Guiding People Toward Change: 360 with Coaching
Written by Christine Cavanaugh-Simmons, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Emergent Solutions, Inc. 
Conventional Wisdom says...To produce optimal results from a feedback experience we believe there has to be synergy between a world class 360 and skilled coaching. Most clients see the value of combining 360 feedback and having someone guide the participant through understanding their results. Unfortunately, most are still using a 360 as a developmental intervention to receive feedback on a one time or yearly event approach. The following article seeks to expand our understanding of how using the right 360 can have a much greater effect as the "gateway" to profound and lasting change in a leader.
Using an effective 360 as a Gateway to Long Term Coaching...
We have learned over the years from running an executive coaching practice that the use of a 360 before and at the end of a long term coaching engagement is a sound practice that provides numerous efficiencies within the engagement's steps and stages.
From the standpoint of providing a clear picture of growth, having a before and after 360 insures a data based approach to seeing if the proverbial needle has been moved as a result of the coaching. Other coaching process efficiencies are gained by avoiding the time consuming and often costly individual interviewing by the coach or internal HR professionals. Another efficiency is the ease of contracting on the more intangible aspects of executive coaching such as having the client buy into an underpinning model of leadership which is most efficacious in today's global leadership demands. One other efficiency is ensuring the network of stakeholders in the development of a leader are all on the same page as to what "positive change" is -- which can get quite challenging to ensure is transparent in a highly confidential relationship such as executive coaching. There is a rather large "but" to add and that "but" is the 360 has to have "the right stuff" to get to these critical conversations.
So, in our experience, not just any 360 will hold the weight of such an important "bookend" role. Some of the reasons for this are:
- A gateway 360 has to allow for the critical conversations a coach needs to have at the outset of an engagement to set goals that are expansive enough to result in significant, dare I even say, transformative change in the leader. I have rarely seen this in home grown 360's which tend to be designed to gather feedback on a collection of competencies.
- Many 360's will point out behavioral markers for clients but they tend to not be tied to an underpinning model that provides a foundation for what the process of leadership IS…in other words many 360's never allow a coach to "organically" open the conversation about the path of leadership and the super ordinate role a leader embraces. I have found that these kinds of 360's allow the leader to project their own values priority upon what they see in their data and rarely shift their world view after getting feedback from such an instrument.
- Very few 360's will provide insight into the aspects of leadership which extend beyond old models of leadership. Most tools tend to focus on one individual having a vision and then organizing resources and people to drive through to achievement of the associated results vs. having a range of options for how one leads which can include convening teams of people and ensuring the conditions for others to succeed are in place through managing AND taking the lead. Often, underneath many 360's is a "one right way" model which is limiting and often an extension of a very old school Western point of view.
- Many 360's leave out the critical aspects of effective global leadership: self awareness, curiosity, perseverance and commitment. Without the emotional intelligence foundation in a 360 it can be easy for the client to miss the subtleties of leading across cultures and geographic distances.
- Very few 360's provide doors to walk through which allow conversations about the emotions, motives, values and beliefs which underpin the behaviors reflected in a 360.
Why the ELS?...
From the collective experience of our coaches, we at Emergent Solutions believe The Booth Company's Executive Leadership Survey (ELS) allows an executive coach to not only gain the efficiencies noted above but also:
- Have the depth and breadth to lay a foundation for setting far reaching leadership coaching goals.
- Easily allow for a conversation about the client's mental models and belief systems about leadership.
- Set the stage for understanding what it means to balance certain archetypes of leading which may be entirely new to the client.
- Encompass what research indicates the necessary skills and abilities to be a global leader.
- Open the door from the outset to explore emotions and motives as they appear in the items and dimensions of the ELS such as inspiration, enthusiasm, presence, perseverance, self awareness and self management.
A short case...
We were asked to coach a very senior executive in a group that is responsible for acquiring companies for a large technology firm. This individual had received feedback throughout his 25 year career about his displays of anger and tendencies to apply practices which were seen as micromanagement. This individual was considered a top performer but was asked to enter into a coaching arrangement due to the complaints received about the outbursts and controlling behaviors which seemed to be escalating as the business environment tightened.
We began the process with the Booth ELS, making sure before taking the survey the client fully understood what the instrument was designed to do and how we would use the results. These outcomes were linked to the coaching as well as the current goals he was responsible for achieving. He was well aware of the expectations for how the data would be used and what he would be required to do after the data was collected to share the steps he would be taking.
The open ended comments were quite direct and numerous which he immediately indicated were what he had heard for many years. The coach first re-tested the assumptions agreed on in the initial session, #1: we would only focus on behaviors that were a "drag" on the results he was responsible for and, #2: seek to leverage that which we would identify as his talents from the positive feedback. The initial question to him was "Had anyone ever connected the reactions people had to him to the metrics/outcomes that mattered most to him or unrealized potential in his group?" He said this had not ever been clear to him and he tended to put this feedback he had gotten in the past into the box called "complaints", not to be reflected upon but to be seen more as the issues others had and not tied to the results he had historically always produced.
Using the structure of the report and linking the feedback on his outbursts of anger and micromanagement to the results, the coach was able to establish that addressing issues of self control would be a worthwhile goal. He could now see the connection between the negative behaviors and the credibility he had as well as the degree of commitment he was not getting from his entire team.
Most 360 coaching sessions would stop here considering the most important "first step of awareness" taken. Given that this was part of a larger coaching engagement the coach was also able to talk about the client's mental model of what his role as a leader was, where that came from, how it had been reinforced by the past bosses and past accomplishments and how this may be too narrow a mind set to achieve all he wanted to achieve. By referencing the Task Cycle® theory and the breakdown of managing vs. leading dimensions the client was able to think more broadly about what leadership influence might be available to him. The ELS, facilitated by review of the Achieving Mastery report, also allowed the coach to explore how he had developed only one model of leading that might not tap into the full potential of his team.
The full conversation set the ground work for approaching some of the behavioral concerns he had heard complaints about but the coach was able to quickly contextualize them into larger questions about leadership mental models, full potential of his team, the possibilities open to him if he were able to envision a different "leaders self". Being able to approach the conversation easily through the review of the report, the questions of values, motives, personal history and envisioning a "whole leader" were all teed up for subsequent sessions and potentially bringing in other more personality based assessments which he was initially uninterested in exploring.
In Summary...
The right tool matters a great deal when desiring the efficiencies and complex subtleties needed for successful longer coaching engagements. The ELS, in our assessment, is the very best out there to accomplish the full spectrum of benefits of using a 360 for the before and after "bookends" because of its ability to provide the opportunity to bridge from behaviors to emotions as well as contextualize the behavioral data into a much larger conversation that supports the development arc of long term leadership coaching.
Christine Cavanaugh-Simmons
Since 2004, Ms. Cavanaugh-Simmons has worked with Emergent Solutions' partners and team members to grow a self funded, fast growing consulting firm with a unique business model. Emergent Solutions has a presence in Palo Alto, Washington D.C. and London.
Through her leadership, a network of up to 65+ top-flight executive coaches and consultants has been created worldwide with professionals on the ground on the West and East Coast, West and East Canada, in the UK and Western Europe, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland). Many of these coaches have been actively using The Booth Co. tools for over 10 years. She has been instrumental in developing our branded approach to coaching - Strategic Action Coaching, which blends leadership effectiveness with strategic capability. The core of this network has been working together since 1999 and is well known for considerable experience as a collaborative "brain trust" for the clients served.
