S5 E4: Exploring Workplace Coaching
Podcast April 9, 2024
Links & Notes
Transcript:
Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions, simplifying HR for people who love HR. From AIM HR Solutions on TruStory FM, I’m Pete Wright.
What do you know about coaching? If you’ve never taken part in a coaching relationship, you might just be carrying around some assumptions based more on myth than reality, and today we’re going to help you see the light. It’s an often misunderstood practice that can help high potential employees mature in your organization and season pros through big career transitions. And to help me better understand the real power of coaching, I’m sitting down with Jen Moff, our VP of Learning and Development, and Scott Loomer, Director of HR Services at AIM. So lace up, let’s get in the game. Jen, Scott, welcome to the show. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
Jen Moff:
Thank you, Pete.
Scott Loomer:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Pete Wright:
We’re going to start with the basics. What is coaching? Scott, why don’t you kick us off? You’re a first timer.
Scott Loomer:
Yeah. Coaching is working with your client and helping them to get to a place that they aren’t right now and they want to be. It can be that simple. It can be career growth, it can be personal growth, it can be whatever they want.
Pete Wright:
Then I guess we have to address why coaching is, as we introduced, often misunderstood.
Jen Moff:
Scott, I feel like we’ve talked about this a little bit. He and I love to just kind of jam on the topic in general, because we both enjoy it so much. People I think see a lot of words out in the marketplace as it relates to business. There’s strategy and tactics, and those get misconstrued too. With coaching, sometimes it can be considered things that it’s not. I’ve had clients refer to it as their therapy. It is not therapy. I’m going to repeat that. Can I get anybody else to second that? It’s not therapy?
Scott Loomer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
But I think that is a fair myth to bust, right? That when you sit down with a coach, you’re either sitting down to dive deep into your inner psyche, or you’re sitting down with someone who is, what, a qualified therapist? What are the things you need to get over? But that’s not entirely, that’s not true. And so, how do you decide when a coaching relationship is right for you and who the right coach is for you?
Scott Loomer:
I mean, oftentimes what we’ll do is with a client after the first session, we’ll say, “Look, this is a get-to-know-each-other session, and we have to feel comfortable with each other.” And it’ll tell the client, if for whatever reason, my style, who I am, it just doesn’t work for you. That’s fine. We’ll find you another coach. I don’t think it happens that often, but the client needs to know that they have that opportunity, because they have to feel comfortable with the coach, with the person they’re working with. Otherwise, the sessions probably won’t be as impactful as they could be.
Jen Moff:
They’re very intimate in many ways, because as the person receiving the coaching, you have to take some risks and be vulnerable to say what I need help with. That means you have to be aware to some degree of what it is that you want and what’s not happening for you, and vulnerability is about risk taking. And if you don’t feel comfortable to take a risk with somebody that’s your coach, then they’re not going to be able to help you, you’re not going to be able to receive the help to come up with a plan to move you forward.
Pete Wright:
Let’s talk just briefly about qualifications for coaching. How do I know when I’m ready to transcend and become a coach?
Jen Moff:
I had somebody ask me that the other day.
Pete Wright:
It’s like my final evolution.
Jen Moff:
Yes, we’ve risen above-
Pete Wright:
What are you looking for when you’re talking about qualifications in a coach that you might be working with?
Scott Loomer:
Well, there are a number of certifications out there. Let’s be clear. It’s not a licensed profession, but there are certifications and there are a number of good coaching schools out there. And in my opinion, I think it is very helpful to go through and spend the time, and get certification working with other coaches that have done it for quite a while. There’s a lot to learn from that. Example is, when I want to get into coaching, I thought, wow, this is going to be cool. I’m going to fix people. I’m going to go in there and just help them become the best that they can be. Wow, what a great opportunity, and I’m going to have all the solutions to their problems. And the first time I said that, they said, “Stop. That’s not how it works. You’ll help them, you’ll guide them, you’ll work together, but you don’t provide the answers. The client gets the answers. They provide their own answers.”
Pete Wright:
Okay, this gets to a thing that I think is another myth to bust, that you’re finding a coach who is somehow the person who you want to be, who has accomplished the successes that you have in your field, and they can then help you do it in your own career.
