Ed Batista

8,000 Coaching Sessions

I've kept careful records since launching my coaching practice in 2006, and an hour ago I conducted the 8,000th coaching session of my career. This only includes formal coaching sessions: 6,936 with private clients to date, and 1,064 with MBA students at Stanford from 2007 through 2020. It does not include countless informal conversations with clients and students over the years. As a solo practitioner I've learned that it's incumbent on me to be deliberate about learning from experience and to organize my own celebrations, so this post is a bit of both.

For many years coaching was a central focus of my professional life, but it was just one of a number of activities I pursued. In my practice I worked with organizations on change management efforts and conducted workshops and offsites for leadership teams and groups of founders. In my role at Stanford I helped to launch the Leadership Labs and Leadership Fellows program, facilitated 1,500 hours of T-groups in Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely) and later taught the course myself, and started my own course, The Art of Self-Coaching.

But over time I found myself drawn to one-on-one coaching more than any other activity. In my practice I stopped taking on consulting projects or facilitating other events. In 2016 I resigned from my full-time role at Stanford to focus on my private practice, although I continued to teach Interpersonal Dynamics and The Art of Self-Coaching one day a week. In 2017 I resigned from the Interpersonal Dynamics faculty in order to teach The Art of-Self-Coaching year-round, in part because my course allowed me to work more closely with students on a one-on-one basis. In 2021 I taught The Art of Self-Coaching for the final time before taking a year off, and last year I resigned from Stanford entirely.

So for the past seven years one-on-one coaching has been my primary professional activity, and for the past three years it's the only thing I've done. I enjoy working with groups, and I'd probably still be teaching The Art of Self-Coaching at Stanford if it weren't for the pandemic, which triggered a host of changes in my life. And I may work with groups again in the future--for example, I've been thinking about doing some small weekend retreats--but it's clear that one-on-one coaching is and will remain my primary passion. So what have I learned after 8,000 coaching sessions? Half-a-dozen lessons come to mind:

1. Initial Conditions Matter

I first learned this from Carole Robin, one of my most important mentors and later one of my colleagues on Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics faculty. In our work with groups she encouraged me to expand my awareness of a host of factors, often unstated or implicit, that influence a group's development, which I later defined as follows: "Every group is rooted in a set of initial conditions that form the foundation for all subsequent aspects of the group experience. How and why were we gathered together? What will our first meeting be like? What will we discuss there?"

Initial conditions are equally important in a one-on-one coaching engagement, and it's necessary for me to understand something about a prospective client's interest in coaching in order to determine whether I'm going to add value. But I prefer not to over-determine their responses by means of a complex or detailed discovery process. So when I'm meeting with a prospective client I tell them that I have just three questions: Why coaching? Why now? What are your hopes and expectations for a coaching relationship? I've found that how people choose to answer these questions tells me a great deal about the initial conditions for the potential engagement.

If you're a prospective coaching client: How would you respond to my questions above: Why coaching? Why now? What are your hopes and expectations for a coaching relationship?

If you're a current client: What led you to seek coaching initially? What were your hopes and expectations for the relationship? How have those factors influenced the trajectory of your relationship?

If you're a coach: How do you learn about a prospective client's initial conditions? How do you determine whether you can add value? What factors lead you to decline a prospective engagement?

 

2. Support and Challenge

As I wrote in 2017, "A client once told me, 'It feels like you're always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me.' It was some of the most gratifying feedback I ever got because it precisely describes my intended approach to the process. My clients need to feel supported by me in a number of ways... My clients also need to know that my support will not prevent me from challenging them."

And as I noted just a few weeks ago, "[Coaching will] involve surfacing your assumptions and preconceptions, questioning your interpretation of events, and challenging you to take responsibility for your contributions to the situation. Coaching begins with empathetic listening, but it doesn't stop there."

When I challenge a client, I want them to know that I’m doing so with their best interests at heart, and when I’m providing support, I want them to know that I’ll always be candid and direct. This by no means a skill I've "perfected," because the right balance between the two is always dynamic, varying not only from one client to another, but also from one coaching session to the next. But I pay close attention to what a client might need in a given moment (and may ask explicitly), while observing whether we're emphasizing one mode at the expense of the other.

If you're a prospective coaching client: How do you prefer to receive support? How do you prefer to be challenged? How do these preferences serve you? How might they get in your way?

If you're a current client: How does your coach express support? How does your coach challenge you? How do you feel about the balance between these modes in your relationship?

If you're a coach: How do you express support for a client? How do you challenge them? How do you sense when you've found the right balance for a given client, in a given session? How do you sense when the balance might be off?

 

3. Many Teachers, No Guru

I've had so many different teachers over the course of my development as a coach. When I was considering coaching as a path I spent the better part of a year under the mentorship of Joe Murphy, who was training a friend to join his practice and invited me to work with them while I documented his methodology. I read voraciously in the process, and the single most impactful book was Susan Scott's Fierce Conversations, although I'd later add Coaching with the Brain in Mind, by David Rock and Linda Page. (Here are lists of the other books and articles I've found useful.)

Before launching my practice I talked extensively with a number of coaches about the discipline and the field, most notably Andrea Corney, Rebecca Zucker and Ricki Frankel. (Two decades later I continue to talk with fellow coaches frequently, a series of conversations I've been documenting over the last three years in this thread.) And the decision to quit my last role in management and launch my practice was catalyzed by a T-group facilitated by Barbara Brewer and Dietmar Brinkmann.

Six years after earning my MBA I returned to Stanford to serve as a teaching assistant to David Bradford. I was later accepted into the school's Group Facilitation Training Program, where I worked closely with Mary Ann Huckabay, who was previously my teacher and coach (and is still my coach today!) I was then invited to join Evelyn Williams' team that established the Leadership Fellows program and offered coaching to our second-year students. I also served on Carole Robin's staff in the Leadership Coaching and Mentoring course, which drew heavily on the Co-Active Coaching model, and I later helped to integrate that class's coaching curriculum into the revamped version of the Fellows program. I would also work repeatedly with Carole, Scott Bristol, Gary Dexter and Richard Francisco on their staff in Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely).

I could mention even more but am mindful of taxing a reader's patience. Every one of these teachers contributed something unique to my growth as a coach--and yet no one has been my guru. I deeply value the relationships I developed with my teachers, particularly Mary Ann and Carole, and yet I believe I've grown the most by integrating the lessons I've learned from all of them into an approach that reflects not only their influence, but also my independence. I serve neither myself nor my clients by remaining on any one teacher's path for too long.

If you're a prospective coaching client: What would you like to know about a potential coach's teachers and influences? How might this inform your selection of a coach?

If you're a current client: What do you know about your coach's teachers and influences? How do these factors show up in your coaching relationship? How might they get in the way?

If you're a coach: Who are your teachers? How have they influenced you? How have you integrated their lessons into your approach? What have you discarded?

 

4. Master the Playbook. Throw It Away.

Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning and relearning. Those of us who are drawn to coaching as a profession have often played a "coach" role in prior stages of our personal lives, and that was certainly the case for me. I learned how to connect with people, how to be a good conversational partner, how to offer advice that would be perceived as helpful. This behavior was entirely genuine on my part, but it was also intentional and motivated. In a rudimentary sense, I "mastered a playbook" that enabled me to navigate interactions with a degree of effectiveness.

And yet when I began studying interpersonal dynamics in earnest with the goal of becoming a coach, I realized that I had to "throw out the playbook" and unlearn any number of conditioned responses. A little small talk could help initiate a connection, but too much would keep the discussion at a superficial level. Filling an awkward silence might ease the other person's anxiety, but it might also block a breakthrough. Volunteering advice would allow me to feel useful, but it might also prevent the other person from accessing their own wisdom. I had to relearn how to interact with people--and do so in a way that felt (and was perceived as) fluid and natural.

But coaches don't go through this process once--we repeat it countless times over the course of our careers. All of the teachers noted above had playbooks of their own, sometimes made explicit in formal texts and programs, but also embedded in the implicit norms of their practice and method. My goal was always to learn as much as I could from each new playbook, unlearn practices from prior playbooks that were now getting in the way, and relearn how to apply this accumulating body of knowledge. In order to remain constantly open to learning, I must also feel free to throw away what I've learned at any time.

If you're a prospective coaching client: What would you like to know about a potential coach's training and experience? How might this inform your selection of a coach?

If you're a current client: What do you know about your coach's training and experience? How do these factors show up in your coaching relationship? How might they get in the way?

If you're a coach: How has your training and experience influenced your approach to coaching? What playbooks have your mastered? How is your mastery of an old playbook getting in the way of new learning?

 

5. Power Dynamics

The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, who I view as our leading scholar on power. I didn't take his course when I was an MBA student, but I included his work on my syllabus when I taught Interpersonal Dynamics years later (and as far as I know I was the only Touchy Feely faculty member to do so.) Jeff's approach is often mischaracterized by the naive as Machiavellian or unethical. In truth, Jeff is a deeply ethical person with strong opinions on right and wrong. But he's also equally pragmatic about the importance of understanding how power works and learning how to wield it, no matter what your goals are.

I don't know Jeff well, but I consider him a colleague, and last year I shared this line with him, from the anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker: "If you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else." He found it striking, and I think it's an apt headline for his body of work. It's certainly one of the most common themes I've observed in my practice over the years. People who are seeking coaching have typically found, in one of countless possible ways, that they have been wrong about power.

This isn't to say that obtaining power is necessarily an explicit goal of theirs, although that's not uncommon. But whatever their goals, if the client is to succeed, typically they must recognize how they have misunderstood power and how it works in their particular context. They must improve their ability to engage in and win power struggles, and as I've written before, "We often think of a power struggle as a rancorous, zero-sum battle between bitter enemies, but that's just one version, and it's relatively rare. Far more common are the everyday efforts noted above: influencing others, wielding authority, maintaining status."

It's also important to consider the power dynamics within the coaching relationship. I take great care to emphasize to clients that our relationship must be a partnership of equals, and I say explicitly, "'I'm not an authority figure, nor am I a subordinate. We’ll work together as equal partners in this process and share responsibility for its success. If we ever feel that we’re not acting as partners, we’ll say so."

If you're a prospective coaching client: How might you have been "wrong about power"? How might this be preventing you from achieving your goals?

If you're a current client: What are you learning about power through coaching? How are you applying these lessons? How would you characterize the power dynamic between you and your coach?

If you're a coach: What role does power play in your coaching? How do you incorporate an understanding of power dynamics in your approach? How do you manage the power dynamic between you and your clients?

 

6. It's a Journey

A coaching relationship is a type of journey, each one unique, but collectively possessing some similar features. As I learned many years ago, it's the client's boat: "Coaching inevitably involves helping a client reach a destination, and as a coach it can be easy to fall prey to the illusion that it's my boat, I've invited the client on board, and after we've reached our destination they'll step ashore. But that gets things exactly backwards: it's the client's boat, they've invited me on board, and after our work is done I'll go ashore while they continue on to the next leg of the voyage."

While a journey should be a meaningful experience, the coaching process must also be normal: "Coaching...must challenge established norms, from clients' internal mental models to the surrounding organizational culture. But even as we're challenging these norms, coaches and our clients must also find ways to work within them. In a word, for coaching and other interventions to achieve their goals they must be perceived as normal--stimulating and thought-provoking, certainly, but also applicable under everyday conditions. But too often coaching and related services are perceived as special--applicable only under unusual circumstances or too far beyond everyday norms to be practical or sustainable."

On this journey client and coach rely on each other as traveling companions, which entails a degree of intimate distance: "Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what’s being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions... Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to 'make the private public'--to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves... And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which create an inevitable and necessary sense of distance... The relationships I have with my clients are warm and friendly ones, and yet it would be inaccurate to say that we're friends--they need me to be their coach, not their friend, and we do the relationship a disservice if we confuse the two."

If you're a prospective coaching client: Where are you going? How might coaching help you get there? What are you looking for in a traveling companion?

If you're a current client: How would you characterize the journey to date? How are you assessing progress? In what ways does coaching feel "normal," i.e. applicable under everyday conditions? In what ways does it feel "special," i.e. impractical or unsustainable? How would you characterize your coach as a traveling companion?

If you're a coach: Whose boat is it? How do you know? How do you make coaching applicable under your clients' everyday conditions? How do you make coaching a practical and sustainable experience for your clients? How are you showing up as a traveling companion for your clients? How are your clients showing up for you?

 

Thank you to my clients and students over the years. It was and continues to be a privilege to accompany you on a stage of your journey.

 

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For Further Reading

Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching) (2023)

Self-Care for Coaches (2023)

Work with Whatever Shows Up (2022)

Coaching and Emotion Management (2018)

Deference Kills Coaching (2018)

Three Paradoxes (Another Coaching Manifesto) (2017)

The Six Layers of Knowledge and Better Conversations (2016)

Tips for Coaching Someone Remotely (2015)

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize (2015)

How to Find (and Choose) a Coach (2013)

Coaching and the Cult of Done (2012)

In Defense of Normal (A Coaching Manifesto) (2012)

Coaching Is a Journey (2011)

Hammering Screws (Bad Coaching) (2011)

Gestalt Coaching (2009)

 

Image via Wikimedia.

A Working Relationship Curriculum

Although I typically coach clients one-on-one (rather than in pairs or groups), a common theme in my practice is the difficulty a client is experiencing in a working relationship. Below is a set of articles that I've written over the years that comprise a curriculum organized around the following themes:

• FOUNDATIONS: A "starter kit" on a set of fundamental topics, from dialogue and coaching tools to empathy and cognitive biases.
• COMMUNICATION: Why our efforts to communicate often go astray and what to do when that (inevitably) happens.
• EMOTION: How to regulate (rather than suppress) the complex feelings that relationships evoke, and why this matters so much.
• CONFLICT: Sources of conflict, from style differences to competitive threats, and a potential path to resolution.
• FEEDBACK: What feedback is (and is not), how to deliver it, how to respond, and why it can hurt.

Note that feedback comes last, and that's by design. Rushing into feedback conversations before both parties are prepared is a reliable way to make difficult relationships even worse. While it's important to get to the point where feedback can be delivered with skill and received with grace, it may be necessary to take some time to get there and to practice a number of interpersonal skills along the way.

If you're having difficulty in a working relationship, optimally you can invite your counterpart to explore this curriculum together. While that may feel daunting, merely expressing your interest in improving the relationship can be a step in the right direction. But even if that's not possible, I hope you'll feel encouraged to make use of these materials on your own until your counterpart is able to join you.

 

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1. FOUNDATIONS

1.1. Better Working Relationships

An issue that comes up frequently in my work as a coach and teacher is how to improve a working relationship in which one person feels disappointed, irritated, or upset with the other. In my coaching practice this typically involves a pair of co-founders or two members of an executive team. While my comments here are by no means comprehensive, they lay out a set of steps you can take to begin to address a working relationship that's faltering or didn't get off to a good start.

