HOW TO COACH EXECUTIVES

By James E. Lukaszewski, APR, Fellow PRSA

As Published in Communication World, the Membership Publication of the International Association of Business Communicators, June 1989

Copyright © 1989, 2000, James E. Lukaszewski. All rights reserved.

It takes lots of gut-level will power and a sense of personal survivability to work with top management. When your phone rings and the CEO on the other end of the line sounds unhappy, you steel yourself: Get the job done, get the problem resolved. You often, at a moment's notice, provide critical insight and recommendations, adjust corporate strategy, or explore and explain tactics. Coaching the boss is a difficult task for many practitioners: You must juggle the roles of seer, guru, confessor, follower, mentor, listener, disciplinarian, friend, and confidant. For many communication professionals, the heavy stress of working at top levels of organizations can cause career and personal problems.

When confronted with the tensions and frustrations of those who work around them, CEOs and other top executives seem dumbfounded at the power they have over subordinates. (It's also true that some top executives recognize and enjoy this power.) Good, straightforward counsel is often hard to find at the top, and CEOs often are frustrated by the inability of those around them to offer strong and positive advice.

I've observed this sense of frustration firsthand for more than 15 years and have focused much of my career on understanding top management's counseling needs and on helping management communicators become effective coaches and counselors to their bosses. In this article, I've used my experience to develop some tools for the would-be top-management communicator. But first, let me tell you a story from my first days as a counselor. It's about my first meeting with the chief executive of a large U.S. Midwestern insurance company:

I was to help him prepare for a series of critically important meetings in the U.S. and abroad: his closest advisor thought he would listen more objectively to an outsider. The human resources and communication staffs decided that the best way for me to get to know him _ and him, me _ was for us to meet in his office face-to-face, rather than using some softer, less direct technique. It was going to be a bit unnerving.

As I approached his penthouse office suite, my nervousness increased. Happily, one of the two secretaries sitting in the anteroom knew who I was and immediately ushered me through 16-foot doors into his office.

The room almost smelled of authority. Two floor-to-ceiling window walls provided an awesome view. The sparse furnishings - a huge mahogany desk, two chairs and a coffee table - lent an air of severity. There was little in the way of art or decoration and virtually nothing on any surface except the telephone on his desk. Beside the phone was one piece of paper - a memo about me.

He pushed it to the side as we shook hands and began to talk. One of his assistants came in, unbidden, to remove the extraneous memo. From that point on, he and I were alone in his large, impersonal, and rather intimidating office. Moving toward the windows with him, I asked him the one question I almost always posed to chief executives: "How do you know what you should be doing next?"

He gazed out the window for a moment, looking perplexed, and then confessed, "The truth is - I don't always know what to do next. The sad thing is, very few people around here help me with those decisions. How are you and I going to work together?"

What a wonderful question! How many times have you listened to a practitioner complain about not having access to the top - or not being plugged into major decisions until receiving the mandate from on high? This story points up one of the greatest difficulties, as well as one of the greatest expectations, executives have: having access to people who can ask them questions, give advice and counsel, differentiate between options, and make strong, pragmatic recommendations. My question to that executive was the start of some excellent communication and relationship building.

The story also highlights the number one requirement for being a top-management communicator: You must be able to think like the boss. If you can't put yourself in the boss' shoes, it's unlikely you'll be successful as a coach and counselor to top management.

The Boss' Shoes Test

Does that sound easy? It takes quite a bit of detachment to operate from another's perspective. Take a moment to analyze your current level of objectivity: How many of the statements in the box on the following page can you honestly agree with? If you are ready to put yourself whole-heartedly in your boss' shoes and to give away ideas - even if they get manipulated, twisted, stretched, and chopped _ you have the potential to be a good coach!

How many times did you answer "Yes?" Remember that, as my friend, former partner and mentor Chester Burger noted, technicians (people who can write news releases, handle publicity, and execute internal and external communication programs) are readily available. But those who have the objectivity to analyze, strategize, develop recommendations, and "think up" are the ones top management learns to prize.

