Week 4 - Coach

My coachee was really eager to talk about his experiments with the four-player model:

He has recently been promoted to a supervisor role in his program. There is abundant tension and bitterness – an “us vs. them” mentality among the staff– because the management style doesn’t allow people to voice frustration. Instead, feelings and thoughts get pushed aside because negativity and frustration might be bad for the kids.

At his most recent meeting, my coachee decided to take the “questions and concerns” section at the end of the agenda very seriously. He opened the floor for venting (as long as it was gear toward progress instead of mere complaining) and really invited people to share and to use their feelings to help the program move forward.

During all this, my coachee planned to be the bystander while he is usually the mover or the opposer. He knew he had to let go of ego and suspend his certainties. As he said it, he had to “shut up and listen.” Each time a person expressed a concern or a frustration, he asked how he could help. So without meaning to, he also took on attributes of the follower, looking for guidance that he could turn into action. He also talked about the urge to become an opposer during these conversations though. He wanted to stand up for himself and to justify things that were making his co-workers unhappy. Instead though, he forced himself to be polite and to be a bystander.

The next day, he reports people were smiling. The energy from the meeting, which was potent at the time, carried over to the next day. People appreciated that he had been a bystander and that he had listened. There is a level of discomfort about his role as supervisor because he was one of their peers a couple months ago and now he’s in charge, so the erosion of that power hierarchy may have also restored some normalcy or comfort to people who are not yet used to viewing him as a supervisor.

I asked if the other three players were represented at the meeting. There was mover – an ABA specialist who is training to be a psychologist facilitated a lot of the meeting. That same man also was an aggressive opposer at times as well. He has a lot of frustration (was recently demoted by choice) and got a little defensive and sarcastic at one point. Two other women were very quiet – maybe more like bystanders. They largely listened, but would express their ideas through the mover mentioned above. He would check in with them, ask what they thought, and then reiterate their ideas. There was no mention of a follower though, and the reason for this seems obvious: there was nothing to be done, at least not immediately. The purpose of the meeting was not to plan an event or create an IEP. The meeting was just meant to initiate a conversation. Followers will emerge in the upcoming meetings when the staff’s concerns are turned into effective plans and actions that will improve the organization.

While there was no ultimate action plan, the meeting was far from pointless. The goal of the meeting was to make people who feel disenfranchised feel heard for a change. With each concern that was brought forth, my coachee asked his co-workers for specific examples and all these examples were recorded. Then he asked group members what could have been done differently in those scenarios. What could management have done better? The conversation is what will yield results. My coachee mentioned that before he was a supervisor, sometimes all he wanted was to hear his supervisor say, “I was wrong, you were right.” While in the grand scheme of things a fixation on right and wrong will not be productive, I can see why he wanted to give that to his co-workers. As long as they feel like they can never be right and that their superiors always thinks he is right, the co-workers will see no point in dialogue. In this case, it seems like admitting that there is a right and wrong is a nice way to strike out against the hierarchies that are in place and are counterproductive. He also talked about how hard it was to let his co-workers say he was wrong, because he had not fully suspended and did still feel strongly about his ideas, but he did a good job staying in the bystander role despite instincts that push him toward opposer.

When I asked my coachee what role he felt most comfortable in, he said he is a mover and opposer. The more we talked about it though, the clearer it became that this is not always true. In different contexts, we have different strengths and weakness. In his career, my coachee’s strengths are as mover and opposer (hence his need to practice as a bystander). In his personal life though, he sees himself more as a bystander and follower, avoiding conflict at all costs. When asked why he thought there was a difference between his personal and professional life, he made an astute point: the only type of professional leadership most of us are exposed to is that of the mover. Most bosses tell you what to do and tell you when you’re wrong. So, since he is new the role of supervisor, it makes sense that he would follow those models. That is how we are taught to lead and that’s how we feel we should act when we are in positions of “power.” Additionally, some people, my coachee and me included, find a certain level of comfort in control. Being in control means there are no questions and fewer variables.