It is not that the newly minted leaders are not qualified to assume higher levels of responsibility in the organization. Rather, these competent leaders are faced with a steep learning curve and it is of value for these leaders to have someone else to talk with, to bounce ideas around with, and, where appropriate, to learn from. This coaching relationship is particularly valuable if the coach is someone who is not directly associated with the leader’s own work unit. The coach can be of even greater value if she has been trained to be appreciative (helping to identify strengths in the new leader), and if she has faced her own comparable learning challenges as a leader in this utility company.  Their appreciative perspective and personal experience enables coaches to empathize with the new leaders, yet also respect and support the new leaders’ own abilities to identify, diagnose and take action on the complex issues they face.

Principle Six: Feedback

In testing out new strategies and behaviors in the workplace and elsewhere in life, one learns. John Dewey proposed many years ago, in his philosophy of pragmatism and his emphasis on experiential learning, that we learn about something by engaging with it and trying to change it.  A coach can help her colleague sort out new learning from formal and informal feedback received from the colleague/client’s environment.

The leadership development and executive coaching project that Richard Wale coordinated in the Yukon Territorial Government (YTG) exemplifies the benefits inherent in the application of this principle.  I have had the opportunity to work closely with Richard Wale and his colleagues in the Yukon Territory. As Wale noted in his article, YTG had initiated a major leadership development program for its employees. A major part of this program involved the collection of information about the program participants through 360-degree feedback processes. This type of feedback can be very damaging to an employee if it is not supported by a carefully crafted organizational coaching program.  The 360-degree feedback process provides the program participants with challenging new information about their own performance. The coach who is assigned to each program participant can help their coaching colleague make sense of this feedback (relates to Principle Five: Complexity). The coach can also provide support and a “container” for the anxiety that is inevitably generated by this feedback (Principle Four), and can help their coaching colleague relate this feedback to the content of the leadership development program (Principle Two).