Jen Moff:
Sometimes that’s looked at that way. I mean, there’s a lot of different approaches and in the last five, 10 years, the coaching industry has definitely grown by leaps and bounds. People learn something and they think, “Oh, I can become a coach now and help other people,” just like Scott was saying. And there’s more to it than just having gone through something and oh, now you embody this thing, so other people want to embody the thing that you embody too. I want to work with them. There is value in working with the Sherpa, so to speak, the person that can take you up the mountain, that’s walked up the mountain too, versus somebody who has a lot of formal education on coaching and best practices, but doesn’t do the work, they haven’t received coaching. I think that’s also an important piece at times, for the person you work with to have been receiving coaching at different times, whether it was to support them in their coaching work or not, because you as a coach can empathize more when you’ve walked that road as the receiver too.
Pete Wright:
Well, the best teachers are always the most eager to be taught, right? I mean, that’s a perfect axiom for finding a great coach. I think. I want to make sure that people walk away from this understanding that you can be a great coach for someone else and not have to have worked even in the field that they’re working with.
Jen Moff:
Yes, totally true.
Pete Wright:
That’s really important and a useful lesson when finding someone, because, and check me when I start lying, in many cases, the coaching relationship is not about helping you succeed in your specific career, but helping you get over your own internal sort of blocks to figuring out your own path.
Scott Loomer:
Yeah, exactly. I found it when you aren’t necessarily an expert in the field that your client is in, it’s actually better for you, because you don’t go in with any preconceived notions or assumptions. “Well, I know what you’re going through. I know I’ve been there, done that.” No, you need to be able to ask the powerful questions. And if you don’t understand the field that well, it makes it that much easier.
Jen Moff:
Coaching is, Scott and I talk about this too, the ability to listen really well and ask great questions. Really great coaches are very curious, and that goes back to the first question, or one of the first questions you asked, Pete, is what coaching isn’t. It’s not giving advice. It’s not telling you what to do. It’s not consultation, which is giving advice, telling you what to do. Using my expert experience to take you all along this same road that I have gone on. Oh, you need to learn how to work in Excel to do X, Y, and Z. Hire an Excel consultant that can maybe do it for you or do it with you. That’s not what coaching is for.
Pete Wright:
That’s not coaching, and that almost sounds punitive, right? Oh, your Excel game isn’t great. You need an Excel coach now. And I think that’s an interesting angle. How can an HR pro working with teams best use coaching? My sense is, not as punishment.
Jen Moff:
Bingo.
Scott Loomer:
Definitely, definitely not. That’ll kill a coaching field in a matter of hours if people think that it’s used as punishment. It’s definitely not that. Oftentimes when we have a new client, they may not understand, they may have been given to us by their employer, and they won’t understand what is this coaching? And they’re a little tentative. And hopefully once you to them what it’s all about, then they start to open up and understand it, and it becomes a good experience for both client and definitely for the coach.
Jen Moff:
Yeah. Like Scott said, there isn’t a governing body for the coaching industry, so even these places that do provide certifications, there’s not a existing list of like, okay, in order to certify someone, they have to be able to do this, this, and this. They have to put in this many hours on this, that and the other. That’s why, if somebody was interested in getting into the field, I preface it by saying it’s great. There’s plenty of coaches that do do it. You get a lot out of it and learning how to ask questions, the best practices, but if you’re looking for a certification to add for credentialing purposes, it’s not going to have the same weight that other certification programs have. So when thinking about how to ask these questions, you can take courses, and read books, and learn all sorts of different tips and tricks, and that’s an important piece of our continuing ed as coaches. Like Scott said, always being willing to grow. That’s for the coach too.
Pete Wright:
Why did you guys decide that coaching was in your path professionally? When did you realize you wanted to be a coach, Scott?
Scott Loomer:
Wow. It started with getting into the HR career, because I like working with people, so it started there. And then, as I heard a little bit more about coaches experienced some working in our organization, I found out how impactful their process could be with people, how they could really help people grow, and to me that was exciting. When you have a client, you’ve got to be 100% engaged with that client. You are there for that person, come hell or high water. You are there for them, and they need to know that and they need to feel that, and that it gives me goosebumps just saying that right now. It really does. It’s exciting.
