Maybe They’re Not Crazy:  Maybe It Is YOU!

©2007 Annetta Wilson Media Training and Success Coaching. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Annetta Wilson is a business strategist specializing in media training and presentation skills coaching. A talent coach for CNN, she has also coached for Walt Disney World. She makes it easier for high-profile individuals and teams to communicate more powerfully. Annetta is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years experience in the broadcast industry, a Certified Trainer and a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst.  

Visit her Web site at www.YourCoachForSuccess.com  

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**  Adam Associate has just started working with Paula Partner.  Adam is a good lawyer with strong skills, but things just aren’t gelling in his working relationship with Paula.  Last week, Adam put together a memo illustrating some strategic decisions to be made for a client.  The memo reviewed the possibilities and included lots of data and details on each option.  When he gave Paula the memo with its attachments, she looked at it and snapped, “Adam, I need a bottom line.  What’s the game plan here?”  Adam began to review the options so he could give Paula the background necessary to understand his final recommendation, but he could tell she was getting more and more impatient.  Finally he cut his comments short and told her what he thought the client should do.  Paula thanked him, and after Adam left she sat down to do her own quick review of the situation.  A few days later, Adam was surprised to find out that she’d made a recommendation to the client that was a good approach but didn’t make use of the hard work he’d done.  Both Adam and Paula are frustrated, and Adam is wondering whether he’s in line for a negative (and unfair?) review since Paula clearly doesn’t appreciate his precision and thoroughness.

**  Paula recently made a pitch to Clinton Client over lunch, to represent his company in a huge merger.  She delivered clear though somewhat abstract information about her experience and the firm’s capabilities, and she presented him with an action plan that showed how she’d hit the ground running.  She was puzzled that Clinton kept throwing in new ideas that were far outside what she had contemplated, and she was annoyed that Clinton interrupted their conversation several times to speak to friends and acquaintances in the restaurant.  Paula had the feeling that Clinton knew every person who walked through the door and that he was intent on speaking to all of them.  He asked whether Paula or her firm represented any of the movers and shakers in his industry, most of whom he identified as friends.  Although Paula was willing to make a personal connection with Clinton, she wanted to move on to business and was frustrated that Clinton seemed to be more interested in telling stories and drawing analogies rather than sticking to the facts.

**  Adam was having trouble with Sue Secretary.  Although she had terrific skills, Sue always wanted to know more about the work she was doing and seemed to approach Adam’s practice as if she and Adam were a team.  Although Adam appreciated her interest, he didn’t particularly enjoy the “bonding time” of talking about family and personal interests, and he sometimes felt that Sue’s favorite word was “why.”  Sue couldn’t stand the organizational systems that Adam demanded and wondered especially why he needed his files to be identical, with the labels printed in a certain font and arranged according to the system he’d been using since his first year in practice.

Do these situations sound at all familiar?  Have you ever found yourself wondering why someone behaves they way they do or wished you could predict how they might respond to a situation?  I’ve been using an assessment known as the DISC with clients for over a year now to help explain and eliminate these communications problems.  DISC measures the extent to which you exhibit behavior and communication styles known as Dominant, Influencing, Steady, or Compliant.  Once you know your own style, it becomes easy to recognize other people’s styles, and that allows you to adjust your own style for maximum effectiveness in communications.  You can learn more about the DISC here, here, and here.

And I’m pleased to announce that I’ve teamed up with two other DISC experts to present a 4-week teleseminar that will teach you to cut through communication chaos and to communicate more effectively by understanding your tendencies and those of the people with whom you interact.  We’ll meet by teleconference for 4 consecutive Monday evening beginning on September 17 at 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT.  You’ll get your own, personalized DISC assessment and you’ll learn how each of the styles presents and what each brings to the table.  And you’ll have access to the 3 of us (all Certified Professional Behavioral Analysts, each with a professional background in law, the media, and/or the corporate world) to troubleshoot your communications problems — all at a fraction of the cost of hiring one of us on a individual basis. 

I’ll provide more information tomorrow.  Curious already?  Here’s the link you’ll need to learn more and sign up.

And then, after we’d been talking for a while, one friend piped up and asked, “By the way… What exactly is coaching anyway?”

Ah.  Because I’ve become steeped in coaching, I forget.  Not everyone knows what coaching is.  I’ve had the same question from people who’ve contacted me after reading my blog, so I thought I’d share the answer here.

In coaching, I work with individuals (primarily but not exclusively lawyers and executive directors/CEOs of non-profit organizations) to create professional and personal change, to reach sustained excellent performance, and to do the work so that my client can self-correct and generate his or her own processes for change. 

For instance, I work with lawyers who are in the first few years of their career to map out what professional path they’d like to follow and to identify the steps to get there.  I work with more senior lawyers who’d like to make a change in the path they’re on now.  I support people who are over-committed and over-stressed in finding a way to maintain (or develop) excellent performance by managing their energy and being fully present when they’re at home just as they’re fully present at work.  I help job-seekers with their resumes, cover letters, and interview skills, and I help them to identify the kind of position that would be most satisfying for them. 

