STRATEGYCOACHING 217
passion for their work.” Passion, like so many great words, is overused. How-
ever, it is also instantly discernable in any conversation, meeting, or business.
It is present in the leader, in the team and in the customers—or it is not. That
distinction is what makes great organizations great.
Like a heat-seeking missile, I continuously look for passion and for what’s
missing. I observe the leader and the environment around the leader, and
then feed back what I see, and make interpretations with the person I’m
coaching that are designed to help elicit what they care about most. My goal
is to find a way to help leaders tap the natural resource of passion, in them-
selves and others, and to allow that natural resource to provide the fuel and
persistence needed to get almost anything important done.
When choosing to work with clients, I look for people who have real passion
about what they are doing, and I look for chemistr y. Another key prerequisite
for any effective coaching relationship is trust and authenticity. Establishing a
relationship and creating the necessary levels of trust and rapport takes a fair
amount of chemistry, and enables you to become a “trusted advisor” as Mais-
ter says, or to paraphrase, a “trusted collaborator.” In my experience, this
coaching as collaboration means bringing your whole self to the table, engag-
ing in deep listening, and not simply wearing one of the hats that we so often
talk about to define professional roles. It also means rolling up your sleeves and
working on getting inside the situation. Additionally, you have to be impecca-
ble in keeping your promises. If a coach can care, listen, help clients read the
world, and then collaborate with them on what is possible, that’s a pretty good
Petri dish in which to have a successful coaching engagement.
Conversely, or symmetrically, the client’s willingnessto learn, grow, ex-
plore, and collaborate on new approaches is, for me, the critical success fac-
tor for a good engagement. I also believe that people who want to work with
a coach also want to be coached by people who can authentically deliver a
sense ofwhat’s possible. There is no formula for this, but the truth is unde-
niable: if clients were not looking for new possibilities, they would not be
working with a coach.
Success has many meanings, so I find that it is crucial to articulate the cri-
teria for successful results in the client’s language. I judge whether or not
I’ve been successful by asking myself these questions:
- Are there results? Can we all see them?
- Is the client satisfied with those results?
•Have their work practices changed in positive ways? - Is their business or brand more vibrant?
- Are their strategies producing more long-term sustainable advantage?