Collective re-thinking - New coaching approaches for the VUCA world

To survive in the VUCA world, not only the individual employees and managers have to rethink, but also the company as a whole. As individual as the world of thinking is in each company, so individual must be the respective way of re-thinking. But there are ways to support this process. Two of the most effective: Transformational Coaching and Generative Coaching. 

Preview 

Outburst of outdated thought patterns: What characterizes Transformational Coaching 

Trapped in old success patterns: Why a high-performance sales team failed to adapt to the new market conditions 

Reflect and saturate patterns: The First Steps in Transformational Coaching 

What doesn't fit, doesn't fit: Why the reflection of changed conditions almost always leads to fluctuation 

Access to expanded potential: Growing beyond one's own abilities with Generative Coaching 

Let the solution emerge: How a communications company found its creative lightness again 

 The much described VUCA world presents not only every individual with great challenges, but also every organisation. Companies must re-think as a whole, free themselves from the rules that applied in the old world and generate new rules that are more appropriate for this new world, which is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Orienting oneself towards best practice is no longer the solution but can rather mean the beginning of a decline in the future. Instead of looking back, organizations need to realign their senses, transform their thinking and adapt it to the new conditions. 

The necessary organisational change in the mindset is demanding, and above all there are no blueprints for it so far. As individual is the world of thought in each company, as individual must the respective way of re-thinking be. But there are ways to support this process. Two of the most effective come - not surprisingly - from the most individual area of continuing education there is: coaching. These are two forms of coaching that have developed in parallel and in line with changing organisational challenges: Transformational Coaching and Generative Coaching. 

In principle, any company can use these new approaches. However, the more mature the company's coaching culture, the easier it is to use and the greater its impact will be (see tutorial at the end). The coaching culture opens the space for the approaches in which they can unfold. It ensures that the paths of thought are "looser" and therefore easier to change. 

Breaking out of outdated thought patterns 

The approach of transformational coaching does not describe a fixed method, but rather a generic term that encompasses all those methods and approaches in organizational coaching that involve an individual or collective paradigm shift. Transformational coaching always begins when familiar assessments and approaches are perceived as no longer target-oriented and too cramped. Learning from and leaving behind the familiar success factors of the past is at least as important as developing something new. 

A case study from practice: The sales team of a pharmaceutical company, which had always delivered excellent figures in the past, had been increasingly losing track of its success and its sales figures were continuously declining. Their "faithful" guarantors of success did not hold-up. They were: 

·      There was a well-established product among prescribing clinicians.

·      The salespeople had recognized pharmaceutical expertise. 

·      Over the years very good and trusting relationships had grown between the prescribing clinicians and the sales representatives. 

Coaching should help to lead the team back on the road to success. The situation analysis revealed the following picture: Due to the cost pressure in the healthcare sector, the clinics had successively changed the focus of their purchasing strategy. The product with its medical effect was less and less the focus, but more and more the medium- and long-term financial benefit of its application. To put it simply: Does the use of the drug pay off for the clinic or not? An important factor for this was, for example, the length of stay of the patients in the clinic. A shorter length of stay meant a greater number of patients and thus more turnover. For the sales representatives, this meant, among other things, that their main contacts were no longer the clinic physicians, but above all the central purchasing department of the clinics or the clinic associations. 

Long valid success patterns burn deep into team memory 

Although the operating team was fully aware of the new purchasing strategies of the clinics, they were unable to adapt to the new conditions. The team members were too attached to their previous patterns of thought and behaviour, which, precisely because they had brought such great success in the past, had burned themselves not only deep into the minds of each individual, but also into the collective team memory. 

The challenge in this case was to help the team break out of old thought patterns, which is a typical focus for transformational coaching. This is usually done in four steps. The first step is to become aware of and appreciate the paths of thought that have led to success in the past. It is a matter of becoming aware which explanatory patterns, mental models, behaviours and routines are used habitually and to appreciate their (former) functionality. 

In this phase, the sales-people told their old success stories, in which they were able to score points with the clinical doctors mainly due to their great pharmaceutical expertise. They experienced these successes once again, felt once again the pride and satisfaction that their successes had triggered. The successes came alive again. Unconscious wishes for recognition were surfaced and nurtured. This also built on their inner strength and self-confidence: “If we were able to create success in the past, we can trust to find the road to success also this time.”

Recognizing the old self-conception and opening up for a new one 

Building on that kind of self-confidence the second step in transformational coaching is to rethink one's own role identification. The sales team discussed and acknowledged - also on the basis of the recapitulated success stories - the company's self-image as a member of the medical world in which it was able to create medical added value. In joint team coaching sessions, the ground was then prepared to leave this identification behind and to open up to a new, more economic one that does better justice to the new conditions. 

The new, jointly developed identification basis formed the starting point for trying out new explanatory and behavioural patterns. This is the third step in transformational coaching. For this purpose, an action learning approach was used to devise new approaches in sales, to reflect on experiences with implementation in the new environment and to exchange the first new success stories. Over time, the initial scepticism in the team turned into a kind of curious spirit of research: What works in the new world and what doesn't? 

Both by actively doing business with the customer and by engaging in a benevolent exchange with colleagues about this, most team members found their own way of interpreting their role in the new environment in a new way - in such a way that they were successful again. The fourth step in transformational coaching is to let new habits develop over time and to internalize them. What is important in this process is that everyone is given time to change and that there is open talk about successes and failures in the process of change. 

Fluctuation is a natural consequence of transformation 

But there were also several members of the sales team who, in the process of transformational coaching, realized that the new world was not the right one for them. It became clear to them that the economic self-image necessary for the new role was not one that they really wanted to develop, and they looked for alternatives. This is not unusual, but rather a typical consequence of such a transformation process. Since every person is different, it is unlikely that the new conditions in a team, department or company will suit every employee. The only question is whether the employees somehow come to terms with the inappropriate conditions or whether they are looking for new conditions that are better suited to them. The latter is ultimately always a better option, not only for employees, but also for companies. 

In another respect, transformational coaching has a positive effect on the whole organisation. Because when coached teams or departments begin to break down their habitual explanatory patterns, which are usually shaped by the organizational culture, they simultaneously create the basis for new perspectives in the company. The organization begins to think more and more "loosely". This can be extremely helpful over time to cope with the fluid conditions of the VUCA world. 

Finding access to one's own expanded potential 

The approach of Generative Coaching aims in a slightly different direction. While transformational coaching tries to expand limiting old patterns of perception and explanation as a reaction to a changed external reality, generative coaching is about consciously connecting oneself with inner states for certain challenges in which one has access to one's own expanded potential. This is similar to a top athlete who has developed a ritual for himself, in order to be able to call up 100 percent of his performance capacity at the very beginning of the competition - not only physically, but also mentally. 

Although Generative Coaching works with individuals or teams, it can still be seen as a form of organizational coaching. This is because the coachee or the coached team not only gains access to their own potential, but also always learns something about how others can be given access to their potential. Both always go hand in hand. Experience has shown that every Generative Coaching - just like every Transformational Coaching - always has an impact on the organisation as a whole that should not be underestimated, in this case on its ability to exploit its organisational potential. 

Robert Dilts and Stephen Gilligan developed the approach on the basis of their many years of experience with NLP and Erickson's hypnotherapy. According to Dilts and Gilligan, Generative Coaching more or less always starts with the fact that both the coachee and the coach have understood the challenge, but still have no idea what answers or solutions there might be for this challenge. 

The coach is also allowed to contribute content 

Out of this not-knowing, Generative Coaching sees itself as an approach that helps the coachee to find access to inner states of consciousness in which it is easier to find something new. In working with these states of consciousness, Generative Coaching places less value on the restraint of the coach with regard to content. Motto: A truly groundbreaking and innovative idea doesn't care where it came from - whether it's the coachee, the coach or the field between the two. 

A core element of any Generative Coaching is the joint establishment of the so-called COACH-State at the beginning of each session. The acronym COACH stands for Centered, Open, Aware, Connected and Holding and describes an inner state that is influenced as little as possible by our learned and accustomed beliefs. In addition to the COACH-State, Generative Coaching consciously works with another inner state, the "Performance State". We all know this state - as those moments and situations in which acting in a challenging situation is particularly good, easy and fluent, or in which we have experienced ourselves particularly creative and innovative. Generative Coaching is about creating a conscious access to this state. 

A communication professional in search of creative lightness 

Frederik Frey (name changed) was far removed from this state of creative lightness. He created his own business about a year ago. 

Previously, he was managing director of a German media agency that is part of a global agency group with almost 40,000 employees. In his new company he and his team developed communication concepts for major customers with a strong focus on new digital media. 

When Frey entered the coaching room, he immediately filled the whole room with his presence. He was used to being the focus of attention, planning next steps ahead, going into action and giving instructions. These behaviours had brought him to the top of his career and also served him well in the operational management of his new agency. At the same time, he noticed that this mode of behaviour quickly made him impatient and "somehow blocked him." 