Much is at stake in how well the communicator's ego weathers the contradictions, intensity, and unpredictability of fast-paced events and changing structures. Being a top-management communication consultant demands the transition from technician and single-level practitioner to the multi-level, priority-oriented, highly focused coach and counselor. The process involves charisma, motivation, education, and maturation. There are no schools for counselors.

So, how do you accomplish the transformation from "tolerated professional" to trusted coach and counselor? Is it simply a matter of corporate politics? Do you have to learn to fight? Do you have to teach others to fight? What is the formula? How do you take command? These questions are difficult, daily issues for most of us who coach and counsel top management.

Maybe we can look to the bosses themselves for some of the answers. Years ago, as a way to help others become more effective coaches and counselors, I began to systematically ask thousands of executives to define the attributes of the chemistry - the magic - required to effectively counsel them. What exactly did they need and expect from the people around them? Their responses, the opinions of hundreds of professionals who have successfully become effective executive coaches, and my own successes and failures have contributed to a list of what top executives want. It's an insightful guide for providing the highest kind of service we can be called upon to render - building leadership.

The Boss' Shoes Test Service is why I am here. It is top management's vision and values that drive the organization _ day-to-day, as well as long term. The coaching process begins by understanding what the boss' problems are. My job is to help management solve, control, contain, and counteract communication problems. Building followership is a key strategy and management goal. I am a loyal follower. Being at ease as a strategist or tactician allows me to stand back from the detail and focus on larger issues and develop simple, positive strategic concepts. Expressing solutions in management language helps top executives feel mentored and motivated. Making positive suggestions is a constant goal. The boss knows I'm a professional: I needn't justify it every day.

What Top Executives Need and Want

• People who listen. Not people who can barely wait to talk, but people who can listen, hear, and react, reflecting back ideas from management's perspective, yet evaluating broader human and perception impacts as well.
• People who have intuition to advance ideas and interpret events. Too often we retreat to the language and philosophies of our profession. When management learns to expect that behavior, our value is lost.
• People who have guts. Communicators must overcome the fear of doing or saying something that might appear offensive: They spend too much time trying to be inoffensive. But inoffensiveness lowers your credibility and builds management frustration. Military strategists will tell you that the two greatest enemies of victory are timidity and hesitation.

  Watch the vocabulary management uses when talking about you. It may reflect some frustration. For example, if your boss asks about "your friends in the media" or "expensive projects," your communication function may have low credibility. Without credibility you will not be persuasive, much less influential.

• People who give two kinds of feedback.

  Data feedback: What the situation is; what the statistics of the situation are.

  Feeling feedback: Executives want to know they are being heard, even if the counselor's interpretation moves in directions the executive finds uncomfortable. The executive wants a signal that the counselor understands the management mentality. Feeling feedback means listening beyond the words. Successful counselors are those who hear the executive's unsaid feelings speaking even louder than words.

• People who inspire. Often inspiration boils down to carefully applying common sense and recognizing pragmatic ideas, actions, and relationships. Some years ago, I consulted with a U.S.-based multinational company that found itself cut off from its non-U.S. management. Huge losses forced restructuring around a very successful core business, and it was the task of the communication staff to find a way to re-establish internal communication worldwide.

  Whatever we came up with had to be accepted and implemented in time to save both human and financial assets. Our suggestions were simple and pragmatic, inspiring a new interest in internal communication. The company implemented a unique, company-wide weekly meeting program designed to bring management messages into all levels of the organization and to provide information and concerns to top management response.

• People who are trusted. To most executives that means keeping your mouth shut. But, it also means communicating with extraordinary candor - understanding who the boss is, but telling it like it is. And once the decision is made, you are trusted to go along with it aggressively (or get out).

• People who have insight, that is the power to recognize patterns of behavior, patterns of attitude, patterns of organizational activity and response - and to notice the differences at the heart of developing new strategies and tactical approaches to management problems.

• People who are complete thinkers. A complete thinker is a counselor who never identifies a problem without offering options and solutions. Complete thinkers exhibit five basic attributes. No matter what the idea, problem, or situation, they are able to identify it, analyze it, forecast outcomes, recommend a range of ideas, and then test specific options.