Jen Moff:
For me, I never intentionally did it, so I came about it in a completely different way than Scott. I was building my brand and doing a lot of thought leadership on certain topics that were important to me, and trying to grow into owning this identity as an entrepreneur at one point in my life. And I learned from a lot of people that one good practice is if somebody asks you if you can do something, say yes and figure it out. And somebody approached me and said, “So do you offer coaching?”
And I said, “Yes, yes, I do.” And that’s how I got my first client. I didn’t know what I was doing in terms of the business side of things, but I really felt confident that I could help this person. The areas that I was focusing on at the time was really about wellness, and self-care, and women’s empowerment, and those are things that are still near and dear to my heart, and tend to be indirectly the things that I tend to work on in coaching relationships.
Like Scott was saying, we do tend to have certain industries that we might have experience with, but sometimes it’s better to not work in industries that you’re familiar with. I find that each coach on our team does have a certain style that works best for certain audiences. And so, for me, that original client and the clients that I’ve had since then, both at AIM and outside of AIM, have followed a similar pattern and those kind of things. Women who are burned out, who are ready for something to change because they’ve gotten themselves backed into a corner, and so it’s about boundary setting. It’s about rethinking how you use your resources of time, energy, and money. And usually, like Scott said, somebody will come to you for one thing, but then you’re actually helping them with something else, that shifts the needle in that way that they needed, but you don’t work on it directly.
Pete Wright:
Let’s turn the table a little bit. How do I know if I am a good candidate for coaching, and what might you look at me and say, “No, you’re not. You’re not coachable,” or, “Pete, I can transform your life.” What makes a good partner?
Scott Loomer:
I mean, a good partner has to be able to step away from their ego. To me, that’s where it really has hampered clients in the past. If they really can’t be transparent about what’s going on in them inside their heads, inside their hearts, that makes it difficult to coach. I think at some level everyone is coachable, but certainly some are more coachable than others based on those things that I just mentioned.
Jen Moff:
Yeah, that defensiveness that the ego can sometimes bring for self-preservation, it’s part of the human condition. There’s no judgment from us by that. I want to be very clear. We’ve all been there. It’s tough to do this work. If you’ve received coaching before, that’s usually a good sign that you can receive coaching. If you are in enough of a pain point where you’re like, “You know what? I’ve never tried this before, but everything I’ve done isn’t working. I don’t know, but I’m willing to try.” That’s also encouraging for coaches like Scott and I. Also, just if you can get them to tell you stories about other areas of their life where they’ve exhibited having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, that behavior in one area usually translates to this area hopefully, to tap into a little behavioral-based interviewing kind of so to speak.
Pete Wright:
Sure, sure. I love that you get to that point where I’ve tried everything else and I’ve sort of given up, right? I’m coming to you with open hands and open heart. I don’t know what to do next and I’m willing to listen. Feels like that’s the definition of getting out of one’s own way. So let’s talk then about how we might use coaching in HR in a proactive, positive way. Give me some use cases for great coaching inside.
Scott Loomer:
Sure. When I first started coaching, it was within a company, within my HR department, and what we were doing was developing internal coaches to work with what we called high potential employees. And so, it became sort of an honor to be given a coach, and that was intentional. We developed it that way how we wanted people to feel. Honestly, everybody could use a coach at some point in time. I mean, come on, who doesn’t have some personal professional issue within their lives?
So yeah, that’s what we’re there for. It doesn’t mean you’re broken if you get a coach. That was the other thing we had to make sure people understood, and the high potentials that I worked with really embraced it. We developed great relationships. People I haven’t talked to in years, I still reach out to once in a while, see how they’re doing, so it became very helpful. And you don’t have to have internal coaches. I mean, that’s why we as AIM provide coaches to smaller businesses that just don’t have the luxury of having a full-time coach on their staff. We can be there and we can help them as well.
Pete Wright:
I like this, the perspectives that you had sent before we started talking, right? The three perspectives of coaching. We have the three of them, development, performance and career. When you talk about pairing coaches with high performing individuals, how are we using these three perspectives for coaching, or how should HR pros understand these three perspectives for coaching and when they might be most appropriate in determining who’s ready and right for coaching?
