Ed Batista

The Mythical COO

A theme in my practice is the CEO whose company has reached the point where there are substantial gaps in leadership capacity, succession planning, and operational rigor, and sufficient resources to attract senior talent. In some cases these gaps are best addressed through a series of executive hires, but it's common for a CEO to envision filling them all at once in a single stroke. They're dreaming of that mythical creature, the Chief Operating Officer.

I'm not suggesting that COOs are figments of our imagination. I've had a number of them as clients over the years, and many of my other clients have hired one or worked alongside one. What's mythical about the position is the all-too-common fantasy that there's a pool of candidates whose experience as COO fits a company's needs and the CEO's vision. The reality is that there's no single job description for "COO," and it can mean something wildly different from one company to another:

• CEO-in-waiting, i.e. the designated successor.
• A capable successor to the CEO, i.e. emergency backup.
• A potential successor to the CEO on an extended tryout.
• An "operational CEO" who manages most (or all) internal functions, while the CEO handles external duties.
• The "first among equals" on the executive team with higher status than others.
• The CEO's "right hand" who tackles special projects.
• A glorified VP Ops who may not really merit a C-level title.
• A co-founder who lost the power struggle for CEO.
• Any combination of the above.

And while a COO may have fit one of these descriptions when they started the job, it's quite possible that their role evolved into something entirely different over the course of their tenure. So when a CEO determines that it's time to make this hire, it's far more difficult than with other executive positions to find someone who's done the job before. Yes, a candidate may have "COO" on their resume, but what does that really mean? Which of the jobs above have they actually done? What job are they doing now? And what job do they want?

The first step in resolving this challenge is for a CEO to fully clarify just what needs they want a COO to fill, and, if at all possible, to reach agreement with current executives, Board members, and other stakeholders who may have their own understanding of what a "COO" does. Achieving this alignment not only makes the search process more efficient, because everyone has a shared understanding of what they're looking for, but it also minimizes the risk that a newly-hired COO will face divergent expectations from different parties.

Obtaining this buy-in from existing stakeholders can itself pose a substantial challenge, however. Other members of the executive team will be worried about a loss of power and influence, whether or not the CEO envisions the COO as their successor. This anxiety will be heightened if the CEO is planning to level one or more current reports under the new COO. And this is often the case, both because the CEO is hoping to free up time and attention, and because experienced COO candidates will expect to have a sufficiently broad managerial scope.

There's no simple solution, but timing is key. It's unhelpful to announce the intention to hire a COO too soon, as that can unsettle the executive team, and the search is usually a lengthy one. It's equally problematic to announce the hire too late, particularly when execs have concerns about their ranking in the new hierarchy. I advise clients to err on the side of transparency. If someone is going to resist being levelled or become a flight risk, it's generally better to know sooner rather than later.

Investors and other stakeholders can be skeptical about a CEO's plan to hire a COO, and sometimes this is well-founded. They've likely seen COOs fail to fulfill expectations for any number of reasons. A presumptive successor can lack the capabilities to step into the CEO role. A heavy-handed leadership style or interpersonal issues can lead to a failure to integrate with the executive team. A lack of clarity on the job description can cause frustration on all sides. Or an inexperienced candidate can convince a CEO to give them an opportunity, but they may never grow into the C-level title.

This isn't to say that a CEO should simply defer to these concerns. The CEO knows more about the evolving needs of their executive team than anyone else, and, unless the Board has approval over executive hires, they're not the CEO's boss. But a CEO who's facing skepticism about a COO hire is well-served by ensuring that such concerns are aired and addressed, even if agreement isn't achievable. Because the goal isn't simply to fill the role, but to ensure that an incoming COO is set up for success. And what's the rush? It will almost certainly be a long search.

 

Questions to Consider

• To what extent do we have clarity on the various needs we expect a COO to fill?
• Where might our respective expectations be out of alignment?
• Is the COO is a factor in CEO succession planning? If not today, might that change in the future?
• Does the CEO's relationship with the COO differ from their relationship with other executives?
• What is the relationship between the COO and other executives? What is their relative status?
• How do other executives feel about this relationship and their relative status?
• How might any of this change as the COO's capabilities and ambitions evolve?