1.2. How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize

Coaching is about connecting with people, inspiring them to do their best, and helping them to grow. It’s also about challenging people to come up with the answers they require on their own. Coaching is far from an exact science, and all leaders have to develop their own style, but we can break down the process into practices that any manager will need to explore and understand. Here are the three most important.

1.3. The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

We typically associate empathy with agreement, and we act as though empathizing with someone entails endorsing their perspective and their feelings, but this need not be the case. Understanding someone’s perspective and their emotions while suspending our judgments about both does not necessarily imply that we agree with that perspective or believe that the resulting emotions are justified. It simply means that we comprehend their perspective and emotions, and we are able to envision ourselves experiencing that perspective and those emotions under similar circumstances.

1.4. Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

One of the most significant cognitive errors is what Daniel Kahneman calls What You See Is All There Is, or WYSIATI, which is shorthand for the fact that we find it very difficult to envision missing data. Even when faced with massive gaps in information, we tend to focus on the information at our disposal and rely on it to construct a narrative, as flimsy as it might be. A corollary to Kahneman's WYSIATI might be called WYDSDE: What You Don't See Doesn't Exist. And as a result we're typically overconfident in the validity and coherence of our explanatory narrative.

 

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2. COMMUNICATION

2.1. Learning to Yield (Navigating Tough Conversations)

What does it mean to yield in our relationships? My client was careful to distinguish "yielding" from "capitulating," and I want to emphasize that distinction: I'm not talking about simply letting others get their way, or avoiding conflicts, or being nice. Instead, I see yielding as finding the right balance between deference and assertiveness, between inquiry and advocacy. So what does this look like in practice?

2.2. Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

If it feels risky to say, it's important. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't feel risky. And that sense of risk is a critical piece of data, a sign that the conversation is a meaningful one with larger implications.

2.3. Intent vs. Impact (When Communication Goes Awry)

When our efforts to communicate go awry, one of the most common causes is a failure to distinguish between intent and impact. When delivering a message we typically imagine that these two concepts are aligned--it may not even occur to us to view them as distinct. Our intent is transparent to us, so we assume that it's equally clear to others and that our message is being received in that same spirit.

2.4. Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)

Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching. But there's certainly more to the process, and here's a sequence of steps that I employ frequently in sessions with clients that you may find useful if you're seeking to integrate coaching into your managerial style.

 

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3. EMOTIONS

3.1. Talking About Feelings

My work as a coach often involves encouraging clients and students to talk about their feelings--a process known to psychologists as affect labeling--in order to manage difficult emotions more effectively. Experience tells us that this is a useful practice, but why? How does talking about feelings make them easier to manage?

3.2. The Tyranny of Feelings

I don't believe that acknowledging the importance of emotions requires us to think like children, nor must we always privilege our subjective emotional experience in order to realize the benefits of a deeper understanding of emotion and enjoy a broader range of emotional expression at work. So what can we do? Here are some concepts I find useful to bear in mind.

3.3. You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

Saying that someone else "makes us feel" an emotion suggests that they are responsible for our emotional state, and that's highly problematic. When another person's statements and behavior trigger an emotional response in us, it's inaccurate to presume that the other person is the responsible party and that we're an innocent bystander.

3.4. Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

A theme in my practice is defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When it arises as a topic I'm usually working with a client who's figuring out how to deal with a defensive employee or colleague, but occasionally I have a client who's been accused of defensiveness and is wondering what to do in response.

 

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4. CONFLICT

4.1. Whether or Not to Fix a Broken Relationship

A theme in my practice is the leader who's struggling to repair a damaged working relationship with an employee. In most cases we start with the assumption that a better relationship is possible and that even a long-running conflict can be resolved. This usually entails the following steps in some form.

4.2. Work Style Differences

We all have our preferred ways of working, and sometimes when we're locked in a conflict with a colleague it's the result of incompatible work styles. When we work with people who share our work style it may feel more comfortable, but homogeneous teams can have blind spots and be prone to groupthink. Teams whose members have a diverse range of styles can be more effective if they develop the ability to manage conflict successfully.

4.3. The Trap of Competition

While our social orientation is critical in enabling our success as a species, it also poses a substantial challenge for each of us as individuals. We must navigate in-group competition, which becomes even fiercer in larger groups. We're hyper-aware of our relative social status and our shifting position within group hierarchies. And in order to accomplish these tasks effectively we're constantly scanning our interpersonal environment for potential threats and opportunities, which necessarily involves comparing ourselves to others.

4.4. Resolving a Protracted Conflict

When we're locked in a protracted conflict with another person, there's one critical step that's usually necessary to reach a resolution in which both parties feel a sense of trust and remain committed to the relationship: The higher-status person must express vulnerability first.

 

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5. FEEDBACK

5.1. Feedback Is Not a Gift

Feedback is a gift. We've been told this over and over, as if it were gospel. I've even preached it myself. But I stopped using this phrase because it fails to acknowledge how difficult the experience of receiving feedback can be. The problem is compounded when we view feedback as inherently true, inscribed on tablets of stone and delivered from the mountaintop. But if feedback isn't a gift, what is it? It's data.

5.2. Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

We need to recognize that receiving feedback is inherently a stressful experience. As Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone of the Harvard Negotiation Project have written, "Even when you know that [feedback is] essential to your development and you trust that the person delivering it wants you to succeed, it can activate psychological triggers. You might feel misjudged, ill-used, and sometimes threatened to your very core."

5.3. How to Deliver Critical Feedback

If we want our critical feedback to be truly useful to the recipient and not merely an exercise in self-indulgence, we owe it to our colleagues to be more thoughtful and intentional in how we deliver it. A valuable model in this context is known as "supportive confrontation," developed by David Bradford and Allan Cohen and discussed at length in their book Power Up.

5.4. Four Responses to Feedback

It's important to be open to feedback, even--and especially--when you disagree with it or find that it disconfirms prior assumptions. But being open to feedback doesn't necessarily mean that you should simply accept it. So when you receive feedback, whether it's in a formal performance review or an informal chat, here are four potential responses.

5.5. Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What to Do About It)

As with all data, feedback is comprised of both signal and noise. Even the most hurtful feedback usually incorporates some signal--valuable information that presents you with an opportunity to learn and grow, challenging though it may be. But there is almost certainly plenty of noise--unhelpful or irrelevant information that should be ignored. The key with any painful feedback is ensuring that you don't miss the signal while filtering out the noise.

 

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FOR FURTHER READING

Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler, 2002)

Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, 2000/2010

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time (Susan Scott, 2002)

Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2011)

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (Edgar Schein, 2013)

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, 2015)

 

Photo by Thoroughly Reviewed via Flickr.

What Do You Need When You Don't Need the Money?

I've had a number of clients who no longer needed to work for financial compensation. In some cases this was the result of a landmark event, such as the sale of their company. In others there was simply the realization that they'd reached the point where they were unlikely to spend more than they currently possessed. Although chance always plays a role in human affairs, and all of these people could consider themselves lucky in various ways, they didn't achieve this milestone by accident. They worked hard to get there, typically for years on end, and yet many were somewhat surprised by what they found when they finally arrived.

We have a number of preconceived notions about what it would be like to not have to work, and they're often some form of "life as permanent vacation." That's certainly what some people do when they realize a windfall, and if it brings them joy, then good for them. But that's not what I've observed in my practice. It turns out that many people who've worked hard their entire careers have a finite capacity for being on vacation. And even if they deliberately pursued a lucrative path, the realization of financial freedom didn't necessarily affect the deeper motivations that drove them as professionals. So what do you need when you don't need the money?

