purposes from a coachee’s perspective. In this sense, coaching is situational. That is, coaches must respond to the people they are helping according to their needs at the moment.
In general, there are four situational needs that coaches are asked to help with: 1) learning a skill, 2) strengthening or changing behavior, 3) making decisions, and 4) dealing with problem situations.(2)
LEARNING A SKILL
Coaching is historically connected to skill development and no more so than in athletics. In fact, if you ask the public to define coaching, they will most likely respond with some reference to sports. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that skills coaching in organizations emerged in force. Although skills coaching is appropriate for all levels, the skill a client needs may be specific to their position on a team or within an organization.
The coach provides a mix of information, advice, guidance, and rehearsal with feedback to keep the client focused and on track to become proficient in the targeted skill. Skills coaching is more closely aligned with teaching than with employing the Socratic inquiry process.
STRENGTHENING ATTRIBUTES AND CHANGING BEHAVIOR
When people learn a skill, it is because they want to become better at performing an activity. When people want to develop an attribute or change their behavior, they wish to improve personal qualities, such as patience or assertiveness. Attributes and behavior are interconnected. Attributes are qualities or unique characteristics that manifest themselves as specific behaviors.
Developing an attribute can be tricky because it requires changes in one’s actions and thinking. The important thing for coaches to remember is that changing one’s “outer game” is not possible without changing one’s “inner game.”
Suppose, for example, an individual wants to become more patient when dealing with others who do not meet their expectations. The coach must do two things: 1) help the person develop an accurate “word picture” of what others would see, hear, or experience if they were being more patient in the way they want to be, and 2) explore what changes in thinking or self-talk will be needed to manifest that picture through their behavior. Strengthening an attribute or changing a behavior requires a high level of motivation for one simple reason: People do not change easily or rapidly.
CONSIDERING TWO PATHS
People bring situations to coaching that require them to make tough choices. “Do I let the senior person who is stepping down and whom I’m replacing stay on?” “Should I remove someone from my leadership team who doesn’t support me but has influence with colleagues and is popular with residents?” “I have been offered an administrative leadership position that will cut down on my time in the clinic — should I take it?” These types of decisions are challenging because they have no definitive answer; they require a judgment call.
The coach has two paths to consider when helping an individual think through a major decision.
One path is to switch hats. That is, move from pure coaching to mentoring and offer advice based on your personal experience. Be cautious with this path because the other person may follow your advice without thinking through the decision. If you choose to put on your mentoring hat, offer your advice as something to consider rather than something that should be done.
The second path is to remain in your coaching role by asking questions that cause the other person to think about the decision from different perspectives. Sometimes this path is difficult because you may know what you think the decision should be, and withholding judgment and only using inciteful questioning requires discipline and skill. It is also the essence of coaching.
DEALING WITH PROBLEM SITUATIONS
People seek help with problems that arise from crises, troubles, doubts, difficulties, frustrations, and concerns. These problems are messy, have no clear-cut solutions, and often cause emotional turmoil. They are problems that stem from the trials and tribulations of professional life or occur in the ordinary course of living.
Decisions require the person to choose among alternative courses of action. In contrast, problem situations require the person to find answers to questions through considerable subjectivity, multiple variables, and incomplete information.
Coaching assumes the answers to problems are within the person. When helping people deal with problem situations, remember that it is not your role as a coach to provide answers; if it were, you would be consulting, not coaching. Consultants are in the business of giving professional or technical advice to people based on their expert knowledge and experience in a particular field. Even though coaching and consulting can complement each other, the purpose and nature of the consulting relationship differ significantly from the coaching relationship.
Your role as a coach is to remain objective, trust the coaching process, and avoid taking on the client’s problems as your own. Physicians find that following this advice is often challenging because, in general, physicians are natural “fixers.” When they see a problem, they want to find a solution; they want to correct what is wrong. This phenomenon is called the righting reflex. It is the single greatest obstacle to effective coaching.
When helping people with problems, avoid the righting reflex. Instead, remember it is your job to help them discover the answers within themselves.
SUMMARY
The issues for which people seek coaching tend to fall into four categories: 1) increasing personal competence by learning a skill, 2) changing behavior, 3) making decisions, and 4) dealing with problem situations. Each client determines the specific purpose for the coaching engagement and sets the agenda for each coaching conversation. Consequently, coaching can be considered a situational activity, and every coach must be flexible to adapt to the situational needs of the person they are helping while adhering to the fundamental nature of coaching.
References
Hersey P, Blanchard KH. Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. Upper Saddleback, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969.
Hicks RF. The Process of Highly Effective Coaching: An Evidence-based Framework (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge; 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003313069