For Further Reading

The Fine Art of Levelling

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 3 (On Attrition)

Conform to the Culture (Just Enough)

The Evolution of the Executive Team

Not Your Friends. Not Your Enemies. Not Your Boss.

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

 

Photo by Carole Raddato.

Loyalty Oaths and Kicks in the Ass

I don't care what the people outside say. Do you agree with me?... Let me ask you this: Are you in it? Let me ask you this again: Are you in it to win it?

~Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan at a company forum [1]

Pointed questions like these, when posed by a leader to employees, are a type of loyalty oath. There's only one acceptable answer, and it's not "Let me think about it." When a client tells me they're thinking about taking this approach to rally their team, I'm reminded of psychologist Frederick Herzberg's classic work on motivation:

The surest and least circumlocuted way of getting someone to do something is to administer a kick in the pants--to give what might be called the KITA. There are various forms of KITA, and here are some of them...

Negative Psychological KITA. This has several advantages over negative physical KITA...If the employee does complain, he or she can always be accused of being paranoid; there is no tangible evidence of an actual attack. Now, what does negative KITA accomplish? If I kick you in the rear (physically or psychologically), who is motivated? I am motivated; you move! Negative KITA does not lead to motivation, but to movement. [2]

The problem is that sometimes a loyalty oath is nothing more than a "negative psychological kick in the ass." And just as a kick in the ass generates movement but not motivation, an oath can yield an affirmative response without generating actual loyalty. It's entirely appropriate and even admirable for an organization to seek to build a culture in which the freely-given answer to such questions is, "Hell, yes!" But all too often these questions are posed in such a way that the desired answer is not freely given, but, rather, coerced.

So if you're a leader who'd like to hear employees say, "Hell, yes!" while knowing that such fervor is heartfelt, what can you do? How might you cultivate meaningful loyalty without resorting to kicks in the ass?

Safety

The concept of "psychological safety" has gained currency in recent years, in large part due to the work of Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. [3] But it's often misunderstood as "No one's feelings can get hurt," which creates an environment in which people are fearful of causing offense, stifling open discussion. In such a setting the most hypersensitive person who's least able to regulate their emotions dictates the culture for everyone else. What is actually meant by psychological safety is something quite different, as I've written before:

To be very clear: 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. [4]

The value of safety in building genuine loyalty is that in a safe environment people feel free to raise doubts and concerns, rather than obliged to keep quiet. This isn't to say that as a leader you should simply defer to such anxieties. But in an unsafe environment those concerns and doubts don't disappear because they're not expressed. They may well get worse, and failing to discuss them is a missed opportunity to alleviate them. [5]

It's not the case that the use of social pressure to evoke loyalty is always illegitimate--see the final section below. There's ample evidence that groups have a substantial effect on individuals' attitudes and behavior, and this has the potential not only to foster a strong sense of group identity, but also to render the group unsafe for dissenters. [6] Companies aren't cults or street gangs, and you have to utilize social pressure responsibly, not to stifle disagreement. Again, the key is ensuring that people feel free to voice a wide range of views.

Reciprocity

Loyalty is ultimately a matter of influence. An oath can be extracted under duress, but coercion doesn't yield sustainable change--true loyalty is given, not taken. And influence is reciprocal: Employees are open to your influence to the extent that you're open to theirs. The leading scholar on the subject of influence is psychologist Robert Cialdini--more on him below--and he's written about the important role played by reciprocity throughout human history:

One of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us [is] the rule of reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us... A widely shared and strongly held feeling of future obligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution, because it meant that one person could give something (for example, food, energy, care), to another with confidence that it was not being lost. [7]

So when seeking to inspire loyalty among employees, you must show loyalty in return. This can take many forms, from company-wide initiatives to personal gestures. At the organizational level, employees will certainly assess your loyalty to them as a function of how vigorously you strive to retain them through periods of difficulty. Layoffs are sometimes necessary, and I've coached many leaders facing this challenge in recent years. But even then you can demonstrate loyalty by taking steps to make the process less painful. [8]

At the personal level, you can show loyalty by expressing support to a direct report who's struggling. This does not mean tolerating under-performance, but, rather, providing clear and direct critical feedback [9], offering resources such as coaching [10], and, should a transition become necessary, conducting it with honesty, fairness and dignity. [11]

Commitment

The affirmative response generated by a loyalty oath is a form of compliance. [12] Compliance is useful and even necessary under certain circumstances, but it's less useful when leading highly-skilled knowledge workers. [13] The pressure to comply will hold such people in place temporarily, but over time the most talented will leave, seeking an environment that affords them more agency and choice, including the freedom to respond to a loyalty oath with questions and concerns.

