Destined to Lead

Executive Coaching and Lessons for Leadership Development

K. Wasylyshyn

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781349470846
  9781137357762
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137437679
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

In a field that's crowded with how-to coaching books and academic tomes on organization/leadership behavior, Destined to Lead breaks away from the crowd with its specificity and candor on how real cases unfolded in the hands in one of the world's most respected pioneers of executive coaching.

C H A P T E R 1

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The Relentless Champion

Most executive coaching cases begin in a fairly predictable manner. An experienced coach is contacted by the boss or human resources (HR) partner of a talented senior leader, and they discuss the prospective coaching engagement. The coach and executive then meet and in the presence of good chemistry and a clear contract, the work commences—work that is focused on helping a gifted individual become even more effective. Depending on the coach’s model, there can be other steps in between but basically this reflects how the use of executive coaching has shifted from a remedial intervention to that of a powerful development resource. In the words of management consultant guru Ram Charan, “As coaching has become more common, any stigma attached to receiving it at the individual level has disappeared. Now, it is often considered a badge of honor.”¹

Nothing about the work with Ted was predictable. This executive coaching case began differently. It unfolded differently. It ended differently. In its totality, three coaching practice points are emphasized: (1) the importance of precoaching scrutiny (Is coaching really the right resource?); (2) the partnership with an HR professional; and (3) the value of life stage development theory² in the conceptualization and management of a case with a lasting coaching outcome.

The Coaching Referral

This referral started at a meeting I was having in London with a senior HR professional who said, “I need you to coach one of our most brilliant scientists.” However, the more I heard about Ted, the less inclined I was to work with him. The HR Vice President in this global pharmaceutical company described Ted as “highly forceful, out-of-control, rude, and too much of a hassle for most people.” When I asked him how he thought Ted perceived himself, his response was both intriguing and revealing—“an idiosyncratic genius.” While he also told me that another consultant had tried to coach Ted, he believed the “hook” for coaching at this juncture was that he was about to be promoted and would be reporting to a new boss who found Ted’s behavior “unacceptable.”

Since I had been consulting to this company for over a decade, I checked out Ted with another HR contact there. She described him as explosive and with a tendency to “ream people out” in both live meetings and teleconferences. On one occasion, when he was championing support for a particular drug, he told members of the company’s top executive team that their resistance to developing it indicated that they had “shit for brains” (I’m thinking to myself, Oh boy, this is not sounding encouraging); then she started to emphasize his “warm and mushy side.” Given this observation, I decided to dig further before I made a final decision about whether or not coaching could be the right “medicine” for Ted at this point in his career.

Serendipitously, the external consultant who had previously coached Ted had once reported to me, so it was easy to get his candid input. He described Ted as “egotistical, abrasive, and combative (with anyone who disagreed with him).” In my follow-up phone call with the HR manager in London, I expressed doubt about Ted’s making the behavior changes that he reportedly needed to make; but I also suggested I have an introductory “no commitment” meeting with him to assess this directly.

The First Meeting

Ted was punctual and appealing, wearing one of the softest leather jackets I’d ever seen. While the business world was in “dress down casual” mode by then (1998), Ted’s version was decidedly high quality. He was also quite engaging—smiling, listening, and remarking on his surroundings. After our polite settling in, I asked how coaching might be helpful to him now. In his words, “The focus needs to be on my temper because I just don’t tolerate fools too well.” When I probed about the manifestations of his temper, he said, “I’m perceived as heavy-handed and that I can pummel people, especially if they’re getting in the way of delivering on our objectives.”

Ted went on to say, “I’ll do anything to get a drug to market—and I can continue to fight even after I’ve won!” Sensing his volatility and perhaps retaliatory nature, I explored this further. Ted commented almost gleefully, “Oh yeah, I can be retaliatory all right! There was once a physician who was blocking my progress, and I actually wanted to destroy her!” As our conversation continued, his seemingly softer—or at least more reasonable—side emerged when he described how he’d never had a secretary or a direct report quit, and the loving nature of the relationships with his wife and three children.