Jen Moff:
Oh, that’s a great question. So we probably should start with unpacking those three a little bit more.
Scott Loomer:
Yes.
Jen Moff:
Career is something that HR does more than any other individual within the organization, and that’s also done by third party vendors as well, like people that are career coaches. And that can look different, whether it’s an internal or an external, but primarily it is focused on the person’s career. What do they want for themselves? What’s their lofty goal? What is the next step in that goal? How do you get them there? Whether that’s a lateral move, a promotion, a different job somewhere else. That obviously would happen more from an external coach that some individual would seek out, but internally it would be used more. How do we get you up where you want to be in a way that works for you and works for the company? Finding that win-win, so to speak.
Scott Loomer:
It’s all those things. When we did it, it was pretty much if you were on a high performance track, you were going to get a coach. And so, it was sort of accepted. It was kind of baked into your development plan. HR wrote the development plans and part number three was, you’re going to get a coach, and we went from there and it worked. I think it was very helpful and very useful.
Jen Moff:
Yeah. The performance piece, that’s what Scott’s not talking about, that was not part of his program here. Performance type coaching is based off of current performance and maybe it’s not where we want it to be, self-identified or other identified. And that’s where I think sometimes coaching gets used incorrectly. It’s used as a disciplinary tool, it’s used as kind of an ultimatum. It’s not self-identified and you’re kind of forced into it. It’s punitive. That’s not successful.
Pete Wright:
Right. When coaching shows up as a bullet on a performance plan, that suddenly gives coaching maybe the wrong reputation.
Scott Loomer:
A lot of it depends on what employees have seen happen in the company. Hey, Joe, just got a coach and then six weeks later Joe gets fired, so next time they want to give you a coach, run away.
Pete Wright:
That’s a great point.
Scott Loomer:
Run away screaming. I think it’s more what have they seen happen. So if you use coaches in that way, you’re going to have a hard time being successful using coaches for what we just discussed, improving performance, helping them with their career growth. You’ve got to be very, very careful in HR how you use a coaching tool.
Jen Moff:
If you came to me and I was a supervisor that needed some coaching or something, if you positioned it to me as that opportunity to make me feel special, like, hey, even if it was a specific type like performance, but if it’s positioned as a positive thing, is that enough that it would be helpful?
Scott Loomer:
It might be, but it might not be based on what I just said, because the client in an organization like that will talk to other people and say, “Hey, I just got a coach.”
And some people say, “Really? Okay, good luck with that one.” Or just the opposite, “How good for you, how exciting. Wow, only the best get coaches.”
It’s the actions that happen within a company, I think, more than the words. You need the words, you need to explain to them, yeah, this is a good thing. We value you, we want to see you successful, and we think this is the best method in order to get you to that next level, so we’re bringing in a coach, so please see it that way. And if you do that 99% of the time, yeah, I think that will work.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think that’s really a lovely way to put it too, because you’re making coaching in an organization proactive rather than reactive. And that seems to be the message, get ahead of it.
Scott Loomer:
Yeah, it’s a good way of putting that.
Jen Moff:
And the development is the one that Scott spoke so beautifully about before. That’s where we’re developing people to reach their next level, because we them as high performers, peak performers, high potential. There’s an opportunity there and we want to keep investing in you. So yeah, that’s the one that I think we see the most within AIM for clients that come to us.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I think that leads to a great question to help us sort of wrap up, which is let’s say next Monday, 8:00 A.M. day one, we don’t have a coaching program. We’re not sure exactly what a coaching program needs to look like. How do I go about building my first coaching program?
Jen Moff:
Well, I think you have to back up a little bit from that question and decide is it the best use of my time, energy, resources to build an internal one? Depending on the size of your organization, it might not be, and that’s not a good thing, not a bad thing, it’s just an honest assessment of where you’re at. And things can certainly change. If you determine that it is the best course of action, that’s a whole different can of worms than hiring a company externally. And it might be, you know what? We want to build our own, but we don’t know where to start. So still it might be in your best interest to hire a company externally, so you can glean information from that interaction and that relationship. It could be we want to put a job posting up and hire a coach as a full-time employee, or we put a coach on retainer and put it as part of the benefits package.