A team of Swedish and American researchers provided some answers to this question via a longitudinal study of a group of workers who were in their mid-60s, concluding nearly a decade later when almost all of the subjects were retired and none were working full-time. [1] Most of my clients who no longer needed to work are younger, and none of them permanently retired, although some took an extended break. But the study's conclusions are consistent with my clients' experiences, suggesting that not needing to work has some typical effects no matter what the cause, at least for some subset of the population. So if you find yourself in similar circumstances, consider the following factors:

Obligations

The study of retirees found that some people were surprised to discover that they missed having any external demands imposed upon them by work: "They expected that the lack of such demands would give them more control over their own time. They also anticipated that a lack of demands would make life less stressful and, thereby, preferable... Surprisingly, the absence of external demands among these participants felt like a void in their lives." [2]

My clients who no longer need to work undeniably value having more autonomy in determining how to spend their time. This includes both the "freedom to" invest in personal pursuits, such as time with family or travel, as well as the "freedom from" onerous professional duties, such as resolving conflicts or...travel. [3] And yet they reliably find that having no obligations at all "feels like a void." The fulfillment derived from the ability to choose how to spend our time is not unlimited, and in some cases we don't resent obligations--we require them.

Contrast

Some study participants were also surprised to find that certain activities they previously experienced as rewarding no longer had the same effect: "Before retirement, going [to his summer cottage] allowed him to escape the demands of the workweek and to rest and relax; it was a well-earned retreat before the next period of work. But once he no longer worked, going to the cottage did not feel the same. The joy of relaxing and well-earned rest was, to his surprise, no longer present." [4]

Many of my clients report a similar shift. Rewarding activities don't entirely lose their savor, but they're less reliable sources of pleasure and rejuvenation. This may simply be a matter of insufficient contrast. The relief we experience when we turn away from onerous duties is part of what makes avocations and pastimes rewarding, and should those onerous duties come to an end, those avocations and pastimes now occupy a different space in our lives.

Colleagues

The study results highlight the unique role played by colleagues: "After retiring, some participants came to realize that their relationships with coworkers were of a specific type that could not be re-created in relationships with friends and neighbors... The problem was not that they lacked social involvement, but that the nature of social contact had partly changed, leaving one type of social experience out of their narratives... It came to most as a kind of 'revelation' that their previous relationships at work had been quite special and could not be readily replaced." [5]

My work with clients invariably involves their difficulties with colleagues--it's not uncommon for that topic to be the primary focus of a coaching session. So it often feels liberating to be less dependent on colleagues or even entirely free of those relationships, at least for a period of time. But eventually this is also experienced as a gap or an insufficiency. Even as my clients enjoy the ability to spend more time with family and friends, they seek to sustain or recreate collegial relationships.

Engaging Occupations

These factors manifest in what the researchers describe as a profound need for engagement: "Here we refer to engagement as something that goes beyond ordinary daily experience. Engaging occupations are those that evoked a depth of passion or feeling... The presence or absence of engaging occupations appeared to be the main determinant of whether participants were able to achieve positive life experiences... Engaging occupations are done with great commitment, enthusiasm, perseverance and passion." [6] More specifically, engaging occupations possess several distinct characteristics:

• Meaning: "An engaging occupation was infused with positive meaning connected to interest (pleasure, challenge, enjoyment), personal causation (challenge, indication of one's competence), and value (something worth doing, important, contribution to family or society)."
• Intensity: "Engaging occupations were typically those that the participant did with some sort of regularity over the week; they were not sporadic. Moreover, engaging occupations were also long term in nature."
• Coherence: "The occupation might have begun as a single activity, but over time it became more intense and involved interrelated activities and projects."
• Duty: "The dutiful nature of such occupations was evident in their descriptions of how not all aspects of engaging in the occupation were pleasurable. In fact, the very nature of duty seemed to be connected to a willingness to fulfill the required duties whether or not one actually felt like it."
• Community: "Discussions about the occupation, planning future involvement, problem solving related to the occupation, and giving and taking advice from others about how to do the occupation contributed to the sense of community." [7]

It's clear that engaging occupations are a form of work, although I'm reminded that some years ago I first appreciated the difference between our work and our job:

We often talk about "my work" and "my job" as if they're interchangeable concepts, but it's important to distinguish between them. I define "work" as a vocation--a calling or a personal mission that provides us with an intrinsic sense of meaning and purpose. A "job," in contrast, is a set of responsibilities we fulfill in exchange for various forms of compensation. We get paid to do the job, but the work is its own reward. [8]

In short, when you don't need the money you no longer need a job, but you still need to work. You need not continue to work in the same capacity, and you may choose to take time away, to work less, to opt out of unpleasant tasks or taxing relationships. But you need an engaging occupation, and the absence of a financial imperative won't necessarily affect the many other needs that are filled by such an enterprise. Freud himself felt this need keenly, seeing patients until shortly before his death at age 83, even as he was suffering from cancer, and he touched on this theme at several points in his life:

I cannot imagine life without work as at all comfortable; giving my imagination free play and working coincide for me. [9]

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. [10]

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Narratives and Experience in an Occupational Transition: A Longitudinal Study of the Retirement Process (Hans Jonsson, Staffan Josephsson, and Gary Kielhofner, The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2001)

[2] Ibid, page 427.

[3] Freedom From and Freedom To

[4] Jonsson et al, page 428.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid, pages 428-429.

[8] The Work and The Job

[9] Personal correspondence from 1910, translated and cited by Walter Kaufmann in Discovering the Mind, Volume 3: Freud Versus Adler and Jung, 1980, page 160. Cited in Apocryphal Freud: Sigmund Freud's most famous "quotations" and their actual sources, page 15 (Alan Elms, Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2001). This sentiment is often expressed as "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness," or something similar, but there is no evidence that Freud ever wrote or said this. In 1950 Erik Erikson, who trained with Freud's daughter Anna, attributed a similar line to Freud but provided no documentation and later admitted it was possible that he mistakenly invented it (see Elms, page 13).

[10] Civilization and Its Discontents, page 80 (Sigmund Freud, 1930 / 1961 edition). Also cited in "Apocryphal Freud."

Photo by VisitGrosMorne.

The Fifth Reunion is the Hardest

For the GSB's Class of 2019, particularly the 108 members who I was privileged to have as students in The Art of Self-Coaching, but hopefully relevant to anyone who's obtained a competitive graduate degree in pursuit of your professional goals.

Having worked with over 1,000 MBA students during my career at Stanford's Graduate School of Business [1], I've had countless conversations about reunions, and I've concluded that the fifth is the hardest. Why? Because during business school you were artificially compressed into the uniform identity of "student," and this often yields a set of unrealistic expectations about subsequent life paths. And a few years after graduation differences in professional accomplishments become more visible, resulting in a heightened sense of social comparison. [2] The bad news is that this can be a significant source of stress and anxiety at a fifth reunion--but there's good news, too, over the long run.

The shared identity of "student" can become all-encompassing, particularly at a place like the GSB where you not only invested countless hours in group projects and interactive coursework, but also likely spent a great deal of social time together. As a result you may well have perceived yourself as a member of an egalitarian cohort. The GSB enhanced this perception by the school's de-emphasis of intra-class competition for grades. As a faculty member I generally appreciated this aspect of their policies. The primary guideline was that the average grade for all students in a section could not exceed a certain quantitative standard, which prevented grade inflation.

