Ed Batista

Leadership Coaching at Stanford Business School

Big news! I just accepted a full-time position as a Leadership Coach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business (GSB). I'll be working with the Center for Leadership Development and Research (CLDR) on a variety of coaching and mentoring activities and with the faculty on several of the organizational behavior courses. Last month I was also accepted into the school's Group Facilitation Training Program, so I'll be co-facilitating a group in the Interpersonal Dynamics course as well.

The GSB is making a big commitment to leadership development (including, but not limited to, executive coaching), and I'm thrilled to be involved. Last summer Evelyn Williams came to Stanford from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, where she'd created a substantial Leadership and Effectiveness Development program over the previous six years. As Associate Director of the CLDR, Evelyn has been making some great things happen at Stanford and I'm particularly excited by her interest in applying technology to leadership development. Evelyn and her colleagues have pulled together a very talented team consisting of folks like Andrea Corney and John Cronkite, and I consider myself lucky to have the chance to work alongside them.

I'm hoping to continue working with other faculty like David Bradford and Carole Robin on courses such as High Performance Leadership, in which I served as David's teaching assistant this past fall. And this position will allow me to make the most of my participation in the facilitation training program with Mary Ann Huckabay, Scott Bristol and another amazing group of colleagues.

As a professional I feel blessed to be able to contribute to such important work. (Although I'm also sad that I'll be saying goodbye to my current clients, and I look forward to staying in touch with everyone and hearing about your future successes.) As a GSB alum I'm proud that the school has made such a big commitment to these issues. And as a person I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who's played a role in the growth and development that's allowing me to take advantage of this opportunity--many thanks to all of you.

 

Sara Ann Friedman's "Work Matters"

Sara Ann Friedman's Work Matters: Women Talk About Their Jobs and Their Lives (1996) is a fascinating book documenting women's struggles not only to succeed at work but also to integrate their professional and personal lives.  Friedman interviewed dozens of women about their jobs, their relationships, their families, their triumphs and their failures.  (The structure and tone is similar to Studs Terkel's Working.)

It's an invaluable book for anyone who cares about the challenges women face at work (and at home, for that matter.)  As an executive coach, I felt that it gave me a helpful perspective on a number of issues my clients deal with every day, but it also made me think about my wife and our relationship and how sometimes I'm a supportive husband and other times...not so much.

Two sub-themes also struck me as particularly interesting.  First, as a woman born in 1935, Friedman was heavily influenced by the initial wave of the contemporary women's movement in the 1960s--but writing in the 1990s, she's keenly aware that many younger women don't identify as "feminists" and resist the idea that they're victims of sexism, even as they continue to challenge stereotypes and confront barriers.  I wish Friedman would have talked with more younger women and explored this issue further, but the fact that she acknowledged the issue at all reinforced my sense of her integrity and open-mindedness.  She definitely has a point of view, but she doesn't try to force her subjects' stories to fit her political agenda

Second, as one would expect, many of Friedman's interviews emphasize issues that are faced primarily, or even exclusively, by women--but her subjects also touch on a number of universal issues, and in the process explore challenges we all face, regardless of our gender.  I found myself nodding along, identifying with one of her subjects' struggles--"I hate it when that happens!"--on a regular basis.

Here are a few quotes from Friedman's interviews that have stuck with me:

Diana Jacobs, Artist, on Self-Expression
There are times when I sit back and say, 'God, who needs one more artist?'  That's when my passion takes over, and I say, 'Heck, one more isn't going to hurt, either.'  The same appreciation I get when I see a wonderful piece of art work someone just might feel about mine.

Judy Chaikin, Television Director, on Being Yourself
When I used to teach improv classes, the very first thing I would say to women is, 'I don't want any good little girls in here.  I give you permission to be mean, rotten, bad bitches.  Be the worst person you can be, but if you're a good little girl, you're out.'  It's amazing what that would do to free them... I became aware very early that the good little girl syndrome was one of the biggest detriments to any woman getting ahead.

Camilla Woodbury, Truck Driver, on Asking Questions
Women ask questions about what they should do instead of just doing it.  It's illegal for men to ask questions.  They're not allowed to be that stupid.  They can't show their fear.  So most of them who are good learn by doing, not by talking.  But I've watched men make major mistakes by just doing something without questioning what they're doing.

Susan Bentley, Assistant Rector, on Staff Meetings
The staff meetings run by Larry [the church rector and head of staff] are very task oriented, very structured.  You come in and you make up the agenda.  You start right on time whether everybody's there or not.  We make up the agenda.  We go through it.  There's not much allowance for side comments and spinoffs or if something reminds you of something else.  There's a sense of tenseness about it all.

Whe Larry was gone [on sabbatical], Joy [the associate rector] was chairing the meetings, which left only one other male on the staff, the choirmaster, the organist and four other women.  Our staff meetings were much more meandering.  We would start on time, but people would touch base informally, commenting on how so-and-so's mother was feeling, how Sarah's birthday party went.  Then we would come together and do our agenda, but it wasn't as task oriented.  It never felt as laborious...

[T]he most interesting thing was, we did that in the same time as our usual staff meetings.  Our conversation would be all over the map, and everyone would get up and think we had a productive staff meeting.

(Thanks to Tom Peters, whose references to Friedman's book encouraged me to check it out in the first place.)

Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching

My last post before taking a few weeks off from blogging discussed Chris Argyris and his concept of double-loop learning, which I've continued to think about in the context of executive coaching.  (Hey, I didn't spend November just taking naps and watching football.)

