Coaching for Change – getting change into the muscle
Fifteen years of coaching, facilitating groups and training across most industries and at all management levels, plus senior manager experience in high growth IT services has taught me a thing or two about change.
At Q1 we have drawn on our collective experience to formulate a programme that gets creative change into the muscle through coaching. We are running this programme with an increasing number of clients who have attempted more conventional approaches to change with little or no result. Our clients who are using this process include a blue chip distribution company, a themed restaurant chain and a creative design agency. Wherever change is on the menu ‘Coaching for Change’ is hitting the mark!
Underpinning Coaching for Change are three key assumptions which tend to be missing when change programmes fail or create inertia and drag.
- For any person to change they need creative ideas and energy.
- Changing behaviour takes effort and investment in money and time
- The skills a team needs to change are rarely found across a wide enough population within the organisation
Let’s take these one at a time:
- For any person to change they need creative ideas and energy.
Think back to a time when you were excited about having a fresh idea. Remember your feelings as a result of having the idea, and compare this feeling with the way you felt when you were doing a repetitive task. If you are like most people the fresh idea feeling has so much more energy and drive, and this is exactly what each person in your company needs if you are to get change into the muscle. - Changing behaviour takes effort and investment in money and time.
Most companies are happy to spend more on software updates and company vehicles than on change. Let’s face it, the ‘awayday’ changes nothing, and one day seminars have little effect. Business school programmes which tend to be heavy on theory are also questionable when it comes to change. To get change into the muscle you have to see change in the thousands of small tasks and decisions made by everyone each minute of the day. There has to be a different way, and there is, but it takes money, time and commitment. Stakeholders need to ask themselves how valuable the change will be and invest accordingly. Coaching for Change is a smarter approach with a high return on your investment. - The skills a team needs to change are rarely found across a wide enough population within the organisation.
If it was easy to change there wouldn’t be so much fuss about it. The reality is that people need new ways of thinking and new ways of speaking in order to change. There are skills involved and few companies ever invest in these skills as a priority because they are seen as ‘soft’ and not crucial to the business. So when it comes to change there is plenty of rhetoric about what needs to change, but people just don’t seem to know how. Old habits die hard.
Creating change is like learning a new dance. You have to get the new moves into the muscle and it will feel uncomfortable and maybe awkward at first. With change some people may even feel insecure the further they venture outside of their comfort zone. However, as you persist and practise the skills of change you become competent and the result has a direct positive affect on both creativity and confidence.
The Coaching for Change process is actually quite simple and incorporates the following activities:
- Learning new thinking and language skills
- Learning to participate in a ‘Learning Set’
- Work related assignments
- Coaching skills
In essence, small groups beginning with the CEO and exec team, meet for half-day meetings at a certain frequency. Some meetings are for acquiring new skills, other meetings involve the group as a learning set where members coach each other. Once the top team are able to manage their own meetings the process can cascade through the various levels of management. We provide the skills and facilitate until the process becomes entirely self-managed.
Change can happen, and whilst it requires a certain level of investment it is still relatively small when you consider the returns you stand to gain. So call us on 0870 762 1300 to get ‘Coaching for Change’ into the muscle of your organisation.
David Molden