Further, although the members of the top ten percent of your class were designated as Arjay Miller Scholars, and some selective firms made it a priority to hire "Arjays," most prospective employers weren't particularly interested in business school grades, only the fact that you attended a program like the GSB. All of this made it less likely that you and your classmates viewed each other as rivals, which fostered a sense of openness and collegiality in the classroom. But a downside was a degree of obfuscation about the real differences in students' relative capabilities and performance.

Once you left graduate school and returned to the working world these artificial constraints were removed, and as early-career MBAs you began to experience an increasingly divergent range of professional outcomes. Almost all of you enjoy an extremely high standard of living relative to the population at large, but that's not how social comparison works, particularly among ambitious and competitive people. Humans measure ourselves against a comparison set consisting of people we view as similar to us, and how we stack up against others who aren't members of that group isn't all that salient.

I'm certainly not suggesting that our professional accomplishments should determine our sense of self-worth, nor is there a sharply defined and well-understood relationship between, for example, material wealth and well-being. [3] But our predisposition to rely on markers of career success as a source of social status is an impulse with deep roots in evolutionary psychology that can't simply be wished away because we find it problematic. As I've written before,

While our social orientation is critical in enabling our success as a species, it also poses a substantial challenge for each of us as individuals. We must navigate in-group competition, which becomes even fiercer in larger groups. We're hyper-aware of our relative social status and our shifting position within group hierarchies. And in order to accomplish these tasks effectively we're constantly scanning our interpersonal environment for potential threats and opportunities, which necessarily involves comparing ourselves to others--as UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky writes in The Myths of Happiness, "Most of the time, it's impossible not to compare ourselves with others... Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly." [4]

Changes in relative status as a function of professional accomplishments take some time to emerge, so these distinctions were probably less evident at your first reunion, when you and your classmates may have largely related to each other merely as former students. But in the years since graduation the effects of different professional paths have likely become much more pronounced. Some of this divergence is a function of your individual talent and effort, and some is a function of your industry and your organization. And much is a function of random chance, which is something we hate to admit to ourselves. [5]

I've talked with many GSB alumni who observed this shift in the social dynamic at their fifth reunion and found it challenging. Some felt awkward about the success they had achieved, while many felt the opposite, that they were failing to measure up to expectations somehow. What makes it worse, of course, is the pervasive sense that none of this can be discussed or even acknowledged. Here the GSB's idealistic vision of an egalitarian cohort finds itself severely tested by the realities of intra-elite competition.

As I noted above, there's bad news and good news. First, some more bad news: Intra-elite competition never ends. The status games available to you are infinite, should you have the good fortune--and the desire--to continue playing. When you were accepted into the GSB, you undoubtedly felt that you had "made it," and you enjoyed the status and exclusivity that differentiated you from your then-peers, some of whom may well have been bitterly disappointed by their rejection. And for a while membership in your GSB class was all that was needed to maintain that status. Five years after graduation, that's no longer sufficient, and the inevitability of social comparison and the corresponding need for status distinctions will be keenly felt--although hard to describe with much precision--at your fifth reunion.

But here's the good news: Somewhere between the fifth and tenth reunion, something changes for most people. The status games won't end--they're truly infinite, and some people will feel compelled to keep score as long as they live. And most of us continue to play in one way or another, if only because the prizes are so tempting--but even as we do, we realize how much more there is to life beyond these status games, and that they truly are games, no different from those played by children.

The causes of this shift in perspective vary widely. Some people achieve a lifelong dream, like financial freedom or fame in their field, and find that the sense of fulfillment is far more fleeting than they expected. Some people find professional accomplishments less meaningful in contrast with their experience as parents or caregivers. Some people suffer great setbacks or health problems that lead them to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for existence. Whatever the cause, the alumni I've talked to who felt uneasy or distressed at their fifth reunion uniformly felt much lighter at their tenth. They felt less competitive with their classmates and more connected--not necessarily with everyone, but with the people who mattered most to them.

I'll close with some recent remarks inspired by my work with clients, who must also decide whether and how to play the various status games available to them, and what really matters to them in this life, even as they pursue tremendously ambitious professional goals:

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you give up your ambitions or settle for achievements that feel insubstantial. Winning offers many benefits over losing, and I want you (and my clients) to win, by any definition you choose. But in the process you're going to have to face a fundamental reality: The more you win, the higher you climb, the tougher the competition. If your definition of "winning" rests upon your ability to obtain "more" than the people around you in order to feel "ahead," you will eventually, inevitably lose.

I'm also not suggesting that you should opt out of conventional competitions and live like a monk--my clients haven't done so, nor have I. And yet it's important to recognize that the yardsticks most readily available to assess your accomplishments--net worth, job title, social prominence, where you live--serve many valid purposes, but they do not, and cannot, measure your sense of meaning and purpose, the depth of your relationships, the feeling of a life well-lived. [6]

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Thank You, Stanford, and Goodbye!

[2] For more on social comparison, see the following:

• The Trap of Competition
• Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"
• The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 8: SUCCESS

[3] For more on well-being and happiness, see the following:

• Myths in the Science of Happiness (Ed Diener, Chapter 24 in The Science of Subjective Well-Being, Michael Eid and Randy Larson, editors, 2008)
• Understanding "The Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness
• The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 5: HAPPINESS

[4] The Trap of Competition

[5] Significance Junkies

[6] Learning How to Fall Behind

 

Photo by Gerry Dulay

Jennifer Ouyang Altman on "Empty Questions"

All too often our questions aren't truly open and honest inquiries. They may be loaded questions, freighted with biased assumptions. They may be leading questions, guiding the respondent to our preferred answer. Or they may simply be statements in disguise, efforts to appear open and honest that are anything but. The problem with these pseudo-questions is that they're never as clever or well-hidden as we think they are. To a respondent they feel hokey and theatrical, like an unwelcome pop quiz with all-too-obvious answers.

My colleague Jennifer Ouyang Altman has some outstanding guidance on how to avoid this and actually convey curiosity: Ask "empty" questions:

Every interaction is an opportunity to become more--or less--connected. You know what people find disconnecting? Perceived manipulation, which is especially offensive in the form of questioning, as if people can't see right through it. Shields go up.

How do we ask better questions? The goal is to be empty. What does that mean? It means releasing preconceived notions of what the answer is, having a relaxed curiosity, swinging freely. It means not forcing an agenda, not trying too hard, not fixing, saving, or correcting.

What kinds of questions stem from being empty?

Empowering questions that don't have a solution stuffed in them.

Stuffed: Should we send an email out?
Empowering: How do we get everyone up to speed?

Expanding questions that develop someone's thinking rather than constricting it.

Constricting: Can you do that?
Expanding: What would it take to do that?

Elevating questions that rise up above the trees to see the forest rather than staying in the weeds.

Weeds: How do we backfill this role as quickly as possible?
Elevating: Is this still the role we need?

Our questions can have the same intention, yet the impact of an empty question is radically different. Rather than ask, Why would we do that?, we can ask: What options have you explored? How did you choose this path? What issues do you see here?

By asking better questions--and truly listening to the response--we learn far more about other people's attitudes, motives, worldviews, values, and emotions, all of which enables us to forge stronger relationships. When I was sick earlier this year, the question that made me feel most heard, valued, and invited was the emptiest: What has it been like for you?

 

Adapted from the August 2023 issue of Jennifer's newsletter (which I highly recommend), with her gracious permission.

---

For Further Reading

Scott Ginsberg on Asking (Better) Questions

Compasses and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)

Questions for a New Leader

The Six Layers of Knowledge and Better Conversations

Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize

 

Photo by Lyza.

