124 50 TOPEXECUTIVECOACHES

Third Month: The Virtuous Teaching Cycle

The top 50 to 100 people engage the next level of leadership in a way that
replicates their own teaching-learning experience. It’s as though 50 to 100
tennis coaches were teaching the same techniques and strategies at the same
time, each to their own class of students. As the ideas, values, and energy of
the teachable point of view cascade through the organization, they gain ex-
pression in the concrete ways each individual contributes to the bottom line.
Because leaders are learning from their reports as well, a virtuous teaching
cycle develops in which the organization gets smarter through the interactiv-
ity, even as it is energized and aligned. In this way, the teachable point of
view is always evolving as strategy and the marketplace changes.
Coaching or teaching is an activity that takes place face to face and one on
one. It’s energizing, spontaneous, and two-way. In the best scenarios, how-
ever, structure is in place for this spontaneous interaction to occur. Teach-
outs are planned and organized. Leadership institutes are created. In such a
way, an entire organization can be transformed, aligned, and continuously re-
generated—from a senior leader ’s teachable point of view to the individual on
the shop f loor, even in an organization of 90,000 employees with 600 stores.

Avoiding Coach Dependency and Disarray

What do coaches add to this mix? In my view, 90 percent of coaching has to
occur on the line. Other wise, the organization does not gain the benefits of
continuous learning and development, and may even be put in disarray. Ex-
ecutive coaches can work at cross-purposes without demonstrating bottom-
line benefit. Management coaches are given incentives to create dependency,
not capability. Even internal coaches can get in the way, acting more like go-
betweens and career counselors than teachers, unless they are fully aligned
with the priorities of the business.
Leaders should coach leaders. After all, who makes a better coach than
someone with the incentive to help the coachee develop his or her own inde-
pendent capability? U.S. Nav y Seals don’t use coaches to develop critical,
life-and-death leadership skills; they rely on those whose lives are also on the
line. Who trains a heart surgeon but another heart surgeon? In successful or-
ganizations, coaching takes place leader to leader, level to level, up and down
the line. Only then does the organization have the alignment, energy, and
smarts to win.