COACHING FORORGANIZATIONALCHANGE 157
and complex ities, while also having a wellspring of benchmarks to compare
and contrast what works and what doesn’t. Although organizations are more
similar than dissimilar in their functionality and dysfunctionality, certain
sectors such as health care or financial services have distinct vertical quali-
ties. In the health care industry, for example, although physicians may have
many of the same competencies as their colleagues in engineering or re-
search, the nature of their work and training creates a unique situation. In-
deed, physicians are generally not experienced working in teams—and
teaming is a critical competency in health care today.
Secondly, the coach must be highly skilled at communication. The best
coaches are effective listeners, able to ask probing questions to obtain new
levels of information. Over a series of many such interactions, the coach adds
tremendous value. Understanding where each critical player is coming from
and how they all perceive their role and benefit in the change enables the
coach to facilitate with greater impact.
Obviously, confidentiality is a key concern in this regard. The difficulty,
however, is that what is private to one person may be considered part of the
normal f low of information to someone else. With that in mind, I always ask
each person to tell me what is confidential and promise not to share whatever
is private. Still, in many instances, people who discuss matters without reser-
vation could be harmed if the specific details of those conversations were ever
revealed. I make it a point in my own communication style to never make ref-
erence what another person has said. When presenting group information, I al-
ways declare what I am saying to be derived from the aggregate perspective.
It helps to have a contract or charter in place. The ground rules and con-
ditions must be clear. Who is the client? Who makes decisions? Who should
be approached for authorization? Having clear milestones and metrics in
place also makes the job easier. If significant problems arise, what is the na-
ture of the coach’s mandate or authority for surfacing those obstacles? There
are probably more people within the organization resistant to the change
than those who are passionate about the vision, while many others become
unwittingly mired in the swamp of day-to-day imperatives. To handle those
kinds of challenges in the spirit of confidentiality, I make it clear to every-
one that organizational objectives supercede individual ones, while promis-
ing to never divulge what someone tells me about another person, incident, or
circumstance.
The organizational change coach is under constant review from multiple
angles. Many are assessing how much that person can be trusted with every
new situation that arises. It shouldn’t be surprising. Much of what holds