My Appearance on The Leadership Podcast

Jan Rutherford and Jim Vaselopulos are coaches who've been co-hosting The Leadership Podcast continuously since 2016, and they recently invited me to join them for Episode 393. We discussed my unexpected move to a sheep and cattle ranch after 30 years in San Francisco; my former work at Stanford, including founding The Art of Self-Coaching and teaching Interpersonal Dynamics, aka "Touchy Feely"; and the leadership challenges I see regularly in my coaching practice.

• Streaming Audio and Highlights
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Soundcloud

Recorded November 29, 2023. Published January 24, 2024.

Thoughts on the Ed Bot (Writing, Coaching and A.I.)

Last week the founders of Heyday, Samiur Rahman and Sam DeBrule, launched Ask Ed, which enables anyone to enter a question and receive an A.I.-generated answer derived from an interpretation of the contents of this website. I'm both honored and tickled that my work here, comprising more than 1,200 posts over the last two decades, could prove useful in this way. (My amusement was only heightened when my colleague Paul Loper dubbed this system "the Ed Bot.")

While the Ed Bot is certainly an application of new technology, it's consistent with the ethos that's informed my writing since I began publishing here in late 2004 and with my approach to coaching since launching my practice in 2006. I also think it has something to teach us about the future of coaching and other helping professions.

Why I Write

I write for two reasons: to learn, and to share what I learn with coaching clients. It's gratifying when anyone who isn't a client finds something I've written of interest, but that's a bonus. I don't write to monetize what I've written by selling access to it or via advertising. That's not a criticism of anyone who relies on those business models--writing is hard work, and I'm all in favor of anything that helps a writer get paid.

But I've found that what works best for me is monetizing the time I spend with clients in coaching sessions, which allows me to write entirely on my own schedule, in my own way, on topics that are of greatest interest to me and my clients. This also allows me to make my writing freely available under a Creative Commons license--anyone can copy, share and adapt my work, as long as they attribute the original to me and made their version available to others under the same conditions. (That's essentially what Samiur and Sam have done with the Ed Bot.)

Writing and Coaching

By no means is being a writer a prerequisite for being a coach. I have many outstanding colleagues who write rarely or not at all. But writing is deeply intertwined with coaching for me. My initial work on this blog played a meaningful role in my decision to pursue coaching as a professional path, and in the years since it's been instrumental in my efforts to advance my craft and to be of greatest use to my clients.

One of the reasons I love coaching so much is that there's always more to learn. This includes coaching as a discipline, of course, but there's an endless range of topics that come up in the course of my work with clients, from psychology and group dynamics to labor and employment law, from neuroscience and decision-making to negotiations and sales. I'm not an expert in any of these fields, but my clients aren't looking to me for "the answer"--instead, they rely on me to be sufficiently well-informed to ask the most useful and important questions. And it's not enough for me to merely research these topics--to truly integrate what I've learned, I need to write about it.

Writing and A.I.

That's one reason why I don't use A.I. as a writer--it might yield a serviceable final product, but bypassing the labor would short-circuit the learning. I believe A.I. has a role to play, but I suspect its utility will be in condensing bodies of knowledge to assist in the creative process, not in creation itself. I'm reminded of insights from two brilliant 20th-century thinkers who foresaw and contributed to many of the developments that we're living through in today's A.I. revolution. In 1971 Herb Simon (1916-2001), who founded the School of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon, noted that the scarce resource is attention, not information:

Whether a computer will contribute to the solution of an information-overload problem, or instead compound it, depends on the distribution of its own attention among four classes of activities: listening, storing, thinking, and speaking. A general design principle can be put as follows: An information-processing subsystem (a computer or new organization unit) will reduce the net demand on the rest of the organization's attention only if it absorbs more information previously received by others than it produces that is, if it listens and thinks more than it speaks. [1]

And in 1988 Russell Ackoff (1919-2009), a pioneer in systems thinking and management science who taught at Wharton, articulated the distinctions among information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom:

Information, knowledge and understanding all focus on efficiency. Wisdom adds value, which requires the mental function we call judgment. Evaluations of efficiency are all based on a logic which, in principle, can be specified, and therefore can be programmed and automated. These principles are general and impersonal. We can speak of the efficiency of the act independent of the actor. Not so for judgment. The value of an act is never independent of the actor, and seldom is the same for for two actors even when they act in the same way. Efficiency is inferrable from appropriate grounds; ethical and aesthetic values are not. They are unique and personal. At least this is how it seems to me. From all this I infer that wisdom-generating systems are ones that man will never be able to assign to automata. It may well be that wisdom, which is essential to the effective pursuit of ideals, and the pursuit of ideals itself, are the characteristics that differentiate man from machines. [2]

Coaching and A.I.

These insights have relevance not only for writing, but also for coaching. In the post announcing "Ask Ed," Sam rightly takes pride in Heyday's accomplishment while also setting expectations accordingly: "Is it as good as having Ed as your coach? No. Is it Ed who is answering your questions? Of course not! Will you still think it’s awesome? Hope so!"

I do think it's awesome, and I have no doubt that advancements in A.I. await us that will make the Ed Bot look simplistic. And I'm equally confident that there will always be a need for a human in the process--although what that looks like will certainly evolve. In a sense, the Ed Bot is merely the latest development in a continuous process of recalculating how I and other coaches add value. Here I believe we'll be well-served by bearing Simon and Ackoff's ideas in mind, and perhaps it's appropriate that I'm left with more questions than answers:

• The cost of information and the value of attention are inversely correlated. When information is essentially free, how can I best help clients preserve their increasingly-valuable attention? How can I help solve my clients' information-overload problems, rather than compounding them? [3]
• What are the definitions of information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom in the context of coaching? How will I ensure that I'm providing clients with less of the former and more of the latter? How might I emphasize value rather than efficiency in the conduct of my practice? [4]

 

Thanks to Samiur Rahman, Sam DeBrule and their collegues at Heyday.

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Footnotes

[1] Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World [PDF] (Herb Simon, pages 37-72 in Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest, Martin Greenberger, editor, 1971)

[2] From Data to Wisdom [PDF] (Russell Ackoff, Presidential Address to the International Society for General Systems Research, St. Louis, June 1988). An edited version of this speech was published the following year as a journal article, From Data to Wisdom (Russell Ackoff, Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, 1989), also available in Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management (1999).

[3] For more on this topic, see A Better Information Diet.

[4] I also reference Simon and Ackoff in a related post, Drowning in Feedback.

 

Photo by Fred Seibert.

My Appearance with Daniel and Greg at OnGrowth

Serial entrepreneur Daniel Kivatinos and founder and Stanford PhD Greg Wientjes have hosted the OnGrowth podcast since 2017, and I was honored when they asked me to join them recently. It was a really fun conversation that covered a wide range of topics: my career at Stanford as an MBA student and Lecturer, the launch of my coaching practice, the difference between coaching and therapy, challenges faced by leaders in my practice, and what it's like to work with me. Our 60-minute conversation is available on the following platforms:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Spotify

Many thanks to Daniel and Greg for having me, and to the mentors and colleagues I mentioned: Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, David Bradford, Evelyn Williams, Garth Saloner, Mary Ann Huckabay, Rebecca Zucker, Ricki Frankel, Scott Bristol, and Vince Stehle. Thanks as well as the 1,000+ Stanford MBAs I had the honor of working with from 2007 to 2021.

Talking with Colleagues About Suffering

A theme in my practice is the leader who's aware or senses that a colleague is suffering and would like to offer support but is unsure how to broach the topic--and a version of this occurs in my own work. In most cases when a client is suffering in some way our coaching sessions provide them with a setting in which they can express those feelings freely. But at times it's clear to me that a client is suffering and yet it's not the focal point of their agenda, or even on the agenda at all.

