HOW ARE THESE ENGAGEMENTS DIFFERENT?

Coaching young leaders in a startup environment is different in at least three ways: the coach’s effective presence, how the process works, and what we actually do to help the leader effect change.

The coach’s effective presence

Jung called the total personality, known and unknown, the self. He identified two aspects: the persona or public self, and the shadow, the private self. Tolbert and Hanafin (2006) state, “Presence represents the translation of personal appearance, manner, values, knowledge, reputation and other characteristics into interest and impact.”

Presence is use of the self with intent. Tolbert & Hanafin (2006) identify three principle categories of presence: be honorable, be an effective change agent, and be curious. Hanafin (2004) created a great construct called the Perceived Weirdness Index (2004): when working as a change agent within a system, the practitioner must be similar enough to those in the system to avoid being rejected but different enough to provoke change. The client must perceive our “weirdness” within an effective range.

The significant age difference between these clients and me is an immutable reality. Other aspects of myself tend to communicate similarity, such as my love of technology, how I dress, and my general comfort in a fast-paced, changeable environment. Further, I can make some intentional adjustments in things like my speech patterns and interaction style. Speech patterns are absorbed often unintentionally. I have favorite phrases from startups like “I’m down with that” or “go for it” that are not helpful with financial services clients.

Any coach working in this milieu needs to make intentional adaptations. For me, I typically get up quite early to write, meditate and exercise. Young startup clients often get to work midday and work into the night. l chose to shift my schedule in response. Perhaps my most intentional and challenging shift was to a more casual interaction style, less focused on goal achievement. I think of these adaptations as both necessary to be effective and also as a means to demonstrate respect.

Respect is the cornerstone of any successful engagement, but it is exponentially more important in working with younger clients. Why? Because they have had so many experiences where people who were older considered themselves better based on seniority. Their perspectives have been discounted based on their youth. This dynamic is the source of great tension between young innovators and the experienced staff they ultimately need to hire. The issue is often framed as a matter of respect.

How do we coaches demonstrate respect? It begins with a careful inventory of our beliefs and biases. We need to cultivate an open mind and a non-reactive presence. In addition to delivering respect, it can keep us from embarrassing ourselves. I remember a huge mural in one client’s entry, which I thought of as almost graffiti. Months later, when the client was moving to a new building, I sat in on a move meeting where the discussion was whether to sell the wall or pay to have it cut and moved. The artist was now internationally recognized and this work was quite valuable!

Presence requires a balance of belief in the client and belief in yourself as coach. Certainly there have been times when I wanted my perspective to prevail but the client’s needs nearly always must take precedence. It is critical to believe that the client knows something about what she wants to accomplish, what’s best for her, and what matters most.

These clients are seldom interested in my credentials or certifications. They don’t care that much about references unless they are from a contemporary or directly related to their work. What they care about is how a coach interacts with them. And while smarts, flexibility and a bit of lightheartedness help, it is presence that gets or loses the contract. Interestingly, in computers and networks, the term presence signals that a user is available and willing to communicate. Perhaps that is what we need to be demonstrating with our coaching presence.

Being in a state of non-anxious presence isn’t always easy. First exposure to the start-up environment can be a bit startling. Work with a mature company and leader is more planned and structured than with young leaders in startups. Like the technology they invent, the engagement unfolds, finding its path organically.

I have traveled my own journey from an initial stance of seeing so many things that “shouldn’t be that way” to a more relaxed assessment of what is, to a focus on those developmental aspects that I’m uniquely qualified to address. I am much less oriented to prevention than to effective response. A notable example concerns the issue of sexual harassment. In a mature company, leaders are expected to know the law, HR people present training. The Gen Y environment is significantly different with an open, even sexually charged, interaction style. Context and the views of the participants dictate whether there is a problem.