The alternative to compliance is commitment, a far more robust expression of loyalty, but one that also takes more work to establish and maintain. Rather than merely obtaining compliance by administering an oath, building commitment requires an open dialogue, additional efforts to gain influence, and the cultivation of a set of norms.

In an open dialogue, as the leader you must be willing to engage in tough conversations. This doesn't mean you have to defer to anyone who raises questions and concerns, but a free-flowing exchange of views in which disagreements are welcome will enable you to surface and address those issues, rather than suppress them. This process will present you with extensive opportunities to exert influence.

In addition to reciprocity, Cialdini has identified a set of principles through which we reliably influence others, including several that are relevant in obtaining commitment. [14] We're more open to the influence of people who are both authoritative and likeable, so it's important to strike a balance. Your grasp of the facts and logical reasoning will make you a credible authority figure, but your tone and demeanor are equally significant. Far too often leaders emphasize the former at the expense of the latter, missing opportunities to build influence through warmth and personal connection. [15]

When employees are committed, their loyalty is reflected in a set of norms, which I've defined as "social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave." [16] Note that employees who are merely compliant haven't adopted loyalty as a norm--they're responding to pressure. And when the pressure's off, their loyalty will vanish with their compliance.

When Loyalty Oaths Work

If loyalty oaths don't always yield loyalty, why do leaders employ them? When do they actually work? When you've built a foundation of safety, reciprocity and commitment, then you've created the conditions under which employees are far more likely to respond to a loyalty oath with a heartfelt "Hell, yes!" This is the result of two additional principles of influence identified by Cialdini:

Social Proof: "One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle [of social proof] applies especially to the way we decide what determines correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it." [17]

Consistency: "Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision." [18]

This is why loyalty oaths are often administered in public, and why leaders repeatedly remind employees that they have previously "made a choice or taken a stand." But bear in mind that there are no short cuts here. The leader who resorts to an oath without taking the time to create safety, demonstrate reciprocity, and earn commitment is really just delivering a kick in the ass. And "if I kick you in the rear, who is motivated? I am motivated; you move!"

 

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Footnotes

[1] Howard Schultz Is Back-Seat Driving Starbucks. That’s a Problem for His Successor. (Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2024). In fairness to Narashimhan, he's clearly under an immense amount of pressure as his predecessor Schultz takes to social media to publicly air concerns about the company's performance, and there's no indication that Starbucks employees resented these questions--but there's also no indication that employees rallied enthusiastically as a result. I suspect the effect was neutral at best.

[2] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968 / republished 2003)

[3] For more on Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety:

• Make Your Employees Feel Psychologically Safe (Martha Lagace interviewing Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2018)
• How Fearless Organizations Succeed (strategy+business, 2018; excerpted from Edmondson's book below)
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (2018)
• Building a psychologically safe workplace [11:26 video] (TEDxHGSE, 2014)

[4] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[5] Talking About Feelings

[6] For more on social pressure, group identity, and loyalty:

• Social Conformity and Group Pressure (Jessica Schrader discussing the work of Solomon Asch, Psychology Today, 2023)
• In-Group Loyalty and the Punishment of Corruption (Hector Solaz, Catherine De Vries, and Roosmarijn de Geus, Comparative Political Studies, 2018)
• Social Psychology of Gangs [PDF] (DaJung Woo, Howard Giles, Michael Hogg, and Liran Goldman, The Handbook of Gangs, 2015)

[7] Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, pages 17-18 (Robert Cialdini, 1993)

[8] Making Layoffs Less Painful

[9] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[10] Getting Coaching for Your Team

[11] Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[12] This passage is adapted from Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change).

[13] What Peter Drucker Knew About 2020 (Rick Wartzman, Harvard Business Review, 2014)

[14] Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001). In addition to the book cited above, this classic article provides the best overview of Cialdini's work.