When I probed his volatility, Ted said, “It’s a reflex, I just go into auto-pilot. I have a real mean streak, and I don’t know when to pull back. I want to punish after I’ve won. I expect people to yield to my opinions because generally they’re better, but I realize now that this behavior has really cost me.” When I questioned how his behaviors had “cost” him, he said he had missed an earlier promotion because he was “too immature.” In his words, “There are no shades of grey for me, but I’m at a different stage in my career now that I’m dealing with senior people who have their own well-formed views, so I need to better deal with them.”

While Ted’s comments were encouraging in terms of him as a viable coaching client, I still had a lingering doubt. Using paradoxical intention, I asked,

So tell me, why would I want to work with you? You made minimal progress with your first coach, and I’m not sure that I’m the right medicine for you. I suggest you go away and think about two things. First, would you make coaching the priority it needs to be for behavior change to happen? And second, are you ready to work with someone who’s going to push hard for you to take a deeper look at your volatility and its implications for more effective leadership?

Within a few days, Ted debriefed our meeting with the two HR contacts (as had I) and then called to say he wanted to begin the coaching as soon as possible.

Data-Gathering Phase

The Coaching Agenda-Setting Meeting

In addition to Ted and me, the coaching agenda-setting meeting was attended by his boss and his HR partner in the United States (who reported to the HR person in London). I crafted an agenda that covered: (1) the coaching process (data-gathering, feedback, coaching, and consolidation phases conducted over 12–14 months); (2) our respective roles (boss and HR in collaborative partnership with Ted and me throughout the coaching); (3) the boundaries of confidentiality (Ted owned all data gathered, however, the specific coaching foci, as well as the quality of his participation in the coaching process would be shared with his boss and HR partner); (4) coaching areas (boss and HR to provide explicit input); and (5) the identification of a sample of respondents for 360 data- gathering. (There were 17 people in this sample, that is, a representative mix of senior executives, peers, direct reports, and Ted’s wife as well.)

As expected, Ted’s new boss highlighted two interrelated areas for coaching: (1) explosive behavior that needed to be modified, and (2) executive presence in terms of Ted’s behavior not sabotaging the collaborative organization his boss was trying to create. Ted’s boss wanted him to censor his overtly negative comments about other senior executives whenever they disagreed with Ted. He also thought Ted needed to “let go” and thus empower his direct reports more fully.

The Life History

Of all the data-gathering, none was as revealing—and helpful in understanding the underlying basis of Ted’s explosive and retaliatory behaviors—than his life history. At the outset of this four-hour meeting Ted said, “I have no contact with my family. I don’t think about them and I don’t like them. They make my skin crawl.” The oldest of three boys, his tilt toward the pharmaceutical industry was not surprising in light of the fact that both his father and paternal grandfather had been pharmacists. He described his mother as “nuts, and emotionally and physically absent” as she had been institutionalized for mental illness when he was a child.

His father was an alcoholic who expressed no affection, provided no affirmation, and yelled at and beat Ted. While he never attended any of his son’s sports events, his athletic ability was an early source of pride and accomplishment for Ted. By junior high school, for example, he was the leading swimmer in his state and became an All-American.

Well-cared for by his swimming coach, a former member of an Olympic swimming team, he moved in with this family when he was 14 years old. In his words, “I was so glad to get away from my family—and I never went back. I lived in their basement, maintained a strict discipline, worked two jobs, and I mostly ate Kraft’s macaroni and cheese.” Ted received a swimming scholarship from Ohio State, majored in pharmacy, and graduated with top honors. He also completed his PhD there and had great mentors including a Nobel Prize winner.

Regarding his first job in the pharmaceutical industry Ted said, “I saw that I could do basic research in a pharma company and make a really good living, too.” After several years there, he joined another big company where, in his words, “I could advance my career without giving up science.”

He would spend nearly two decades in this company where his major career highlight was the development of a drug that saved millions of lives and proved to be one of the company’s blockbuster products. On the personal side, he formed a few very close friendships with colleagues and also met a woman (the “absolute love of my life”) whom he married. His habit of indulging her and his three children, making holidays—especially Christmas—an extravaganza of gifts was an expression of his generosity and also a reaction to the misery and deprivation of his own childhood experiences.

