Super valuable and so easy to apply. I personally have a fourth question that helps me decide: Is the coachee already involved in a Team Leadership program that is currently underway. I have had some experiences where the combination just didn't work, where the leader in question actually wanted to work with two coaches at the same time.
Absolutely brilliant article ! Thanks for calling out on two crucial issues of integrity violation and incorrect direction that organisations do not want to address .
Wonderful food for thought, Marshall. I wonder how many organizations that promote a zero-sum mentality could tell whether some of the behaviors they want coached are ethical. Perhaps an equally important consideration for coaches is whether the organization or an employee is requesting the coach. If it’s a company that encourages profit at any cost, it may be an integrity/ethics concern disguised as something else; if it’s the employee working in such an environment, maybe it’s the employee moving in a different direction than the company.
Useful considerations for coaches regardless. Thank you!!
These are the issues that as a CHRO I was often asked to fix. Ethics and integrity issues are not fixable and are usually part of a pattern of behavior.
Thank you again for your "drop in and be incisive," practical tips Marshall. These three questions are especially helpful.
One question that I also ask is, "Give me a couple examples where you willingly and if possible enthusiastically changed your behavior to benefit someone or something other than yourself and tell me how that worked out for you." What I look for are people who have a TRACK RECORD of already changing their behavior that - at least initially - benefited others more than themselves and how/if they were able to sustain that.
In fact I got brought in as an advisor to the Prosecution in the OJ Simpson criminal trial after I asked the then DA, Gil Garcetti, "Have you thought of asking potential Black jurors, 'First, have you ever changed the way you felt about someone else?' because if they never changed their mind about an abusive parent, they weren't going to change their mind about Simpson. 'And second, if you changed your mind, what made you to that?' in which case you're looking for people who changed their mind based on logic and facts vs. emotion because you're going to need them to take all the evidence into consideration when they come up with their verdict."
Garcetti came back to me after speaking to Marcia Clark and told me that they never would have come up with that "elephant in the room" question ever, and as soon as they heard it, they knew it was true.
I went on to be an advisor throughout the trial and faxed >150 pages of "outside the box" observations and tactical suggestions.
I never published anything about it, because the fact that it was a double murder caused me to not want to get caught up in the circus that the trial became.
I did my best to stay away from publicity because of that, but one short conversation with Dominick Dunne, did find its way into one of his Vanity Fair articles (https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1995/07/dunne199507) where he quoted me as saying:
Although jurors and the media start off each day like a group of Bambis, gamely making their way through the forest of DNA evidence, they end each day looking like deer in the headlights of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
—Dr. Mark Goulston, U.C.L.A. psychiatrist and observer for the prosecution, in the corridor outside the courtroom.
BTW in retrospect, if you want to make it as a coach, people do have to know about you, otherwise you will end up that tree that falls in the forest that nobody hears... or hires.
Consider this comment my 26 year post OJ trial Monday Morning stab a publicity.
Super valuable and so easy to apply. I personally have a fourth question that helps me decide: Is the coachee already involved in a Team Leadership program that is currently underway. I have had some experiences where the combination just didn't work, where the leader in question actually wanted to work with two coaches at the same time.
Absolutely brilliant article ! Thanks for calling out on two crucial issues of integrity violation and incorrect direction that organisations do not want to address .
Wonderful food for thought, Marshall. I wonder how many organizations that promote a zero-sum mentality could tell whether some of the behaviors they want coached are ethical. Perhaps an equally important consideration for coaches is whether the organization or an employee is requesting the coach. If it’s a company that encourages profit at any cost, it may be an integrity/ethics concern disguised as something else; if it’s the employee working in such an environment, maybe it’s the employee moving in a different direction than the company.
Useful considerations for coaches regardless. Thank you!!
So true - Thank you for sharing.
I've often said - Not everyone 'gets' coaching, and not everyone 'gets a coach' -
These are the issues that as a CHRO I was often asked to fix. Ethics and integrity issues are not fixable and are usually part of a pattern of behavior.
Love the clarity Marshall...I totally agree with firing the integrity issues.
Thank you again for your "drop in and be incisive," practical tips Marshall. These three questions are especially helpful.
One question that I also ask is, "Give me a couple examples where you willingly and if possible enthusiastically changed your behavior to benefit someone or something other than yourself and tell me how that worked out for you." What I look for are people who have a TRACK RECORD of already changing their behavior that - at least initially - benefited others more than themselves and how/if they were able to sustain that.
In fact I got brought in as an advisor to the Prosecution in the OJ Simpson criminal trial after I asked the then DA, Gil Garcetti, "Have you thought of asking potential Black jurors, 'First, have you ever changed the way you felt about someone else?' because if they never changed their mind about an abusive parent, they weren't going to change their mind about Simpson. 'And second, if you changed your mind, what made you to that?' in which case you're looking for people who changed their mind based on logic and facts vs. emotion because you're going to need them to take all the evidence into consideration when they come up with their verdict."
Garcetti came back to me after speaking to Marcia Clark and told me that they never would have come up with that "elephant in the room" question ever, and as soon as they heard it, they knew it was true.
I went on to be an advisor throughout the trial and faxed >150 pages of "outside the box" observations and tactical suggestions.
I never published anything about it, because the fact that it was a double murder caused me to not want to get caught up in the circus that the trial became.
I did my best to stay away from publicity because of that, but one short conversation with Dominick Dunne, did find its way into one of his Vanity Fair articles (https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1995/07/dunne199507) where he quoted me as saying:
Although jurors and the media start off each day like a group of Bambis, gamely making their way through the forest of DNA evidence, they end each day looking like deer in the headlights of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
—Dr. Mark Goulston, U.C.L.A. psychiatrist and observer for the prosecution, in the corridor outside the courtroom.
BTW in retrospect, if you want to make it as a coach, people do have to know about you, otherwise you will end up that tree that falls in the forest that nobody hears... or hires.
Consider this comment my 26 year post OJ trial Monday Morning stab a publicity.