Scott Loomer:
One of the things we haven’t talked about, Pete, is confidentiality from the point of view of the coach. So sometimes that can be an issue if all your coaches are internal. Like, okay, I’m going to bear my soul to this coach, and I know he has a good relationship with my boss and my boss’s boss. Therefore, am I really going to feel comfortable? Whereas when it’s an external, sometimes it feels just safer. Sometimes companies will bring in a consultant for whatever reason, and just the fact that they’re an expert in this field, even though maybe they’ve had the same ideas already, it’s going to work better. Same thing can occur with coaching. Sometimes bringing an external coach in, depending on the situation, I think is sometimes more helpful.
Jen Moff:
Point you made about the confidentiality, so glad you brought that up. What we were saying before about there’s not a governing body for this industry. In the therapeutic sector there is, and so they do have ethical agreements that they have to commit to. While we don’t have that, part of our service agreements do follow the ethics based off of the International Coaching Federation, which is kind of similar to what therapeutic agreements have, that what you say during your time with a coach stays with a coach, unless you disclose that you are at risk of harming yourself or someone else. In that case, we will be required to disclose, but otherwise we really want to make sure that what’s said with us stays with us here at AIM.
Pete Wright:
Well, and in a normal sort of service agreement, hiring an inside coach, when you have somebody who you bring in as an employee, is there a norm for ever creating a confidentiality relationship for internal coaches too? If I were building this internally from the ground up, would I publicize that the relationship is confidential?
Scott Loomer:
Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, we did that. We made it very clear to our clients like, look, this will be confidential. I know we all work together in the same building, whatever, but these conversations have to be confidential. And we would put it, we would sign it. Either the coach would sign it, so to give them every level of confidence that we possibly could. It’s critical. It needs to be a safe zone for the client, otherwise it’s not going to work as well as it should.
Jen Moff:
You are so good, Scott, when you wrap up a relationship with a client, because part of the request that comes in is like, “Hey, we’ve got this going on with this person. We want to provide some coaching for them,” and the company wants to know that their investment is paying off. How do they know that there’s value and stuff happening if we’re not allowed to talk about it? What do you tend to talk about when you recap the relationship for a company sponsor, Scott?
Scott Loomer:
The first thing I do is when I speak to the sponsor is explain to them that, understand this is confidential. I am not going to share with you the conversations that I had with your employee first off. What I will then say afterwards when we meet afterwards, or even during the sessions is that, “Hey, just so you know, I’ve been meeting on a regular basis. He or she is being very forward in their conversations and we seem to making some good progress.” And then I’ll ask them, “Did you see any progress? What can you give me as far as feedback?” But really, I don’t get much deeper than that.
Pete Wright:
It’s fascinating. It is a fascinating relationship and I hope by sort of dismantling the myth of practice expertise requirements in a coach, and confidentiality, and certifications, all of these things go into creating a reputation that is unearned for coaching. And if you’re listening to this, and I hope that you were able to walk away from this episode thinking, “Hey, let’s explore coaching. Let’s explore how we can create partnerships for our high performing teams, and our new employees who were ready to onboard quickly. And let’s create an ecosystem of safety and progress in our coaching experience. And maybe we can make some headway we never imagined we could.” Scott, Jen, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Where shall I send people to learn more about AIM’s own coaching investments and programs?
Jen Moff:
That’s a great question, Pete. If you go to aimhrsolutions.com, we have a page dedicated to our coaching services. Definitely take a look there.
Pete Wright:
I will make sure to put the direct link to that page in the show notes, so whatever podcast app you’re listening to this episode on, just swipe up in your show notes and you will see exactly where to go to learn more, and connect with our experts in coaching and development. This is really great. Thank you both for hanging out. And as always, you can find all of the notes and the links in the transcript at aimhrsolutions.com. You can listen to the show on the website, or Apple Podcasts, or YouTube Music, or Spotify. Anywhere great podcasts are served. On behalf of Scott Loomer and Jen Moff, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you next week right here on Human Solutions, simplifying HR for people who love HR.