The question about his goal of the coaching already gave concrete hints to what was blocking him. He thought first of all the problems to be solved and spoke of a general dissatisfaction which he could not specify. The challenge to break through the blocking effect was thus formulated, there were no starting points for a solution or even an approach to a solution. Frey was trapped in his mindset which was continuously looking for solving problems. An almost classic setting for Generative Coaching. 

Not conceiving the solution, but sensing it 

And "classically" one of the first steps was to establish the so-called COACH-State, in which Frey was centered, open and mindful. With some practice it was possible for him to reach this inner state through deeper and calmer breathing. Having arrived in the COACH-State, Frey's Coaching goal “materialized”. He felt in himself the longing for time and space in order to be able to let truly innovative communication concepts arise for his customers. Interesting were his words "let arise" - which were contrary to the mode-of-doing in which Frey usually acted. 

In the next step, the space of consciousness was explored, which offered particularly good conditions for the "letting arise" of truly innovative communication concepts. Frey immediately realized that he would have to "close doors behind him" to have time for himself and privacy. Music by Smetana came to his mind, and he saw himself in the vast steppe of Botswana, where he had been on holiday a few years ago in a game reserve. His breathing became powerful and even - and he plunged deeper into his memories, into his youth, where he and his best friends had come up with ideas for crazy undertakings. 

He decided to create spaces for himself and his company - in the literal and figurative sense of free spaces - in which everyone can create communication solutions as individuals and as team. At the same time his eyes suddenly lit up, he had spontaneously come up with an idea for a new communication concept - apparently out of nowhere by magic. In reality, the idea came from his hitherto untapped potential, because Frey had reached the performance state in coaching where he had access to it. 

Not every organizational challenge of our time needs new methods like Generative Coaching or Transformational Coaching. And it doesn't always have to be Design Thinking, Scrum or Kanban. In most cases, much is already achieved when clarity is created, when the important is separated from the urgent, when good prioritization is achieved, and when the right is made effective. But whenever we need to find ways into the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future, we need methods that open up creativity instead of using best practices of the past. And currently there is probably no method that can do this better than coaching in general and Generative Coaching and Transformational Coaching in particular. 

Axel Klimek 

The author: Axel Klimek, coach and organizational developer, is managing director of the Center for Sustainability Transformation and co-founder of the consulting firm MCW - Make Change Work. His core expertise lies in supporting companies in complex change and transformation processes. Contact: a.klimek@make-change-work.com www.make-change-work.com

Tutorial: Assessing the Coaching Culture

The extent of the impact of coaching measures in a company depends to a large extent on the coaching culture. The more mature it is, the looser the thought paths in the organisation are and the easier it is to change them. The degree of maturity can be assessed using the following criteria - which at the same time provide starting points for further developing the coaching culture.

Business case for coaching: There is a clear common understanding about the return on investment of coaching.

Pool of external coaches: There is also agreement as to which type of coaching can be particularly supportive for which type of challenge. Accordingly, the coaches are selected from a fixed pool in a targeted manner. In addition, the coaches in the pool always receive timely information about the strategic goals and challenges of the company.

Development of internal coaches: Coaching is not only delegated to external coaches, but managers and employees are also trained in coaching so that a coaching approach and understanding can unfold its effect in all critical decision-making processes.

Training for coaches and coached employees: Not only do internal coaches receive further training, but also potential Coachees reflect on how they can get the most out of coaching for themselves and for the organization.

Team Coaching: Coaching is used in the further development and performance improvement of management and project teams.

Agility and resilience: In the organization, the question of how to react faster, more agilely and more resiliently to external challenges is repeatedly addressed.

Coaching as part of the leadership culture: Coaching plays an important role in the definition of the leadership and cooperation culture.

Evaluation of coaching: The effect of coaching is evaluated regularly and the evaluation results - especially those concerning the identified essential drivers for an effective coaching procedure - are continuously incorporated into the development of internal coaches and managers.

Compensation Relevance: If there is a variable portion in the remuneration system, then both the use of coaching and further training for coaches have a positive effect.

Penetration in the company: Coaching is generally used in all important decisions and at all interfaces of communication and cooperation.

Strategic development: Strategy development is broken down to the required competencies on the executive and employee level, but also on the team level. Coaching is used specifically for learning these skills.

Harvesting the Learning: All coaches, both internal and external, regularly have the opportunity to reflect their perceptions and experiences about the organization and the organizational culture to the management. This feedback flows into the planning of strategy and organisational development.

Published in German in managerSeminare, June, 2019