Some clients hire me to fix a performance problem, and some clients hire me because they want to fast-track their success.

When I coach, I ask questions that cut to the heart of the matter.  What do youwant — you, not your spouse or parents or colleagues or friends?  How do you want to go about getting it?  What’s standing in your way, and how can you work through the obstacles?  I may offer observations (did you notice that your voice quavered when you said XYZ?  What’s that about?) and suggestions for reflection and action.  Because I’ve been in practice and have learned something about being a lawyer, sometimes I’ll also put on my consultant’s hat and give direct advice, if that’s what the client wants, about how some action is likely to play out. 

I am results-oriented, because I want my clients to identify what they want, to figure out how to get there, to do the work (both external and internal work), and to learn through the process.  Although there’s a lot of variation, I usually tells prospective clients to expect to work together for at least 3 months, because that’s about how long it takes to see changes, and I usually work with clients for 6 months to a year.  And sometimes clients will stop coaching for a while and then return.  It’s client-driven, because my top concern is to work in whatever way will best serve my client.

And I offer these parting thoughts from What an Executive Coach Can Do for You, reprinted from the Harvard Management Update:

“Coaching has evolved into the mainstream fast,” says Michael Goldberg, president of Building Blocks Consulting (Manalapan, New Jersey), whose clients include New York Life and MetLife. “This is because there is a great demand in the workplace for immediate results, and coaching can help provide that.” How? By providing feedback and guidance in real time, says Brian Underhill, a senior consultant at the Alliance for Strategic Leadership (Morgan Hill, California). “Coaching develops leaders in the context of their current jobs, without removing them from their day-to-day responsibilities.”

At an even more basic level, many executives simply benefit from receiving any feedback at all. “As individuals advance to the executive level, development feedback becomes increasingly important, more infrequent, and more unreliable,” notes Anna Maravelas, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based executive coach and founder of TheraRising. As a result, she says, “Many executives plateau in critical interpersonal and leadership skills.”

. . .

More specifically, the experts say, coaching can be particularly effective in times of change for an executive. That includes promotions, stretch assignments, and other new challenges. While you may be confident in your abilities to take on new tasks, you may feel that an independent sounding board would be beneficial in helping you achieve a new level of performance, especially if close confidants are now reporting to you. More so, you may recognize that succeeding in a new role requires skills that you have not needed to rely on in the past; a coach may help sharpen those skills, particularly when you need to do so on the fly.

But coaching is not just for tackling new assignments. It can also play an invigorating role. Coaches can help executives “develop new ways to attack old problems,” says Vicky Gordon, CEO of the Gordon Group coaching practice in Chicago. “When efforts to change yourself, your team, or your company have failed—you are frustrated or burned out—a coach can be the outside expert to help you get to the root cause and make fundamental changes.”

So, that’s what coaching is. 

If your interest has been piqued, if you’d like to have a conversation to see whether working with a coach might be the right step for you, please contact me.  I currently have a few client openings, and I’m pleased to offer a limited number of complimentary consultations each month so you can explore coaching with me.  More information is available at my web site, www.LifeAtTheBar.com, including my full CV so you can see who exactly I am, or feel free to call me at 800.758.6214.

Value of coaching
This report discusses the survey results concerning the value of coaching.  44% of survey respondents ranked the value of coaching as “very high,” and another 46% ranked it as “somewhat high.”  Interestingly, it seems that the value of coaching is monitored primarily by anecdotal evidence (56%) , which another 35% of respondents reporting no formal process for such monitoring.  There’s no other information about how “no formal process” is used, such as whether anyone is actually monitoring value or whether value is assessed by the self-perception of the person being coached.

Method of coaching delivery
And this report discusses the methods through which coaching is delivered: in person, by telephone, and email/instant message/webcam.  According the the survey results, 44% of executive coaching is delivered in person and 37% is delivered by telephone.  (I am surprised to find that 19% of executive coaching is delivered otherwise, with email taking the lead at 15%.)  The survey further reports that 70% of executive coaches find in-person delivery most effective, and 96% of those who’ve worked with an executive coach consider in-person coaching to be best.  (And Sherpa Coaching, which conducted the survey, doesn’t provide any telephone coaching.)

Certification/experience
Sherpa Coaching found that executive coaching clients view business experience and coach-specific training or certification as being equally important.  (See pages 8-9 of the full report.)  Although 65% of those who purchase coaching services (HR professionals, other purchasers, and coaching clients) see “formal certification for executive coaches as absolutely essential or very important,” there’s little consensus on what organization should do the certifying.  (Sherpa Coaching provides coach training and certification.)

What does this mean for lawyers and lawyer coaches?

