The Three Dimensions of Business Coaching
"Coaching is the universal language of change and learning."
- CNN
In the coaching experience, we coaches interact with our clients on multiple levels. This is even more true in the realm of Business Coaching, where I have often worked with groups in a team setting as well as coaching some of the people in the group individually. The nature of those conversations with my clients, group vs. individual, are often quite different. Sometimes entirely different. As a follow up to my last blog post, I wanted to explore with you horizontal, vertical, and transformational development and coaching in the business context.
Horizontal Development: Task and Goal Completion
Level one coaching in a business setting is often comparable to the coach acting as a project manager guiding a team towards a deadline or new type of outcome. An example could be a tier of managers looking to manage their time more effectively. As coaches, we might assist by assessing the current practices and setting up a daily schedule, or even a meeting regimen, that reduces wasted hours and increases productivity. But this does not often solve the underlying issues, as new tasks, commitments, and challenges continuously surface to disrupt their schedules.
Horizontal development in this context is akin to implementing a Lean Methodology. Coaching focuses on increasing the ability of an individual within the context of their team to contribute to improved performance of their team. It can be like expanding a computer's hard drive to allow the efficient and fast processing of complex projects. Coaching in this context invites individuals within a group context onto a shared pathway where each will take responsibility for their output and actions. For example, an engineer might learn new skills in communication and language, thereby increasing her ability to ask better questions, make better recommendations, and explain her decision process clearly, leading to a positive outcome on the project.
Vertical Development: Skill Development
At the second level of business coaching, an individual being coached will often make the shift from a role of task manager to one of a mentor. A manager who struggles with decision making might lead ineffective team meetings. Rather than simply working on more effective communication, we'd work together on their identity and importance within the larger context of the organization, so that they can take ownership of how their effectiveness as a leader impacts the larger organizational effectiveness, as well as the lives and work of the teams they manage. This journey often requires learning new competencies, enabling them to rise to similar challenges on their own in the future.
Vertical development relates to how we interact with different levels of authority. This learning technique helps clients develop personal skills so you can thrive in constantly evolving working environments. In vertical development, we start by challenging old assumptions and testing new hypotheses. Vertical development also involves developing an individual's ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to the environment in a more sophisticated, integrated, and effective manner. This type of development often involves enhancing an individual's soft skills, such as emotional intelligence, leadership ability, decision-making skills, and the capacity to handle ambiguity and complexity.
As an example, I worked with a regulated entity who was implementing a vertical development program to help middle management understand their resistance to organizational change. This included identifying and challenging their fears and misconceptions about the change, running experiments to shift these preconceived notions, and systematically eliminating these resistances. The outcome was enhanced adaptability and responsiveness to changes, new leadership supporting the changes, faster uptake of the changes, and a more resilient and agile organization.
Transformative Development: Self Transformation
At the third and deepest level of business coaching, I aspire to act as a transformative guide. On a number of occasions, I’ve coached executives struggling with work-life balance, leading to high stress, poor decision making, and job dissatisfaction. Instead of only offering time-management strategies or stress-coping mechanisms, I might guide them through an introspective journey to better ground and focus them, helping them redefine their relationship with work, self-care, family, and leisure. For each client the journey is different, but the process could involve exploring their intrinsic motivations, values, life goals, and identifying and breaking down any barriers preventing their fulfillment.
The Mind as Machine
Continuing with the computer-based analogy, in the business context horizontal development could be said to increase the size of your mental hard drive. Vertical development boosts your processor’s speed and power. Transformational development puts one in a better position to analyze and use the vast amount of data they’ve stored on their hard drive, to be more resilient and better prepared to withstand and find balanced, appropriate responses to any sudden, unexpected changes in their working environment.
Horizontal development focuses on expertise, whereas vertical development helps you put that knowledge into practice. Horizontal development is more commonplace, and it will likely stay that way. Employees will always need the basic skills to meet the demands of their position. But highly developed soft skills are now critical in today’s volatile business world, where agile, effective problem-solving is key. And given increased market volatility, global commerce, and wicked problems, transformational development is being recognized as a critical path for creating broad thinkers who can tackle our most complex challenges.