[15] Connect, Then Lead (Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut and John Neffinger, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

[16] Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

[17] Cialdini 1993, page 116

[18] Ibid, page 57

 

Image: Oath of the Horatii (detail) by Jacques Louis-David, 1785. Photo by Steven Zucker.

Lessons from Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna

I'm skeptical of glowing CEO profiles. When we put leaders on pedestals, we often set them up for a fall. That said, Ben Cohen's recent Wall Street Journal piece on Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna offers some interesting insights. [1] While it would be a classic example of the fundamental attribution error to give Vigna too much credit for the company's stellar performance, he's clearly made a meaningful contribution since taking on the role in 2021. [2]

Respect for tradition, with a fresh perspective.

Vigna cares deeply about the Ferrari tradition of excellence, dating back to his childhood when he was a devoted fan of the company's Formula 1 racing team. But his training in the semiconductor industry gives him a new perspective on the brand: "It's a luxury company where, contrary to other luxury companies, technology plays an important role."

There's a noteworthy contrast here with Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer. Founded in Seattle in 1916, Boeing may have been seeking a fresh perspective when they relocated their headquarters to Chicago in 2001. But in the process they seem to have lost their traditional focus on engineering, laying the groundwork for a host of serious production problems today. [3]

Cultural evolution.

Respect for tradition doesn't mean no change at all. Vigna was dismayed to find an unnecessarily complex and multi-layered organizational structure, and he took steps to simplify it:

The problem, he discovered, was that Ferrari was being weighed down by its "bureaucratic mass index," his name for the excess layers of an organization... At one point, Vigna counted nine levels of employees in a cybersecurity meeting and noticed that only the lowest-ranking person had anything useful to say. He restructured groups and reduced the number of organizational levels.

But these changes appear to have been measured, not sweeping:

When you change the culture of a company, it's never a revolution. It's an evolution. If you have a revolution, you will have a lot of passive resistance and you will be inefficient. You will was a lot of energy for a small gain.

A freer flow of information.

When Vigna became CEO, he was concerned that the company's structure was preventing important information from reaching him. He began his tenure by interviewing 300 employees from throughout the company, and he didn't stop there:

Vigna also sought out the people who had spent the most time in Ferraris: the test drivers... He bumped the test drivers from six levels below the CEO to three with the goal of accelerating the flow of information. "They cannot be nested under the engineers," Vigna said. "Otherwise it's like asking the server how is the wine."

While I thoroughly enjoyed Cohen's piece on Vigna, this post is also just a good excuse to share not only the gorgeous photo above--possibly a 225 Sport Spider from the 1950s--but also one of my favorite videos of all time:

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Footnotes

[1] He Loves Speed, Hates Bureaucracy and Told Ferrari: Go Faster (Ben Cohen, The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2024)

[2] Roberto Fernandez, one of my best professors in business school, described the fundamental attribution error as "ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation." The original research was also conducted at Stanford in the 1970s: The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (Lee Ross, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, L. Berkowitz, editor, pages 173-220, 1977)

[3] Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago (Bill George, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, January 24, 2024)

 

Photo by Bill Abbott.

Leader as Referee

A theme in my practice is the leader with a team of employees who are consistently embroiled in internal conflict. While purely interpersonal factors may contribute to this state of affairs, there are usually additional contextual or structural issues that transcend individual personalities. [1] For example, these teams often operate in an environment with variable compensation plans, such as sales or investing.

These teams are typically less interdependent than operating teams that win or lose as a unit. Team members may even view their nominal colleagues as direct competitors. [2] And there may be ambiguity surrounding individual responsibilities or "swim lanes." Sales organizations can allocate business by deal size or geographic territory, and investment firms may subdivide along industry verticals, but these boundaries aren't always clearly marked (and some parties may benefit from a lack of clarity.)

