Advice in Disguise Is No Help at All

When your Scottish company – grown from scratch and driven by an entrepreneurial culture – is absorbed into a division of a US corporate whose culture is essentially directive, something has to give. What that something is, says Robert Hutchinson, now Director of Organisational Development for Lifescan Scotland is 'cultural preconception'. In this Futures interview he shares something of his cross-cultural experience and his new-found enthusiasm for coaching.
Interview: summer 2004, Glasgow

FUTURES: Was leadership coaching always an important tool for you?

HUTCHISON: Not at all. I associated it with sporting achievement – "run faster – dig deeper – just do it" – a demanding, directive behaviour not at all conducive to quality relationship-building. Especially with high-level executives who don't take too kindly to being ordered to "do better".

FUTURES: Since then, though, you've taken a Coaching Futures diploma. What happened?

HUTCHINSON: I found I could only get so far in creating high levels of trust, openness and reciprocal support using the tools I had. My facilitation and communication was good but not enough. I saw coaching as a 'power tool' to add to my skills set.

FUTURES: What took you to Coaching Futures?

HUTCHINSON: In our company development sessions we'd find delegates leaving with a better understanding and a real desire to change. But back in the high-pressure workplace the resolve never lasted long. They needed ongoing personal help and motivation, but they came from so many different disciplines and brought such varying experiences that my training group found it hard to make sustained headway.

FUTURES: So you turned to coaching?

HUTCHINSON: Yes, but only after I worked with US consultants who used basic coaching in the their leadership development programmes. It seemed an effective tool in achieving behavioural change. It had achieved very positive audience feedback too. Later, when I started asking around, someone introduced me to Management Futures. And so, with a colleague, I attended a week-long Coaching Futures course, then on to take their university-accredited diploma.

FUTURES: Has it changed your mindset?

HUTCHINSON: Yes, what coaching can do when used as a self-development, self-awareness tool, is powerfully highlight areas of leadership weakness. It did that for me. More than that, it convinced, me that coaching was about more than personal career growth, that it could create some real opportunities for whole-organisation change.

FUTURES: What elements in coaching do you find can be expanded from the personal to the organisational?

HUTCHINSON: The basic currency of this process is the person. One person empowering another, a very human process. The key values, I find, are about listening, directive behaviour, caring, courage and playing to strengths. Listening is the obvious one: if you can't do it, no change is ever going to happen.

FUTURES: Directive behaviour?

HUTCHINSON: This hinges on the issue of 'advice in disguise'. That's when you think you're empowering a client by encouraging them to develop their own solutions. Subconsciously though, your own ideas – advice – can sneak through via the way you summarise, give feedback or brainstorm with the person. It's the easy way out for a coach. When I'm in top coaching form and not doing that, the client in any case invariably asks outright for the key advice he or she needs.

FUTURES: Caring and courage then?

HUTCHINSON: This is about really caring, not just practising professionally, about keeping your own agenda out of it. Courage is something you need cranked up to maximum, especially when coaching senior people. When you get them to the brink of their emotions, that's when all your instincts say pull back. But you mustn't.

FUTURES: And 'playing to strengths'?

HUTCHINSON: You have to know your weaknesses but not let the focus be on them. Americans in particular seem to like the characteristic Scottish strengths of directness, of not beating around the bush. I play to those. The North American culture I've encountered while working with company franchise leaders from Boston to Minneapolis, from New Jersey to Vancouver and in Silicon Valley too, is that the contrast between their 'sell yourself' business culture and our more self-depreciating style is the key barrier to overcome. Our under-claiming sense of humour gets their acceptance. They've been conditioned to feel it is dangerous to show weakness. Maybe they'd privately welcome less inhibition, more openness.

FUTURES: You say coaching can be a change agent for whole organisations. Is that really practical?

HUTCHINSON: If it's conducted right, it certainly is. Like when you reach the stage of 'coaching without thinking'. Then you get closer to the client and understanding can be immediate. That's when you find he one powerful question you need to ask. And you think "Where did that one come from?"

FUTURES: One last tip?

HUTCHINSON: There's this scene-shifting response I learnt from a sick, elderly lady. However, ill she was, when people enquired, she would say this. Now I use it when I meet and greet a client. When they break the ice by asking "How are you?" I always say "Great, really great". So often the client will admit they were about to launch into a twenty-minute litany of complaints but now they feel they can't indulge themselves. It's powerful, that. You've got the relationship into a positive place. That's when the coaching goes well.

FUTURES: Many thanks.