Kudos
The survey results support several conclusions I’d reached through my own anecdotal experience about the value of coaching and the skills and experience necessary for a coach. 

Those who have been coached or who have purchased coaching tend to find significant value in the results attained.  (And, after all, results are the key measuring stick: for lawyers, the questions include whether coaching has helped the client to clarify the strategy for success on her career path, to strengthen his client service skills, to find a sustainable balance between work and home life, etc.) 

Many coaching programs teach that a good coach can work with a client without understanding anything about the client’s business.  However, I believe it’s critical for lawyer coaches to at least understand what the practice of law entails.  Otherwise, too much time is wasted on explaining context and translating jargon.  My bias holds that an attorney coach should have both a background in law and coach-specific training.  (And that’s the profile of the coach I hired when I was practicing law full-time and with whom I still work now that I practice only part-time.)  Though the survey reveals certification as an important qualification for coaching, I suspect that most lawyers are more interested in the coach’s training and experience, and that a lawyer will likely evaluate for himself whether a coach has the necessary experience and skills to help him navigate through practice challenges.

Questions
I question the survey’s emphasis on the benefits of in-person coaching, however.  I’ve provided coaching and been coached in person and by telephone, and I’ve found both to be quite effective.  In-person coaching is simpler in some ways, since body language is readily observable, but with practice it’s quite possible to “hear” body language.   I often find myself saying, for instance, something like “your voice really dropped its energy when you said that, and I wonder whether you’re slumping now.”  I prefer in-person meetings when I’m coaching someone on interviewing skills, but I’ve successfully coached clients on even those skills by telephone. 

Although I do provide in-person coaching on request, I’ve found that telephone coaching has certain significant benefits, some of which may be particularly strong for lawyers:

1.  Confidentiality.  Many clients prefer not to let others know that they’re being coached.  One client calls me a “secret weapon.”  While I have no problem maintaining confidentiality, my presence in a client’s office could raise a question that’s easily avoided by meeting by telephone.  (Or meeting in another location.)

2.  Easy scheduling.  It’s often easier to keep a telephone appointment than an in-person appointment.  There’s no concern about traffic or the travel time.  Lawyers who travel frequently are able to make it to telephone coaching sessions much more regularly than in-person appointments.  And I’m willing to offer very early morning appointments by telephone that I would not offer for an in-person meeting. 

3.  Flexibility.  Although it’s important for clients to keep their scheduled coaching appointments, life sometimes interferes.  It’s much more simple to reschedule a telephone call on short notice.

4.  Cost.  Some coaches charge a premium (stated or unstated) for in-person meetings.  Others build the cost into their fee structure for all clients.  Much like the cost differential for buying music as an MP3 rather than as a CD, face-to-face coaching involves certain costs that telephone coaching doesn’t.  At this time, I don’t have a higher fee for in-person coaching, but it isn’t difficult to imagine changing that practice in the future.

5.  Removal of geographic restrictions.  Clients can select the coach who best meets their needs regardless of geography when coaching is provided by phone.  For instance, one of my clients lives in Canada and travels to the Philippines on a regular basis, and we would never have crossed paths but for her enthusiasm for telephone coaching. 

For these reasons, among others, I have elected to be coached by telephone even by coaches who live in my city.  All of this said, good coaching can occur either in person or by telephone — or both.  The client’s personal preference should govern the method of delivery, given all of the surrounding circumstances. 

I hope the survey results, and my thoughts about them, are useful for those of you who are considering hiring a coach.  As always, I’d be delighted to answer any questions or to discuss any concerns you may have. 

Julie Fleming Brown coaches attorneys on professional development, career management, and client development issues. Please visit www.LifeAtTheBar.com for more information, or contact Julie at 800.758.6214. Julie is offering free Success Strategy sessions during the month of February. More information is available on this blog or on the Life at the Bar website.

So I was delighted to find two reports today: one that summarize the return on investment of leadership coaching at a professional service firm and one that summarizes the return on investment of executive coaching at a Fortune 500 firm.  The data from these summaries are impressive.

86% of leaders in the professional service firm rated leadership coaching as very effective; 95% are doing things differently as a result of coaching; and leaders noted significant impact in their leadership behavior, team-building, and staff development.  According to the study, the ROI from such coaching is 689%.

Among the executives coached, 60% noted a favorable impact on productivity and 53% cited increased employee satisfaction as a result of coaching.  The summary states that 60% of survey respondents identified specific financial benefits that resulted from their coaching, though details are not provided.  The study concludes that coaching provided a 529% ROI.

While these studies are open to question if only because the company that performed the studies also provides coaching services, the results strongly indicate that coaching is valuable in measurable and quantifiable ways.  That conclusion is backed up by a 2001 Fortune article that states, “Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.” Executive Coaching — With Returns a CFO Could Love, Fortune, 2/19/01.

Because of my own experience, I’d believe in coaching even without data like this.  But it’s nice to see these reports that back up what I already know.