In the Netherlands, everybody who is somebody nowadays has a coach. Even coaches seem to have them. When a government department was recruiting coaches for top civil servants, candidates needed to tell if they had a coach themselves. I didn't.
Most coaches are not coaches at all. Real coaches let you train till you drop and they decide in what role you are going to play - if they let you play. The coaches we are talking about, can't do that at all. A personal coach is a combination of a personal teacher and a personal consultant. They may advise you what to do and preferably do that in a way you also learn how to do similar things in the future.
Advising and teaching in what? In my experience mainly with two things: politics and presentation. How to operate in internal and external force fields and how to sell yourself and your ideas. That is mainly useful in situations of strong competition, in conflicts and in crises. And in assuming new responsibilities and still finding your way. It is a kind of action learning outside the work situation.
Coaches have only one client per assignment. They work confidential, they are often invisible - if not for the accounting department. Their greatest advantage is that they can concentrate on one person, their greatest disadvantage is that they are, because of this, expensive.
Are they worth their money? Let's assume that a particular coach is a truly excellent teacher and a truly excellent counselor. He or she knows everything about how to be successful in organizations, in business, in adminsitration, in politics. Then the question is: why did that person become coach? As the old quip goes: Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach. Or they coach.
There may be good reasons for people to become coaches or consultants: having become older and wiser and less eager to do battle and join the fray; or being young and having a quick mind and a quick temperament and rather jump from one challenge to an other than stay long on one spot.
Many people that present themselves as coaches seem to overflow with positive energy. They are there to stimulate their fellow human beings, equipped with NLP and other workshop-wisdoms. But often they haven't been in the real-life situation of their clients - or they have withdrawn from that, sometimes for good reasons, but rarely because of an overdose of personal success.
Go for people who are practical, asking practical questions and giving practical suggestions. And are willing, eager even to hear how their suggestions worked out. Avoid people who are wholesalers in calendar wisdoms. If you want to be fired up, visit a motivational lecture or motivational workshop. Don't look for a motivational coach. If you need to be motivated all the time, you better spend your money on analysis or therapy. (How to find a therapist - if you really, really need one, is an other story.)
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Mubarak, personnel management and systemic persistence
Mubarak is being called the last pharaoh of Egypt. But we probably only need to wait for the next one. Societies have tremendous persistence. In system dynamics we know 'path dependence': once a path is formed, once a pattern is formed, even from random beginnings, new events tend to follow the same path, the same pattern. The decision to hold to the left at roads is just as natural as holding to the right, but once the pattern is there, it is very difficult to change.
After the Russian revolution, the communist leaders turned into czars, and after the fall of communism, the present leaders turn again into czars. Edward Rutherfurd, who wrote about London through the ages, was struck by the fact that the enormous waves of immigration through the centuries were absorbed without leaving traces. Wherever people came from, they turned into East-enders. Also today you can see a Pakistani boy, a Chinese boy and a Jewish boy walking along the Thames and hear them talk cockney together.
In Brazil, I worked with a group of human resources professionals. We did a constellation to find the core issue of personnel management in Brazil. The representative of the Brazilian HR profession was avoiding all the time to look at the core issue. The representative of the core issue felt heavy and dark and had no idea who or what he was. Then I asked "How old are you?' and he blurted out to his own amazement: "More than 300 years." We found out it was the history of slavery in Brazil, still a shadow over apparently modern HR management. It suddenly dawned on me why, when I was a HR director over there, my policy of "internal mobility" was so resisted in the company, that was in other respects a shining example of modernity. Although everybody could always apply for jobs outside the company, people were not allowed to apply for vacancies inside the company. Managers resisted the freedom of choice of their subordinates.
Systemic role patterns are extremely persistent, therefore, real societal change mainly happens after a country first is going through a dictatorship and then through a lost war. The dictatorship destroys most of the old social infrastructure and a lost war destroys the remaining. Mancur Olson sees that as the main explanation of different speeds in economic development. The longer a period of stability and peace, the more the growth of "collusive" organizations, the more the system calcifies.
We see similar processes in families, where family patterns repeat themselves through the generations. Sometimes we can trace them back to their origin: usually times of war, revolution, famine and pestilence. By the way, the social consequences of epidemics are liberating and the social consequences of famines are stifling, as Pitirim Sorokin demonstrated. Think why.
After the Russian revolution, the communist leaders turned into czars, and after the fall of communism, the present leaders turn again into czars. Edward Rutherfurd, who wrote about London through the ages, was struck by the fact that the enormous waves of immigration through the centuries were absorbed without leaving traces. Wherever people came from, they turned into East-enders. Also today you can see a Pakistani boy, a Chinese boy and a Jewish boy walking along the Thames and hear them talk cockney together.
In Brazil, I worked with a group of human resources professionals. We did a constellation to find the core issue of personnel management in Brazil. The representative of the Brazilian HR profession was avoiding all the time to look at the core issue. The representative of the core issue felt heavy and dark and had no idea who or what he was. Then I asked "How old are you?' and he blurted out to his own amazement: "More than 300 years." We found out it was the history of slavery in Brazil, still a shadow over apparently modern HR management. It suddenly dawned on me why, when I was a HR director over there, my policy of "internal mobility" was so resisted in the company, that was in other respects a shining example of modernity. Although everybody could always apply for jobs outside the company, people were not allowed to apply for vacancies inside the company. Managers resisted the freedom of choice of their subordinates.
Systemic role patterns are extremely persistent, therefore, real societal change mainly happens after a country first is going through a dictatorship and then through a lost war. The dictatorship destroys most of the old social infrastructure and a lost war destroys the remaining. Mancur Olson sees that as the main explanation of different speeds in economic development. The longer a period of stability and peace, the more the growth of "collusive" organizations, the more the system calcifies.
We see similar processes in families, where family patterns repeat themselves through the generations. Sometimes we can trace them back to their origin: usually times of war, revolution, famine and pestilence. By the way, the social consequences of epidemics are liberating and the social consequences of famines are stifling, as Pitirim Sorokin demonstrated. Think why.
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