Month: April 2013

Relationship Mapping Tool, A Coaching Tool for the Leadership Journey

Most of us begin our careers as technical or functional specialists who are individual contributors. When we get promoted to a team leader or supervisory role, and then later on to a managerial and executive role, we must transition from specialists who are individual contributors to leaders who contribute primarily through the work of others. The higher we move up the organization, the greater our dependence on the help and goodwill of others to get work done and accomplish organizational goals.

The leap from specialist to leadership can be a tough challenge for many as it requires learning how to get things done through others. Skills in planning, organizing, coordinating, controlling, as well as communication skills, interpersonal skills, motivating skills, networking skills, to name a few, become more critical to success than the technical or functional skills through which we built our earlier success.

Leadership is a journey and leadership coaching can help the budding and perhaps struggling new leader or leader in a new role. One leadership coaching tool is Relationship Mapping developed by Scott Blanchard and Madeleine Homan discussed in the article “Coaching Tools for the Leadership Journey” by Ken Blanchard, Madeleine Homan Blanchard, and Linda Miller. The Relationship Mapping Tool and process involves these five steps:

1. Identify your key goals and milestones

Define clearly what must be accomplished and how these will be measured.

2. Create a relationship map for each goal

For each goal, identify the key persons/stakeholders who will be affected by efforts to achieve the goal and achieving the goal.

3. Analyze the key persons/stakeholders in your relationship map

Answer these questions for each key person/stakeholder:

* What are their main goals and objectives?
* How will it serve them for me to succeed–or fail?
* What is needed from them?
* How can they help–or hurt–the project?
* What is the person’s thinking style?
What will be needed to most effectively communicate with and influence him or her?
* What attitudes does the person have about me?
Is there respect, credibility and trust?
* How do I feel about the person?
Is there any judgment or bad history to complicate things?

4. Identify who are more/most important to the success of the goal or project

5. Create an action plan for each critical stakeholder

Create a mini action plan for deepening you relationship with each critical stakeholder. Actions can include going to the person and asking for advice, calling or emailing the person to get an opinion on something, spending more time with them to get to know them better, getting their inputs about the goal or project over or coffee or lunch, and other interactions that can help deepen the relationship.

Pay attention to how they see things, understand their point of view, what they focus on, what is their approach, and so on.

In another post, we will look at a similar tool focusing on stakeholder analysis for communications planning.

Situational Leadership and Executive Coaching, Part 2

As I mentioned in Part 1 of the post, one interesting discovery I had is that Situational Leadership is also applicable to Executive Coaching.

“Executive coaching requires exceptional leadership and questioning skills to be effective. At no point is leadership more important than in assisting clients in defining their performance issues and identifying the underlying causes.”

This is how Paul Hershey and Roger Chevalier began their article on Situational Leadership and Executive Coaching, and it made me stop and think, again, about how asking powerful questions can make a difference in the coachee’s self awareness and create that “aha” moment. The first time I heard about asking powerful questions, I wasn’t sure what that really meant. But as our coaching class did the exercises on coming up with what we thought were powerful questions and discussed which were and weren’t, then I began to understand.

They added an Executive Coaching Guide to Situational Leadership to show how it provides a structure to guide executive coaches in working with their clients. The principle is the same in that executive coaches must adjust their leadership styles to their client’s readiness to perform a given task. Readiness refers to ability and willingness.

As a performance aid, the Executive Coaching Guide provides a process and a two-phased framework for interviewing, counseling and coaching situations. The first phase focuses on asessing a client’s readiness in dealing with each of his issues, performance or otherwise, and choosing an appropriate leadership style. Assessing readiness helps the coach choose the appropriate leadership style to work with his client. The coach asks open-ended questions to assess how the client sees the overall situation and gain insight on the his issues. The readiness level for each issue may vary.

The second phase focuses on selecting the appropriate leadership style to intervene in a manner that has the best probabilty of a positive outcome for the client. The coach matches his coaching leadership style, choosing from the following:

  • R1 – Client is unable and unwilling or not confident
  • S1 Prescribe – 1. Presents alternative courses of action. 2. Identify the best course of action. 3. Inform, describe, instruct, and direct.
  • R2 – Client is Unable but willing or confident
  • S2 – Develop – 1. Discuss ways to improve performance. 2. Reach agreement on best course of action. 3. Guide, persuade, explain, and train.
  • R3 – Client is able but unwilling or not confident
  • S3 – Reinforce – 1. Reinforce the process used and the progress made. 2. Reinforce self-worth and self esteem. 3. Encourage, support, motivate, and empower.
  • R4 – Client is able and willing or confident
  • S4 – Follow-up – 1. Document session in clien’t record. 2. Follow through on all commitmenets. 3. Monitor progress and prepare for next session.

Leading with questions in one of the most critical skills of executive coaches in working with clients to analyze performance gaps and causes, to set a reasonable and achieveable goal, to process options and decide on a course of action that moves the client forward.

The Executive Coaching Guide is published in Coaching for Leadership, Writings on Leadership from the World’s Greatest Coaches, Edited by Marshall Goldsmith, Laurence S. Lyons, and Sarah Mc. Arthur.