Coaching and the Three Degrees of Organisational Change
Second-degree change requires a leap into unchartered territories where we feel more vulnerable and uncertain, since we may have to experience and confront what we have been avoiding. However, when the usual ways of doing and seeing things has become uncomfortable enough, and when they have been shown (by the coaching intervention) to cost us more than they are benefitting us, then we are ready to embrace second-degree change. Let us consider the case of Phil and his team to illustrate what second-degree change might ask of both coach and client.
Phil, His Team, and Second-degree Change
Let us imagine that a coach who works at the second-degree change level had been invited to come and work with Phil and his team.
To begin with, the coach would’ve systematically established, by means of a thorough psychometric assessment and interview process, what was driving and motivating Phil’s behaviour. The assessment would have, from the outset, engaged Phil in a conversation that helped him identify the beliefs and assumptions about himself and the world that informed his approach as a manager and leader.
The coaching conversation would have then used practical and behavioural examples (identified by Phil) where his “narrow focus on error and needed improvement”, his “avoidance of criticism and mistakes”, his “lack of delegation”, and his “harsh and selective inner critic” were having a significant negative impact on his leadership style and on his team’s performance. Phil could have been invited to assess how his habitual patterns were actuallyworking against his goal of improving workplace relationships and the functioning of his department. Ideally, the coaching conversation would have have encouraged Phil to identify how his view of himself and the world was driven by an early internalized message that he had to be perfect and beyond reproach in order to be acceptable and loved.
The coach would’ve invited Phil to acknowledge how his fear of being criticized or judged as bad or corrupt was driving his criticism of himself and others. Rather than encouraging Phil to improve and correct himself, the coach might have invited Phil to become more tolerant and accepting of himself and others, while acknowledging the good and positive.
After helping Phil evaluate and relax these dimensions of his team and leadership style, the coach could have moved on to helping Phil find alternatives to the “one right way” approach that made it difficult for him to delegate tasks. By helping Phil see that his over-responsibility and micromanagement of the department was actually creating disengagement and poor functioning, the coach could have shown Phil how risking more and allowing for so called ‘mistakes’ along the road of progress would actually empower his team to take more responsibility for their tasks and performance levels. As you can imagine, this would be counter-intuitive and difficult for Phil and it would therefore require a careful balance of support and challenge from his coach.
As far as Phil’s team is concerned, the coach would’ve done well – as with Phil – to establish what each team member’s driving motivations, beliefs andassumptions were, and how these were influencing their responses to the current problems. The coach could’ve used an accurate psychometric assessment, combined with individual or group coaching sessions, to help the team own their part in either fuelling or addressing the department’s difficulties. As with Phil, each team member could have been invited to challenge the assumptions and behavioural habits that reinforced the dynamic between the team and Phil, and amongst team members.
By, from the outset, locating responsibility for the needed changes and ‘paradigm shifts’ at level of every individual (rather than on the shoulders of Phil alone) any systemic blaming and potential disengagement patterns could also have been addressed.
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