Is your coaching all about happy endings? Probably not – and nor should it be. For most of us, the real success happens in very small increments
Everyone loves a happy ending. It’s the basic assumption that we all have when reading a story or watching a film, and as writers we know that’s what our readers expect.
However, that doesn’t reflect real life and it got me thinking about how the coaching community describes its own success. I hugely appreciate the effort people make in writing books, but it’s these examples I’m pointing a finger at in this column today.
Charting success…
Assume (and I think it’s quite a reasonable assumption) that the results of coaching interventions would map out as a normal distribution curve. We would find there are likely to be extremes at either end of the curve – either huge successes or disasters – though the number of these, proportionately, is likely to be small.
The middle of the curve would represent the majority of the results – where a coaching intervention will have made some difference, but not an extreme one.
When I contrast this likely distribution of results with the coaching books that I read, there is a tendency (of which I am also guilty) to put forward the extreme end of the curve – in other words, the great successes. Not as much is talked about situations where there is only an incremental improvement – or indeed the failures.
So let me make amends for this.
…and failure
Here’s a recent example from me at the failure end of the curve.
I have had two clients in the last year where in the final coaching session the atmosphere has been close to euphoric as they have put together plans to transform their working life, either into a brand new sector or into a more senior exciting role.
However, both have ended in failure. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe the endings as almost a bloodbath!
I have to take some responsibility for that in encouraging both the clients to wander down a certain path.
Are we learning yet?
Do you learn more from your successes or failures? I think you learn from both, but you also have to recognise the vast majority of coaching interventions lead to incremental improvements, rather than case studies in books.
Those case studies are just too neat, and while I appreciate why it is the masterpiece, rather than the average result that is put forward, it is the average result that reflects what actually happens most often in our coaching and consulting rooms.
Permanent change is difficult. If it wasn’t, more progress would have been made in the world of addiction.
If I consider the changes that I have made personally over the past three years they definitely fall into the incremental category.
I practise mindfulness. If I was to be asked to provide an example of a change that has come about as a result of my practice, I would talk about a very small domestic one: I am now able to empty the washing machine without being as grumpy as I used to be, by becoming more present and concentrating on the task!
It’s a boring example that is unlikely to end up in any new book, but doesn’t it reflect more fully what actually happens with the majority of our clients?
- Neil Tomalin is managing partner of Saintclair Partnership