Feedback Phase

Organization-Based Data

As Ted and I began to discuss his 360 feedback,³ I was reminded that beneath his outwardly aggressive and confident persona, there were strong elements of sensitivity and insecurity. Seeing his mix of anticipation and anxiety, I reminded him that this type of feedback was no more than a set of perceptions, that is, a point in time and not the absolute truth. But despite this, it was better to have them because, as the axiom went, “Perceptions were reality in corporate life.” When he said the feedback was making him “feel flat,” I reinforced my support and optimism that, in the presence of his intention to do so, he could accomplish the necessary behavior changes to be successful at this senior level in the company.

I also emphasized that his many distinctive strengths far outweighed problem behaviors. I even suggested that if others in R&D (an organization I knew well) had more of his bold and tenacious drive, the company might, in fact, accelerate its success.

Core Strengths

The 360 data underscored a number of core strengths. These included his: (1) scientific knowledge (respected on a world stage); (2) reputation for selecting winning compounds; (3) knowledge of the pharmaceutical business; (4) innate intelligence (agile and creative mind); (5) work ethic, energy, and passion for what he believed in (“relentless champion”); and (6) kind, caring, and compassionate nature (with people who got to know him).

Development Areas

The three development areas tracked with what Ted and I had already discussed as well as with what his boss and HR partner emphasized in the coaching agenda-setting meeting. The first focused on his lack of emotional control—how his passion was a significant double-edged sword that could lead to explosive outbursts, insults, the desire to crush adversaries, flaming emails, and intimidation. Our HR partner captured it well when she said, “We all know how brilliant Ted is, but what he needs to do now is channel this brilliance into collaborative relationships with others versus fueling combat.”

The second area involved his executive presence—specifically, the level of maturity he projected as a senior leader. As his boss had underscored in the coaching agenda-setting meeting, Ted needed to be more circumspect in his comments about top company executives, and he needed to further empower his direct reports.

The third area was not identified in the coaching agenda-setting meeting, but it connected to what I had learned from his life history. The majority of people in the sample described Ted as an obsessive-compulsive workaholic whose sense of identity was completely dependent upon his work-related accomplishments. In tandem with this, he was seen as inexplicably insecure and in need of frequent recognition and affirmation.

Distillation of Coaching Areas

After merging Ted’s organization-based data with input from his boss and HR partner, we settled on two areas for the coaching phase. Further, I recognized that the life history data would likely jumpstart the coaching, and the construct of emotional intelligence would be a helpful learning vehicle. The two interrelated areas were: (1) self-regulation—minimizing his explosive/volatile behavior; and (2) executive presence—Ted behaving as a mature and enterprise-focused statesman who did not define himself solely on the basis of his work-related accomplishments.

Given the emotional intelligence he displayed with family members and certain others, I emphasized that developmentally it was easier for one to “generalize something that’s already there” than it was to try to “build in” something that’s not. This seemed to have a palliative effect on the doubt Ted was having about whether or not he could deliver on his behavior change agenda. In a conversation with his boss a few months later, he said that Ted was indeed “making real progress.”⁴

Conceptualization of Case

Clearly Ted illustrated what Kaplan and Kaiser⁵ have described as a lop-sided leader. His massive innate left brain capabilities had fueled distinctive and stellar career accomplishments, but limitations in right brain-based interpersonal/relationship skills limited his full effectiveness as a leader. Further given his childhood history, there were psychological attachment issues⁶ that influenced leadership behaviors that were not appropriate—especially at this level of responsibility. Specifically, Ted’s limited perspective-taking skills influenced his reflexively negative behavior (I have a real mean streak and I don’t know when to pull back) th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   The Relentless Champion
• 2   Destined to Lead
• 3   The Recovering Perfectionist
• 4   The Duality Within
• 5   The Demon Slayer: Conquering a Dark Side of Deference
• 6   A Midlife Reinvention
• 7   Fighting the Force of Old Habits
• 8   The Reluctant President
• 9   The Reluctant President Revisited
• 10   From Executive Coach to Trusted Advisor
• 11   Client and Coach Views Compared
• Coda: As to the Future . . . 
• Notes
• Index