That post prompted an exchange in the comments that helped to clarify my understanding of double-loop learning.  Charles Green wrote:

What's the difference between "double-loop learning" and "learning from your mistakes?"  Apparently it's the depth of learning--do you examine fundamental assumptions, or are you just incrementally making improvements?  This distinction sounds great, but in practical life it sometimes feels less clear.

And here's a portion of my response to Charles:

I believe you're looking in vain for a set of heuristics that will allow you to consistently distinguish between single-loop and double-loop learning. The distinction between the two processes is relative depending on who's doing the analysis and what preconceived notions they bring to the table. The key to double-loop learning is asking whether there are any unchallenged assumptions built into your current goals and strategies, and whether it's possible to pull back and include those assumptions in the frame of your analysis.

In most circumstances, the learning we undertake is aimed at improving our performance relative to a set of goals and other factors that are taken for granted. Feedback from our performance (or "learning from our mistakes") typically cycles immediately back into our analysis of the strategies, tactics or techniques that led to our performance. This is important work, but it's inherently limited by those initial factors that are taken for granted at the outset and that remain unchallenged by an assessment of the performance results.

In contrast, if we can pull back and expand the frame of our analysis, we begin to call into question some of the factors that we usually take for granted. Our performance results aren't simply used to assess the strategies that have been derived from those factors--they question the factors themselves.

I've created some slides to help illustrate the distinction between single-loop and double-loop learning.  (Click on each graphic or the links below to open up a window showing a larger version.  You can also download a 4-slide PowerPoint file, 52 KB.)

The first graphic below (here's a larger version) represents most of the learning that we experience. Results are used to assess our goals, values and strategies, which are then altered in order to obtain more desirable results--a process which certainly includes "learning from our mistakes."

But factors other than results are used to determine our goals, values and strategies in the first place.  These underlying assumptions are typically implicit and unspoken, and they go unchallenged and unquestioned.  Because we may not even be aware of them, they're not included in the assessments we conduct, and they're not part of our learning process.

What if we made a dedicated effort to be aware of these underlying assumptions and included them in our learning process?  This would involve expanding our analytical frame to explicitly identify and subsequently challenge these assumptions.  Our results would feed back twice, in two "learning loops."  We'd continue the ordinary process of altering our goals, values and strategies based on our results, but at a deeper level, we'd ask questions about the truth and validity of our assumptions, and would seek to understand the ways in which they determine our goals, values and strategies from the start.  Here's an illustration of this "double-loop" process (and here's a larger version of the graphic below):

To make this distinction clearer, I've applied the concept to an issue that often comes up in executive coaching engagements and one that I've dealt with on a personal basis--communicating more effectively.  In my own case, I received some feedback that helped me make a strategic decision to express my emotions more fully when speaking in order to have a greater impact.  Here's an illustration of this strategy (and here's a larger version of the graphic):

But as the graphic above makes clear, there were several assumptions implicit in my choice of strategies, such as "My audience will understand and share the meaning of my emotions," "My internal emotions and their external expressions are congruent," and "My language and my emotional expressions are perceived as consistent."

These assumptions obviously had an important effect on the potential success of my strategy, which relied upon their accuracy.  But because these assumptions were implicit and unchallenged, it was impossible for me to understand their impact on my results.  Unaware of whether my assumptions were true or false, I couldn't know whether I succeeded (or failed) despite them (or because of them).

This was a perfect opportunity for some double-loop learning, illustrated in the graphic below (here's a larger version):

I expanded my frame of reference to look at the underlying assumptions that supported my strategy and began asking explicit questions that enabled me to develop a much more nuanced and sophisticated approach.  This also gave me a clearer understanding of the causes of my success or failure as a communicator in a given situation.

But there's one last wrinkle--having identified and challenged the underlying assumptions that supported my original strategy, those assumptions are now consciously integrated into that strategy.  And as I continue to address the issues raised through the process of challenging my assumptions, what was initially double-loop learning becomes single-loop learning again.

When we begin a double-loop learning process, everything comes to a full stop while we ask such challenging questions as "Why do we do this task this way?" and "Why do we do this task at all?" and, as discussed at length here, "What assumptions are embedded in our methods and our goals?"

But the answers to (some of) those questions become well-understood, and the process of asking them (sometimes) becomes second nature.  And at the very least, we simply don't have the time or the energy to invest in a continual process of challenging underlying assumptions.  For all these reasons, we eventually find ourselves back in the routine, everyday process of single-loop learning, which is almost seamlessly integrated with our other activities. 

When the process works, the obvious benefit is that any lasting fruits of our double-loop learning allow us to become more efficient while obtaining better results.  But even (and perhaps especially) when the process works, it's important to remember that there will always be more, and then still more, assumptions to be addressed in the future.  There's no finish line; there's no point at which we can say, "I've successfully challenged and understood all my underlying assumptions, and integrated their implications into my goals, values and strategies.  I rule!"

The key is simply to remember that even though we can't live our lives in "double-loop mode"--how would you get through the day?--we all need to make time for it on a regular basis.

Now, Where Was I?

You may have noticed that I took a little time off, 44 days to be exact.  It wasn't planned, but it's been a nice little break.  I started dragging my feet on the follow-up to my previous Double-Loop Learning piece, then caught a lingering cold, then had to deal with a more serious family health issue (which has been resolved successfully), and in the middle of all this I realized that I was enjoying not blogging and decided to keep on not blogging for a while.  Just following my own (and others') good advice (and, of course, the beauty of the subscription and email update services to the left is that you don't need to actually visit this site to keep up with new posts.)

But I'm rested and ready, if not exactly tanned, and it's good to be back.

Photo by skippy13.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.