It's not my place to determine our agenda--that's the client's job--but it's not uncommon for people to want to talk about something while also feeling ambivalent about raising the topic. If I ignore my intuition and defer to their stated agenda, we might miss a meaningful opportunity. And yet the client must always feel a sense of agency in our work together.

It's complicated, but at least I have the benefit of being a coach, and in my relationships with clients it's expected that at times we'll explore troubling and even painful topics. But my clients may not have that kind of social contract with their colleagues, making it hard to know how to proceed when they sense that a co-worker is suffering. If you're in this situation, here are some suggestions:

Take the Initiative

Some people prefer to suffer in private, or they may be reluctant to discuss it with colleagues. They may resist or even resent our efforts to address the topic, and we should be careful to avoid "inflicting help." [1] But most of us tend to err on the side of caution, and while we tell ourselves we're "being sensitive," this also reflects our fear and anxiety. We're afraid that our efforts will be rebuffed, and we'll feel embarrassed. So instead we sit back and wait, hoping that when they need our help they'll ask for it.

Sometimes this is true...and sometimes it's not. The suffering person may in fact feel embarrassed themselves, and they may want us to relieve them of the burden of initiating the conversation. They may wonder if we see their suffering at all, or if we even care. Or they may conclude that this isn't the kind of relationship, or the kind of company, where we talk about such things.

So find the courage to take the initiative. This will be fraught, and it will feel risky, and sometimes you'll get it wrong. But you'll only improve your ability to sense the right time and to find the right language with practice. [2] Extend the invitation, and don't be discouraged if it isn't accepted at first. Try again later. Don't insist--the other person has to feel in control--but by signaling your interest you make it easier for them to respond when they're ready.

Normalize Vulnerability

Acknowledging suffering often evokes a sense of vulnerability in both parties. This is almost certainly true for the person who's suffering, who may believe that such acknowledgment is a form of weakness that will leave them feeling exposed and unsafe. They may worry that they'll be seen as less competent or capable, or that they'll be considered "emotional," a liability in many professional settings.

But this is also likely true for the leader seeking to offer support, particularly when it's unclear if such support will be welcome. The leader may lack experience in having these conversations, or this may be a new frontier in their relationship with this individual. Or the person's suffering may be apparent while the underlying cause is unknown, compounding the leader's uncertainty about whether or how to proceed.

The paradox is that in most settings expressions of vulnerability trigger an empathetic response, a mechanism that may be rooted in our evolutionary psychology. [3] This isn't guaranteed, of course, and it's necessary to take small steps at first and read the signs with care. A starting point is conveying any trepidation you might feel and letting the other person know that it's OK if they feel similarly.

Understand What's Needed

Leaders often rise to their position on the basis of their effectiveness as problem-solvers, and that's an identity as much as a skillset. In some circumstances colleagues are seeking a solution that will solve the problem, but much of the time there's none to be found, or at least not one that the leader can provide. This is certainly true of our greatest difficulties--a grievous illness, the loss of a loved one, a global crisis. [4]

If you find yourself in such a discussion there are many ways to offer useful help and support, but it's important to understand what the other person actually wants. Even when you don't have a definitive solution, they may still value your advice on how to address or think about the problem. But note the tendency of problem-solvers to offer advice, even when it hasn't been asked for.

Before jumping in to share your perspective, be sure to slow down and listen. The experience of truly feeling heard is surprisingly rare in organizational life, where people often listen in order to reply. Put your advice on hold, at least until it's requested, and just be fully present. You may find that this is sufficient.

And you may also find that something more is called for, even--and perhaps especially--when there's no advice to give and listening isn't enough. The other person may simply need a literal or virtual hug, which can be daunting territory to navigate in organizational life. While it's essential to be aware of and respect another person's boundaries, we can be so cautious about avoiding offense that we inadvertently appear callous. Tone of voice and body language can go a long way toward expressing the sentiment. A murmur, a sigh, a moment of silence, or holding our hand to our chest can speak volumes.

Why Bother?

All of this work is easier if we take steps early in our professional relationships to lay a foundation for more meaningful dialogue later on. One of the most straightforward ways for a leader to accomplish this is by scheduling regular one-on-ones with direct reports, honoring that commitment by minimizing cancellations or rescheduling, and ensuring that employees feel a sense of ownership over the agenda. [5] And yet it will still require effort and a modicum of risk, and a leader may well ask, Why bother?

One very pragmatic reason is that people who are suffering are incapable of doing their best work. They may be in the grip of a threat response, aka a "fight, flight or freeze response," which will impair creative thinking and render them more risk-averse and prone to distraction. [6] Talking about their distress and anxiety can play a significant role in helping them manage these feelings, enabling them to redirect their focus to other matters. [7]

I would add that our professional relationships have the potential to be sources of belonging and connection [8], not merely vehicles for value creation, and we realize this potential fully only when we're willing to have hard conversations. This doesn't mean that companies are "families"--I agree with Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke that this is an inappropriate metaphor, and that colleagues are best-served by viewing each other as fellow members of an elite team who earn their positions by virtue of their performance. [9]

Cultivating the ability to have hard conversations about suffering develops a set of skills that are equally valuable in hard conversations about performance: the courage to speak up, a sense for the right timing and the right language, comfort with vulnerability. This is yet another reason why "accountability and empathy are not mutually exclusive." [10]

 

This is a companion piece to Talking with Colleagues About Divisive Topics.

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Footnotes

[1] Inflicting Help

[2] Conscious Competence in Practice

[3] Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts (Dacher Keltner interviewed by David DiSalvo, Scientific American, 2009)

[4] This section is adapted from What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?).

[5] How to Have Better One-on-Ones

[6] Neuroscience, Leadership and David Rock's SCARF Model

[7] Talking About Feelings

[8] Abilene: Loneliness and Belonging in Organizational Life

[9] Shopify CEO email to managers: We are not a family (Tobias Lütke, internal email, 2020, shared by Lukas Naugle, LinkedIn, 2021)

[10] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

 

Photo by Christopher Matson.

How to Have Better One-on-Ones

One-on-one meetings with employees are seemingly among a leader's most straightforward tasks. Two colleagues have yet another conversation about work--what could be simpler? But a theme in my practice is that a more deliberate approach to one-on-ones can turn them from perfunctory exchanges into much higher sources of leverage. [1] If you're a leader who'd like to hold better one-on-ones, here are some questions to ask yourself and a set of proposals to consider:

If you're not holding formal one-on-ones, why not?

Andy Grove, the late CEO of Intel, noted that managers from other companies viewed formal one-on-ones as unnecessary, telling him, "I don't need scheduled meetings with my supervisor [or subordinate]; I see [them] several times a day." [2] I sometimes work with early-stage CEOs who feel similarly and view formal one-on-ones as superfluous bureaucracy. But this approach has several problems.

Even when you're communicating frequently with employees, it's likely that those interactions are highly tactical, with with little time devoted to more strategic issues, and no time at all to address the quality of your working relationship or anything of similar complexity. And, as Grove continued, "there is an enormous difference between a casual encounter by a supervisor and subordinate, or even a meeting to resolve a specific problem, and a one-on-one." [3]

The absence of formal one-on-ones means that when you do schedule a meeting to address a bigger challenge, you signal to your employees that such events are for "tough conversations," rendering them more stressful and less likely to succeed. (And this may be equally true when an employee schedules a one-on-one with you.)

