CTOs considering coaching common concerns
CTOs considering coaching common concerns
It's common for CTOs to reject coaching initially - I know I did - because they have preconceived notions of how it works and how busy they feel. Let me dispel some of those.
Hi everyone,
Thank you for reading Great CTOs Focus on Outcomes. I publish weekly and have an archive of almost 150 posts, each packed with valuable insights on various topics relevant to CTOs and the issues they face, distilled from my career experience.
I strive to make each post a helpful resource on the topic it focuses on so that when a CTO has a need, they can reference an atomic nugget of insight. To this end, I regularly revisit and refine posts, ensuring you always receive the best and most up-to-date information with the most clarity.
If you’d like to support the growth of this resource, consider upgrading to paid and take advantage of the other ways I can help you.I didn’t take the opportunity to receive coaching the first time I was offered it. Now that I am coaching, I see that the common reservations CTOs have with coaching today are similar to my reservations back then.
Today’s post explores some of the reservations I felt then and have observed in others since. We examine what CTOs may worry coaching involves and compare it with what it entails.
Expectations of coaching versus reality
Those new to being coached soon discover how they expect coaching to work differs from how it works.
First, they may discover that the purpose is not to have someone tell them what to do.
Many start with precisely these fears:
'I am going to be told what to do."
"I must change things I think are working.'
'they will tell me all the things I am doing wrong.'
‘They will judge me based on how things are - I must justify everything I am doing.’
‘Others will judge me for having a coach.’
After the first few sessions, it’s common to see that they are pleasantly surprised—their worst fears about coaching haven’t been realised. Instead, they get help to focus on pursuing improvement based on their ideas, grounded in their values, and specific to their situation.
How coaching sessions work
There’s a variety of coaching formats.
The one I most commonly use is straightforward. It is designed to focus on recognising and accentuating what is working and then concentrating on the most impactful area where support is needed. We finish each session by clarifying the steps to be taken between now and the next.
The coachee is in the driver’s seat for each part of the session. They identify what is working, the issue they want to focus on, the option(s) they believe will have the most impact on addressing their issue, and the steps to take to progress.
So, from that description, the participant does all the work. What exactly does the coach do?
The power of good questions
A big part of coaching is asking questions. You may have had an inkling about this, but you are still determining exactly how or why it works.
Incisive questions are a potent tool, empowering you to identify your priorities and opportunities.
They put you firmly in the driver's seat of your growth, keeping your decision-making independent and confident.
The temptation as a new coach is to provide the answers to every problem you recognise.
The discipline focuses on helping the coachee identify their thinking and options so they can apply them now and in the future.
It may at first feel like you need to leverage all your valuable experience.
The experience you bring from your career before coaching is not just beneficial—it's invaluable.
It helps the coach know what questions to ask and what might be essential to consider, and it's a testament to your expertise and value.
When questions are overused
Another risk is that questions are overused, and you may only be able to answer one question with another.
That can be frustrating if the coachee feels genuinely stuck. Questions are powerful, but occasionally, specific advice will be sought. As the coach, I'm here to support the coachee.
I'm happy to give you some advice based on my long career experience, but I'll only do that when you ask.
This ensures that you're always in control of your coaching journey.
It also delineates our mode:
are we helping you explore your challenge and your options, or
am I providing you advice based on my career experience.
This gives you, the coachee, control of when we are in which mode. It also sets the former as the default. This is much more preferable than the latter, which, if overused, can create an unproductive dependency on the coach for decision-making.
The coachee often has an idea of something they could invest time in, but the uncertainty has held them back.
Hearing from someone experienced that similar approaches have been taken in similar contexts...
...or that the strength of reasoning has been well tested during the coaching conversation, which can be enough to provide the confidence to test these ideas.
Grounded in where we are
Another benefit of the format is that it is grounded in the CTOs’ present situation. What change has been positive recently? What issue do we have now?
Why is this important?
I’ve written before about gap thinking:
Thinking about a distant goal and then creating lists of actions to get there will produce an overly long list of tasks, reduce focus on checking actual progress towards the desired future, and replace it with progress through the completion of tasks. A gap widens between the feeling of making progress and what is needed.
A long-term goal is worthwhile. The easy mistake to make is a plan solely based on it. I prefer to use the long-term goal as our orientation—the direction we are pointing. We need to consider our present situation and the steps towards the intermediate goals on the way to our destination.
This model fits into my coaching approach. We consider the situation adequately to account for obstacles we may need to overcome and other factors that may aid our progress.
General objectives for CTOs
In addition to the objectives we identify that are specific to the coachee, I also have a set of universal objectives for CTOs that correlate to better performance. We may cover these in a future post.
One example of this:
The CTO is in control of their time.
My career experience has shown me that it’s impossible to consistently be strategic in your thinking if you are not in control of your time as a CTO. Knowing this, I am acutely aware of when the coachee may not be in control of their time and consequently have many strategies that they consider for wrestling their time back under their control.
I use these to guide my conversations and help ensure I use the coachee’s immediate context and my career experience.
Have you experienced coaching? What are your expectations about coaching? What concerns do you have or did you have? Please share your experiences in the comments.
If you enjoyed this publication, please help others find us and benefit from the insights.