My work with clients who are leading in these circumstances involves mitigating the effects of interpersonal conflict, to be sure. [3] But it's also important to recognize that conflict probably can't be eliminated, and that may even be a counter-productive goal. There's a tendency today to idealize friendly and collaborative relationships among colleagues and to downplay the utility of internal competition, and in many settings that's entirely rational: teams that win or lose as a unit usually underperform when they view colleagues as antagonists. [4]

But in the right circumstances internal competition fuels superior performance, and the leader who's too quick to stifle conflict will miss opportunities to succeed and may even destroy value. To be entirely clear, I'm not suggesting that organizations should foster cutthroat attitudes among colleagues in order to achieve business goals. There's evidence that excessive internal competition can contribute to undesirable turnover and create perverse incentives to game the system. [5]

One option for a leader facing this dilemma is to envision their role as a referee. Just as a ref in a sporting contest must ensure that competitive behavior doesn't impede fair play, a leader in this situation must assess the costs and benefits of internal competition and determine how to respond when conflicts occur. They can start by predicting likely scenarios and the appropriate consequences.

What's aggressive but fair play?

Some conflicts generate rancor and friction, but in the leader's estimation no lines were crossed. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and a leader should make an effort to get the perspective of all parties involved. But it's not necessarily the case that the leader must defer to anyone whose feelings have been hurt. People need to take responsibility for their emotions, not merely view their response as a function of others' behavior. [6] And while the leader-as-ref-can promote fair play, it's also true that not everyone is cut out for competition.

What merits a penalty?

Tolerance for a degree of internal conflict doesn't mean "anything goes," and the leader has an obligation to respond to behaviors that cross a line and merit some form of penalty. Barring legal and regulatory requirements that supersede a leader's latitude to determine when a line has been crossed, this is a subjective assessment that's highly dependent on what's normative in the cultural context. Behavior that's unremarkable in some cultures is a minor faux pas in others and a major violation in still others. The nature of such penalties can vary widely, from a mild rebuke or some critical feedback [7] to a formal censure or performance improvement plan. Here it's incumbent on the leader to be consistent across individuals and from one incident to the next, or risk creating perceptions of unfairness or favoritism.

When do you take someone out of the game?

Referees have the ability to declare a player no longer eligible to participate in a given contest. A leader might consider some form of this option in situations where a more severe penalty is called for and a cooling-off period could benefit all parties. In the moment, someone might be asked to leave a meeting or drop off a call. If problems persist, they may be removed from a deal or a project team. Even further, they may be assigned to a new role or levelled. [8]

When do you cut them from the team?

Leaders aren't merely "referees," of course. Most of my clients also function as a "general manager" or "team owner," with the ability to determine who's on the roster. And in some cases a violation is so egregious that the person loses their job. Occasionally this is the result of a single episode, which usually entails legal or regulatory issues that compel the leader to act. More commonly there's been a pattern of behavior that has persisted over time, and here's where many leaders who are comfortable with conflict make a misjudgment: They fail to take early action to call a penalty, and what begins as an "aggressive but fair" culture turns increasingly toxic as "hard fouls" go unpunished.

This may be justified on the basis of financial performance. Organizations routinely make exceptions for bad behavior when people make their numbers. But cultures are slow to change, and when an organization allows toxicity to fester because the assholes are hitting their targets, the "cultural debt" won't be paid down automatically if they're fired when they falter. As I've noted before, "Invest in the culture you want, or get the culture you deserve." [9]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Layer Cake of Working Life

[2] What Kind of Team Are We?

[3] A Working Relationship Curriculum

[4] Startup Leadership: A Greater Us

[5] For example, the competitive dynamics engendered by "rank and yank" management systems can have a range of intended and unintended effects:

• Forced distribution rating systems: When does “rank and yank” lead to adverse impact? (Gary Giumetti, Amber Schroeder and Fred Switzer, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2015)
• The return on investment of rank and yank in a simulated call-center environment (Dennis Adsit, Warren Bobrow, Peter Hegel and Ben Fitzpatrick, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 2018)
• A New Hope for Rank and Yank (Jamie Mulligan and Rebecca Bull Schaefer, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2011)

[6] You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

[7] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[8] The Fine Art of Levelling

[9] The Accumulation of Cultural Debt

 

Photo by Football Schedule.

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.

When You're on Thin Ice

I don't work with clients who are being forced into a coaching engagement against their will. In those situations coaching is usually viewed as a last-gasp desperation measure or as a way to mitigate legal risk, and in either case the odds of success are low. But it's not uncommon for a new client to have sought coaching in response to a major setback that has jeopardized their professional future, or for a current client to unexpectedly encounter a similar situation. They haven't yet lost their jobs, or their company, but they're on thin ice. If you are, too, what should you do?

