COACHING FORORGANIZATIONALCHANGE 159

champions throughout the organization is geared toward three goals: deep-
ening the relationship, creating alignment around a shared agenda, and fur-
thering the learning process. In fact, it’s the learning that serves as the true
guidepost for how well the organization is progressing and how meaningful
were its efforts.

W. War ner Bu rke

Thinking Strategically

During Change

W

hether implementing a change or trying to deal with change that has
been mandated, the job of the modern executive is fraught with com-
plexity. People are inundated with conf licts around the decisions they must
make. As soon as one set of demands has been made, another conf licting set
emerges. Those conf licts may revolve around values or resources, or simply
the speed with which new demands keep coming.
As a coach, I work with people in leadership positions who are trying to
manage or bring about organizational change. Naturally, there are larger
strategic issues in what the change is all about. My coaching is therefore to
help those leaders make sense of the strategic implications of change in a
way that enables them to deal more effectively with the pressures they are
under. In doing so, I focus on the person, not the role or job. In my view,
there’s no such thing as a person playing a role or conducting a job. You need

W. Warner Burke is the Edward Lee Thorndike Professor

of Psycholog y and Education at Teachers College, Co-

lumbia University, and a Fellow of the Academy of Man-

agement, the Amer ican Psychological Society, and the

Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He

is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of 14 books,

including Organizational Development: A Process of

Learningand, most recently, Organization Change: The-

ory and Practice.He can be reached by phone at (212) 678-3831 or by e-mail at

[email protected].