Alternatively, holding formal one-on-ones on a regular basis normalizes the experience, allowing you and your employees to grow more comfortable addressing complex or difficult topics. Simultaneously, it highlights that this is a particular type of conversation and not just an ordinary meeting, motivating both you and your employees to be more thoughtful about how you prepare and participate.

Who merits a one-on-one?

Having formalized the process, it's important to assess how you're allocating the time you have available for one-on-ones, which is one of your organization's most precious resources. This isn't self-aggrandizing--it's simply a consequence of the fact that your attention is finite. [4] And a one-on-one meeting involves a major "investment" of attention from which you should expect a substantial "return," just as you would with any other limited resource. [5]

In addition to meeting with their direct reports, some of my clients initiate or make themselves available for skip-level one-on-ones with more junior employees. This practice can provide you with a new perspective on the organization, but it comes with potential dilemmas. It doesn't scale, and can leave you spread too thin. It can also short-circuit normal managerial channels--although if you have concerns about one of your direct reports, this may be the point.

I've had clients who levelled an employee and offered ongoing one-on-ones as a way to cushion the blow, but again, this doesn't scale and is generally a short-term fix. The key is recognizing that people want the leader's attention because it's a valuable resource, and beyond a certain point in your career it's unlikely that you'll be able to meet this demand entirely without compromising on other responsibilities.

What's the appropriate cadence? How long should a one-on-one last?

Here Grove offers some useful guidelines:

How often should you have one-on-ones? Or put another way, how do you decide how often somebody needs such a meeting? The answer is in the job- or task-relevant maturity of each of your subordinates. In other words, how much experience does a given subordinate have with the specific task at hand? This is not the same as the experience they have in general...

The subordinate should feel that there is enough time to broach and get into thorny issues... I feel that a one-on-one should last an hour at a minimum. Anything less, in my experience, tends to make the subordinate confine themselves to simple things that can be handled quickly. [6]

Given that your employees' "job- or task-relevant maturity" likely varies, the cadence of regular one-on-ones need not be uniform, nor is there a single best practice. Most of my clients hold weekly one-on-ones with most of their direct reports, but meeting every other week is also common. A longer cadence with direct reports is less typical, but skip-level one-on-ones are often monthly or quarterly. Ultimately it's up to you and each employee to determine what works best.

The key is predictability, so you should only ever cancel or reschedule a one-on-one as a last resort. If you do this repeatedly you send a very clear message that it's a low-priority event, and your employees will act accordingly. And if you have a direct report who's reluctant to hold one-on-ones or who cancels on you, this merits further investigation. It may be a sign of a deeper problem in the relationship [7], or it may simply be that the quality of your one-on-ones needs to be improved. Make clear your desire for one-on-ones to be valuable to them, solicit feedback on your current arrangements, and enlist them in joint problem-solving.

What's on the agenda? How should we prepare?

As with cadence, there's no universal template for agenda-setting or preparation, but there are some general principles to bear in mind. Grove stresses that the employee should feel a sense of ownership:

A key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by [them]... So the [subordinate] should be asked to prepare an outline, which is very important because it forces them to think through in advance all of the issues and points [they] plan to raise. Moreover, with an outline, the supervisor knows at the outset what is to be covered and can therefore help to set the pace of the meeting according to the "meatiness" of the items on the agenda. An outline also provides a framework for supporting information, which the subordinate should prepare in advance. The subordinate should then walk the supervisor through all the material.

What should be covered in a one-on-one?... The most important criterion governing matters to be talked about is that they be issues that preoccupy and nag the subordinate. These are often obscure and take time to surface, consider, and resolve. [8]

Claire Hughes Johnson, the former COO of Stripe, expresses similar sentiments:

I generally tell folks, especially more experienced people, that the 1:1 is their time. We set up a mutual doc that we can both edit, and we track action items and link out to goals and career conversation notes. Beyond that, I ask the individual to propose each 1:1 agenda, and I only edit the doc to add in agenda item suggestions when I have them. [9]

When your employees own the agenda, not only is this much more efficient for you, it also ensures that the discussion will focus on issues that are most important to them. But having your employees set the agenda doesn't mean that you have no input, as Grove and Hughes Johnson make clear. You can also give feedback to an employee on the quality of their agenda if you conclude that the time isn't being well-spent. My clients who've asked their employees to take responsibility for agenda-setting typically find it a useful exercise in revealing who's well-prepared and who's not.

A particular form that lack of preparation can take is the employee who treats the one-on-one primarily or even exclusively as a vehicle to report out. If you find yourself listening to extensive updates that should have been written reports or automated dashboards for you to review in advance, you can let them know that it's a missed opportunity to have a more meaningful dialogue.

How should one-on-ones be conducted? What role should I play as leader?

An employee who sets the agenda and provides you with sufficient time to digest any preparatory materials enables you to add value not by directing the conversation or even having answers to all their questions, but by posing questions yourself. While there are limits on the extent to which you can serve as an employee's "coach," you can readily employ coaching as a methodology. [10] This not only scales, it also allows you to add value in one-on-ones even with senior employees who possess specialized expertise that you lack. Grove recommended what he called "dialectic management":

What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? They should facilitate the subordinate's expression of what's going on and what's bothering them. The supervisor is there to learn and to coach... How is this done? By applying Grove's Principle of Dialectic Management, "Ask one more question!" When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all they want to say about a subject, [the supervisor] should ask another question. [11]

And your questions should include inquiring about your employee's state of mind and well-being. Hughes Johnson notes that a one-on-one should always begin by "asking how someone is doing--checking in really matters." [12] Grove firmly agrees: "The supervisor should also encourage the discussion of heart-to-heart issues during one-on-ones, because this is the perfect forum for getting at subtle and deep work-related problems." [13]

It's by attending to the logistical details above that you create an environment in which employees are willing to truly tell you how they're doing and be candid with you on "heart-to-heart" issues. Holding formal one-on-ones that are rarely cancelled or rescheduled and for which both of you are fully prepared goes a long way toward creating the psychological safety that's necessary for real openness. This doesn't mean that you should avoid contentious issues, as I've noted previously:

Psychological safety entails candid and direct communication. It requires asking and answering hard questions. It does not mean "being nice." It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or fraught topics to ensure that no one experiences distress. To the contrary, a setting in which people are reluctant to be candid and direct for fear of triggering any distress in others is psychologically unsafe. [14]

I opened with the idea that better one-on-ones can be a great source of leverage for a leader, and I'll close with Grove's thoughts on the same subject:

What is the leverage of a one-on-one? Let's say you have a one-on-one with your subordinate every two weeks, and it lasts one and a half hours. Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate's work for two weeks, or for some eighty-plus hours, and also upgrade your understanding of what [they're] doing. Clearly one-on-ones can exert enormous leverage. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] 1x 10x 100x (On Leverage)

[2] High Output Management, page 73 (Andy Grove, 1st edition, 1983)

[3] Ibid.

[4] Beyond Simple Multi-Tasking: Continuous Partial Attention (Linda Stone, 2009)

[5] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention

[6] Grove, pages 73-74.

[7] Better Working Relationships

[8] Grove, page 75.

[9] Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company-Building, page 399 (Claire Hughes Johnson, 2023)

[10] For more on coaching as a leadership tool (and its limitations), see the following:

• Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)
• How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize
• Investment vs. Attachment

[11] Grove, pages 75-76.

[12] Hughes Johnson, page 399.

[13] Grove, page 77.

[14] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[15] Grove, page 77-78.

 

Photo by World Bank Photo Collective.