A Powerful Map for Effective Coaching – The E-Scale Process

With a growing interest in more “positively oriented”, “strengths-based” and “non-pathologising” approaches to psychology I was gradually led to the field of coaching and ultimately coaching in the workplace or executive coaching. To cut an already too long story short, I was always in search of a system and an approach to coaching that would accommodate my existing training and experience, while providing a straightforward yet ‘deep’ framework for the variety of individuals I encountered in the workplace context.

My search was rewarded when I discovered the E-Scale technology:

“The E-Scale system moves beyond traditional profiling and sets a targeted and meaningful development process in motion. Most profiling tools do nothing more than attempt to describe personality traits and preferences. The E-Scale takes you far deeper through a systematic process for developing emotional intelligence that reveals how and why we develop our personality preferences , our patterns of thinking and feeling, as well as our habits of response.” (see Free EQ Profile on www.emotionalintelligence.tv)

Powerful, Effective Coaching with the E-Scale

The “how and why” in the last sentence of the quote above is what I found particularly significant about the E-Scale profiling and coaching system. What I discovered was that, as a coach, I was guided by the E-Scale to systematically investigate – in collaboration with my client – what the motivations and emotional drivers were for behavioural patterns that the client and E-Scale report had identified as potentially self-defeating.  At the same time, the E-Scale grounds the client’s strengths in the same set of motivations and emotional drivers that underpin their areas of development, which powerfully reveals how our strengths and areas of development are so intimately connected.

This is a truly incisive and unique take on the development of emotional intelligence!

For example, the E-Scale revealed to one of my clients that her visionary leadership style, which habitually focused her attention on future possibilities and positive outcomes, was at times resulting in a tendency to avoid the current problems and emotional conflicts in her team. She realised – by reading the E-Scale report and with careful questioning from me -that what motivated this future possibility focus was a fear of getting stuck in emotionally uncomfortable conversations and confining commitments. The E-Scale coaching materials (see accreditation manual below) also helped me and the client understand this fear in the context of the client’s unexamined worldview. The E-Scale revealed the client’s core limiting beliefs, how she maintained these beliefs and how she could grow beyond their limitations.

A key development task for her was to embrace her visionary planning strengths while confronting some conflict situations in her team. By staying more in the present, rather escaping into future plans, the client could ensure that her visions became a reality.

I remember thinking that, without the E-Scale’s key insight about this client’s driving fear, we would’ve skirted around these real issues for hours, since talking about fear and deeper emotions was part of the avoidance pattern that was creating problems for her. The E-Scale Leadership report spoke directly and deeply into the client’s worldview and allowed me to structure questions and responses guided by the report results and her feedback.

What I really liked was how the E-Scale report allowed me to integrate my existing skills in interviewing and facilitating coaching conversations with a powerful assessment tool that quickly cut through to what was really important.

The E-Scale also builds on a model of human development and personality (i.e. Enneagram) that, in describing both observable behaviour patterns and deeper psychological dynamics, leaves scope for a range of psychological theories and coaching techniques for facilitating change.

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