• People who are pragmatists. Top executives want positive, yet down-to-earth and immediately useful advice.

• People who understand the dollar value of time. These people exhibit the ability to forecast impacts, make recommendations quickly and carefully, and turn questions into answers and good ideas into better ones - virtually on the spot and without being asked. The effective coach and counselor volunteers information and is constantly helpful.

Today's great success stories in business usually involve leadership and cooperation among many corporate disciplines. The exhibit that follows provides some helpful questions for the communication professional who already counsels and coaches. Use it to measure your ability to think like a leader.

From the chief executive's point of view, management's job is often to deal with paradox, contradiction, confusion, confrontation, and conflict rather than to predict challenges. Leaders who are CEOs do question themselves and their work and, once in a while, look back over their shoulders to see whether anyone is following. But when you are at the top, you do have an unobstructed view plus a perception of the level of leadership necessary. Creating leaders requires that we understand and accept the executive perception of what leadership means.

How's Your Coaching Ability? These questions can help you evaluate the attitudes and behaviors you bring to working with top management. How valuable are you? Do you understand your organization and the executive's job? Do you know what keeps the boss awake at night? Do you know who the customers are? Have you gone out on a sales call? Do you know what it costs to create, maintain, and keep customer relationships? If you work for a nonprofit, have you recently attended a membership meeting or seen what it takes to get a new member to join your organization? Are you closer to your customers? It doesn't matter what they are called in your business _ patients, participants, members, etc. What makes them want to buy your product or your organization? Do you really understand what drives your company: the customers and clients purchasing your goods and services? Can you identify two or three critical attributes of each of the publics your organization serves? Do you have a sense of the marketplace? Do you know where your organization fits, the issues affecting it, the barriers and dangers? Do you talk like an owner? Is it, "our business," or is it "your problem?" The sense of we-they comes about because of the way we communicate. Bosses notice ownership, especially when it comes to handling problems. Do you anticipate the major concerns of the people for whom you work especially those at the top? Prepare for coaching and counseling by playing the "what-if" game. On the left-hand side of a piece of paper, set up the "If" column; on the other side, set up the "Then" column. Anticipate problems and solutions. If something could happen, then you have at least one ready option. Can you control your ego involvement in the solution of problems? Do you remember who runs the company? It isn't your department, and it isn't you. Can you retain your perspective while broadening the boss'? Have you learned not to take modification of your ideas personally? If your advice is ignored or if next year's programs are 180 degrees from this year's, it doesn't matter. Most who fail at counseling stumble over their unwillingness to give up ownership of their own ideas or are unable to overcome the frustration of having advice ignored. Are you self-motivated? Can you start and stop on your own, work independently and take the consequences? Can you focus immediately on what is truly important? Do you have a can-do attitude? It takes no talent to figure out why something can't be done. Your real value is in helping find a way it can be accomplished. Do you express your suggestions in management's language? One criticism of the communication field is that it overemphasizes interactions and communications, intangibles and feelings. That's our perspective. But, can you take your advice a step further and blend it into management strategy with solid data or realistic scenarios? Management strategy must have solid data or realistic alternative scenarios. Do you always try to add value to your contacts with management _ even in situations where you're sitting in the back of the room? Value comes from always looking at the ideas, problems, and issues under discussion from new angles that are helpful, although different. It's more than simply answering questions or providing statistics. Adding value entails being on the alert - trying to interpret, explain, illustrate, or characterize in ways that build understanding and support positive action. Do you know how to teach executives to use your skills as a counselor, coach, or consultant? Unless top executives know what you can do and your value as a resource, they will have difficulty using or recognizing what you know. You must constantly educate, reinforce, and re-educate yourself. Do you understand the difference between influence and control? Counselors are influencers, not controllers. Final decisions are nearly always made by someone else. Do you identify with the real goal of your counseling and coaching - preparing management to cope, with or without your specific ideas?

Copyright © 2000, James E. Lukaszewski. Permission granted to reprint with attribution.