How To Incorporate Coaching Into Your OCM Practice
“But I am not an executive coach? I am not certified? I lack seniority?” No problem! Any and all organizational change management (OCM) practitioners can and should up their game by incorporating coaching into their change practice.
What Is Coaching?
When we think of coaching, we may think along the lines of traditional coaching: the method to provide an individual, typically an executive, with advice and guidance intended to help develop their skills, performance and career. Coaches may facilitate conversations in the following areas:
What is top of mind that you want to focus on today?
What behaviors will enable you to deliver on your goals?
From an organizational change management perspective, we should begin to think about coaching a little differently: as a method to provide a key project stakeholder – typically a leader or change owner – with guidance and best practices to help enhance their leadership behaviors in support of a critical change effort. As change managers, we can facilitate conversations around:
What is top of mind regarding our project that you want to focus on today?
What behaviors will enable you to deliver on the project’s goals?
Why Is Coaching Important?
As part of the change process, leadership commitment and engagement are essential to create sustainable change. Our goal as change practitioners is to deliver a change program that sticks, but we cannot create this lasting change alone; we need the effective support of leadership and key stakeholders. Coaching is a key tool for us to use to foster and drive commitment from leadership. Through coaching we facilitate critical conversations with key stakeholders, enabling us to help remove barriers early, reframe the path as needed, and deliver the project more efficiently and effectively.
But Am I Qualified?
If we are brought in as an OCM lead on a project and coaching is not in scope, how can we begin to play that role? There can be many challenges!
“You don’t know our business”
“I have not asked you to coach me, and I don’t want to be coached”
Balancing feedback with relationships
“We have always done it this way”
I am so much younger than they are…
I am the only fill-in-the-blank in the room…
It takes elements of both competency and courage to coach. But are you qualified? Yes, you are! You do not need a special skill set nor certification to be a coach. No, you don’t need to have more years of experience nor to have walked in their shoes. You have knowledge and experience about change that your leadership does not have. Most leaders lack a background in OCM, although they will certainly have a perspective! You bring change expertise to the table and should be proud of it and own it. Coaching is not about telling. Coaching is about asking questions, sharing observations, facilitating discovery, and then providing guidance along the way.
How To Coach
Identify Leaders and Key Stakeholders
Who are the key decision makers? Who owns the change? Is there someone who is very influential? Is there someone who is essential but not bought in? These are the people who you should be coaching. As you begin to develop and fine tune your coaching skills, be mindful of and limit who you select to coach. As coaching becomes incorporated into how you operate as a change manager, you can include additional stakeholders.
Articulate The Process
It’s important to set expectations and to get buy-in up front from leaders regarding your role as a change coach:
Let them know that you’re invested in their success and that of the project
Share that you will be working with them, because as a leader, it is important that they demonstrate key behaviors for change
Communicate that you will seek regular engagement (30-60 minutes) with them to:
Understand their priorities and pain points
Share observations
Identify critical next steps
Let them know that you understand that their plate is already full, and your goal is to help them invest their time in the most effective and impactful strategy for when and how to show up as a leader
Be Prepared
As you work with stakeholders to show up as change leaders, it’s important that you show up too. Take 30 minutes to prepare for these coaching meetings. Take detailed notes of your conversations. Capture the critical next steps. Send follow-up emails to your leaders summarizing your thoughts and documenting next steps. Share information or articles that are relevant to your leader. Become a thought partner.
Remember, you’re not expected to know it all, you may feel uncomfortable at first, and not every conversation will go well. But you have got to practice coaching in order to develop your coaching skillset set as part of your organizational change management toolkit!
There is no joy in checking back with your clients a year after a change program only to discover that key elements of the change did not stick. By fine tuning our coaching skills, change managers can understand the current state of leaders, meet them where they are, and guide them to where they need to be – to lead successful change. As change coaches, we position ourselves to leave our clients in a better place than where they were before.
Contact ChangeStaffing to learn how our organizational change management consultants can help you to incorporate your coaching skillset.
A special thanks to Kacie Lineger, Leadership Coach and Strategic Organizational Change Management expert, for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog.