The Holding
environment is a term from developmental psychology describing the
people, places, tools, and rituals that surround us at any given point
in our lives. The holding environment is also seen as a figurative
"safe space" for people to talk about what is going on with themselves
and their organization. It is where they can talk with one another
about the challenges they face, debate issues, and clarify assumptions
etc. A good holding environment offers the security we need to
engage life and encourages us to take risks in order to grow. A poor
holding environment provides insufficient supports for life's
challenges, stunts growth and triggers reactive behavior. For
example: each person undertaking any learning or change effort, will
(at some point) ask themselves: How big is this challenge relative to
my ability to meet it? What support mechanisms are being provided to
help me attempt this change? (read: Am I being well held?).
How can I enhance my ability to succeed ? Given the support I have
-should I scale back my goals so they can be better met?
It is especially important for organizations to create a holding
environment at the establishment of a coaching program, when people
may feel challenged and vulnerable or just unsure about their
involvement in the coaching process.
Developing Strong Learning Partnerships
To create an effective 'holding environment' for coaching requires
more than technical or professional skills. It requires that coaching
practitioners look at themselves and the quality of presence they
bring to the coaching process. Our ways of being and interacting have
as much influence as our words. Successful coaches have typically
developed high levels of personal awareness and are able to use
themselves as an instrument of change within the holding container
they have created.
Each coach therefore has the responsibility to ensure they are
able to form a container in which coaching can best occur with their
client. This holding environment provides a climate of trust between
the educator (the coach) and the learner (the client/coachee). The
adult educator Laurent Daloz (1999) says: To
engender trust is central to any strong, nurturing relationship.
But although the trust that characterizes an early relationship owes
much of its strength to the ascribed authority of the 'teacher', more
mature trust is sustained increasingly by the shared commitment of
each partner. It must be constantly recreated.
The
importance of a trusting and confidential relationship with
their coach is especially important for leaders who (as they climb the
organizational tree), can experience increasing isolation and the
absence of confidantes.
Building Emotional Scaffolding
Within the container of the coaching relationship, the coach
uses various skills that both support and challenge the
client. The ability to provide the right balance of support
and sufficient challenge for a learner to stretch beyond their current
level of capability is a critical skill required of any successful
people developer. This co-created relationship also provides the
emotional scaffolding that can carry clients through periods of
self-doubt and isolation and even rejection by others around them.
The need for a Systems Approach
When we look at the various domains of groups within
organizations we can clearly see the interdependence and influence
they have on each other. People, corporations, organizations,
groups, and interpersonal relationships are all open, living systems
and that is why coaching cannot be done in isolation.
Systems within Systems
To look at the coachee in isolation is to ignore or discount the
systemic reality of being part of a living system. We are all systems
within systems and as with all systems are influenced by, or are the
influencer of all of these systems and the constant changes within
them. The executive affects every system he/she impinges on and every
system that system impinges on and so on. As coaching
practitioners any time we influence or enter the environment we impact
their system and so on, and so on.
In exploring and assessing (diagnosing) the coachee’s
presenting issue or reason for being coached, the coach needs to assess
the coachee’s other systems. The coach and the coachee may get more
impact or leverage in effecting the desired result of the coaching
program by working with a system other than the one being presented as
the issue, e.g. you may need to have the coachee implement some
changes in their relationships or belief system to improve performance
in their job. There is also the opportunity to learn what has been
effective (behaviors or beliefs) in one system and then transfer it
into another system. Other times it may be necessary to
stabilize or enhance one system, which will then have a positive
impact on the other systems. So two strategies are to compensate
for weakness, stress, or defect in one area by receiving energy or
mental or emotional gains in another and the other is to actually
transfer what works
in one area and bring it into another area.
The Organizational
Coaching Dilemma -How to develop a Systems Framework for the
Coaching
Model
As the coaching model of change and learning is adopted and
quickly proven recent research tells us that the number of managers,
leaders and other personnel with defined development needs has
significantly increased while proportionally the number of qualified,
well-trained "coaches" (internally and externally) who can
competently address their needs is lagging significantly behind in
numbers. Today,
most organizations are now finding themselves possessing
limited resources to cope with the demand for the two primary levels
of
coaching: structured formal coaching for managers/leaders provided by
specialist trained internal "coaches" and spot coaching/informal
coaching delivered by the 'leader as coach'.
Professional internal people developers need
a new framework in which to think about how to best manage the provision
of these specialist coaching developmental services throughout their
organization. Many internal people developers are now building a system
of
working that not only holds their people, but also holds
the larger system as well – a system in which specialist coaching
services are integrated at all levels and implemented throughout the
organization in a way that supports all those involved. This is not only
a unique
and successful way of working with managers/leaders and their
development needs but also the organization as a whole as well.
The Leadership Challenge -and the need to develop a Systems
Model of Coaching
The challenge for all senior leaders is developing a strategic plan to
achieve business goals whilst at the same time manage the context
or culture of the organization to enforce consistency, whilst also
supporting creativity and innovation. To manage
learning systems,
leaders must reconcile ambiguity and competing
tensions inherent in complex environments. This requires leaders to
expand their
capabilities in the form of social and emotional
intelligence to apply cultural and conceptual skills, to build
relational networks and
successfully self-manage their own human factors
to better manage themselves and others.
Today's organizations now need to develop a representational mechanism
for relating and integrating the coaching/learning environments,
create
an integrated ontology that considers and relates these elements, and
make use of it to define new collaborative coaching/learning scenarios.
Senior internal people developers therefore need to identify a suitable
ontology and its basic elements that can provide a
successful
application model. To find a solution to this challenge the Behavioral
Coaching Institute has combined a number of theoretical
and applied
psychology approaches used widely in areas such as education,
training and work psychology. The resultant framework has
proven to be a
successful foundation for organizing the elements in this type of
ontology. The ontology provides the structured elements
that form the
conceptual structure for the definition and construction of the coaching
environments, and the analysis and assessment of
group collaboration.
The Systems Model of Coaching (SMC) Template
-Some Benefits
This proven framework provides organizations a Systems Model of
Coaching (SMC) enabling them to expertly work with relationship
systems
and to develop coaching activities using appropriate technologies. The
SMC integrative Model also provides the organization's
people
development managers a means to better develop and manage a whole range
of coaching activities. This in turn provides the organization's various
coaching practitioners a standard of practice and a map of the micro and
macro learning design domain space.
The SMC Template also provides a “best practice guide”
highlighting how to best create a coaching activity (via the effective
use of tools
and resources in implementing activities), and a language
and structure by which coaching practitioners and their managers and
sponsors might discuss and plan the development and implementation of
coaching activities.