1. Slow Down

If you're in this position you've likely experienced a great deal of success up until now. This may be your first serious professional setback. In these circumstances it's common for events to speed up--or to just feel that way. You may sense an urgent need to take action in some form, to right a wrong or clear your name or do something. But as I've noted before, "The impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down." [1]

This is particularly true when you're on thin ice, in part because you probably haven't spent much time here during your career, and your past training may not serve you well. In my experience successful leaders and executives often have a high need for power and a low need to be liked [2], a desire for control [3], and a degree of comfort with conflict. [4] If you identify with any of these characteristics, it's possible that the very factors that contributed to your previous success may have also fueled your recent setback. Rather than forge ahead, it may be most useful to pause and reflect on how you got here.

2. Get the Right Help

This is one of the primary benefits of coaching in these circumstances. Being on thin ice often involves a lot of stressful meetings with senior management, HR, attorneys and others who have a wide range of motives and obligations that may or may not align with yours. In contrast with these other events on your calendar, a coaching conversation will proceed at its own pace, leaving ample room for reflection. 

And unlike these other figures, a coach is there to help you set your agenda, focus on what's most significant to you, make sense of what's happened, and learn from the experience. Note that this will also 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. [5]

All this said, it's understandable if you have some skepticism or uncertainty about coaching, particularly if you're being encouraged to pursue it as a result of this setback. It's important that you feel sufficient autonomy in the selection of a coach, convinced of their competence, and a personal connection. While your organization may recommend that you choose from among a roster of coaches, you should expect to be able to have a discovery conversation with several to find the best fit, and come prepared with questions for them, just as you would with any other candidate for a mission-critical role. [6]

Specifically, be sure to discuss confidentiality with a prospective coach, and clarify under what circumstances, if any, they will be interacting with anyone else in your organization. [7] Without knowing this in advance, it will be hard for you to know what is safe to share with your coach, and it will be equally hard for them to know what is safe to share with anyone else, making it far more difficult for you both to build trust with each other.

3. Hope for the Best

Recovering from a serious setback doesn't happen overnight. Making your way back from the thin ice will likely be a multi-stage process, and it's helpful to set realistic expectations. In many situations your first goal is professional survival--retain your position, keep the company alive, avoid any catastrophic outcomes. And as someone who's experienced a great deal of success, you may feel impatient or even desperate to put this episode behind you.

Here the sense of urgency and bias for action that may have served you well in the past are unlikely to be as useful. Your setback has probably put you, your performance, and even your behavior under a spotlight--or a microscope--and you're now subject to careful and ongoing scrutiny. This is no doubt unpleasant, especially if you believe that you're the subject of unjust accusations. [8] But in this situation taking forceful action can easily be labelled "defensiveness," and note that you don't get to make that determination--the people around you do. [9]

I'm not suggesting that you meekly accept what's happening and seek to avoid giving offense. You may need to apologize, but that may also may be inadvisable. [10] Nor am I suggesting that mere survival is the best you can hope for. It may well be possible to find your way to solid footing and not merely survive, but thrive. And yet that will undoubtedly take time, just like any recovery from illness or accident. In particular, be prepared for some vestige of this episode to cling to your reputation, and to face repeated reminders, implied or explicit, that you were once on thin ice.

Some important skills to cultivate in this context include resilience and emotion regulation in the face of perceived threats [11], the ability to make the most of this experience as a learning opportunity [12], and a view of failure as a source of potential growth. That last point doesn't mean you should passively tolerate failure, but, as I've written before, "Whenever we're pursuing something ambitious--in the business model, the strategic plan, the investment, the hire, the career step--we will fail, repeatedly. But in the process we are also ruling out possibilities as we seek to understand what works." [13]

4. Prepare for the Worst

Even as you work toward a recovery in concert with your colleagues and other stakeholders, you may also need to be prepared for the situation to take a turn for the worse. Assess the extent to which you can rely upon in-house or corporate counsel, who may have obligations that conflict with providing you with the best possible guidance. If there's a risk of legal action directed against you, or if you may need to take action to protect your interests, you will want personal counsel to advise and represent you.

You may be reluctant to obtain counsel because it feels premature or unnecessary. But thin ice can break, and you don't want to be researching your options when you're in the water. At the very least, interview several prospective attorneys who specialize in representing individual executives and get a feel for their approach and communication style so you'll know who to call if needed. Some attorneys are very comfortable with antagonistic litigation, while others prefer mediation. There's no universal best practice, but it can be useful to consider who they'll be facing should legal action be necessary.

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Slowing Down

[2] McClelland and Burnham on Power and Management

[3] Authority and Control in Organizational Life

[4] The Warrior and the Sage

[5] Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)

[6] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[7] Duty of Confidentiality and Duty to Disclose

[8] Staying Sane When You've Been Falsely Accused

[9] Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[10] Should You Apologize? It Depends.

[11] Ignoring Bandits and Building Resilience

[12] Learning How to Learn

[13] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

 

Photo by Owwe.

A Working Relationship Curriculum

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.

Four Responses to Feedback

If feedback isn't a gift, what is it? It's data. About our impact on a particular individual at a particular point in time. And while it may be "true" in the sense that the feedback-giver is accurately representing their perspective, that doesn't make it The Truth. Because feedback always says as much about the giver as the recipient. It's filtered through their reality-distortion fields, reflecting their personal values and priorities. [1]

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:

1. Express appreciation for the positive. We almost always overlook positive feedback and focus immediately on the negative. This is an understandable response--negative feedback has the potential to pose a threat, which makes it likely to generate a strong emotional response and capture our attention. [2] But this is a missed opportunity to acknowledge the full range of feedback you've received and make the conversation more productive for all parties. So be sure to pause, acknowledge any positive feedback, and articulate what you'll continue to do (or do even more of) as a result.

It's harder to determine how to respond to negative feedback, but you don't need to agree with it all or treat it like a set of obligatory duties. That's a sure path to overwhelm and resentment. But it's essential to avoid responding defensively or to reject it out of hand. [3] Instead, recognize that every piece of negative feedback contains a request for change and that all change carries a cost. With that as a guideline, you can distinguish among the following:

2. Easy changes you're happy to make. At least some of the negative feedback likely involves certain behaviors or aspects of your working style that you're not attached to and can modify without undue effort. Remind the feedback giver that we all have blind spots, and they don't need to wait for a formal process to give you similar feedback in the future.

3. Hard changes you're willing to attempt. There's probably also some negative feedback on behaviors or aspects of your style that feel more deeply rooted or will be more difficult to change. Invite the feedback giver to partner with you in this process, by offering help, support and understanding, and possibly by taking some responsibility for their contributions to the issue.

4. Changes that will be too difficult or costly to undertake. By no means should you feel compelled to accede to all of the negative feedback you receive. Some of the changes your feedback giver is asking for will either impose an intolerable burden on you or will prevent you from accomplishing your goals. But bear in mind that they're requesting these changes because these behaviors or aspects of your style are imposing a cost on them. You need not grant their request or agree with their point of view, but you can empathize with it.

In addition, note that it may be useful to respond to feedback not only one-on-one, but also in larger groups, particularly if you're a leader and the feedback is derived from multiple employees and other stakeholders:

• One-on-one: If possible, meet individually with each of your feedback providers. This may require a significant investment of time, but it will be the best way to separate the signal from the noise, because it will be easier for both parties to speak candidly. These conversations may feel risky, but that's actually a reason to have them. [4]
• In a small group: Also consider meeting jointly with a subset of your feedback providers, typically your direct reports. This may also feel risky, even daunting, but it will be a unique opportunity to model how to respond to feedback, which will make it easier when you have critical feedback for them. [5]
• In larger settings: Finally, it may be advisable to share some remarks with a larger group that includes people who didn't provide feedback but still have a stake in your performance in some way. If you're a CEO or a functional leader this could be at an all-hands or an offsite, which is one of the most effective ways to build a feedback-rich culture. [6]

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What To Do About It)

Adapted from Your 360 Report Is Ready.

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Footnotes

[1] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[2] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[3] Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[4] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[5] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[6] Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

Photo by Nicolas Vigier.

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]

 

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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]

 

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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