At Barrett we are very mindful of our coaching approach and the well-being of the coaches and coachees. Read what Jens Hartmann, our head of Learning and Development has to say about this.
‘Coaching with Compassion’ not only is better for the coachee, it has health benefits for the coach as well
Let’s say you’re a sales leader, and you have the opportunity to coach a salesperson who has a decent track record. This has been their week:
Some big deals are taking more effort and time to close than expected; there’s pressure to close deals before the end of the quarter to reach sales targets and earn bonuses; market conditions are tougher which means the sales closed to prospecting ratio has plummeted; they’ve had some difficult client situations to deal with because operations have messed up some big order; and they’ve just lost a big deal to a competitor because the business couldn’t get the latest product to market fast enough.
As a sales leader, you can be rightly concerned about the situation above. You already have a lot on the line with:
- Managing and reporting on sales budgets, pipelines, forecasting, etc.
- Developing effective sales strategies and tactical sales campaigns
- Working with the C-suite and keeping up-to-date with what’s happening on the frontline
- Staying ahead of the competition
- Dealing with strategic accounts, putting together big deals
- Being there for your sales team, coaching them, advising them, keeping them on track free from distractions, managing poor performance, and so on
Now you need to find time to work with the salesperson described above, and coach them to better performance.
So where do you start?
What if you started by asking yourself the following questions:
- How do I think this salesperson is feeling at the moment?
- How should I approach this person and their current circumstances?
- How should I relate to them?
- What should I say to them?
- How would I coach them?
- How do I feel being their sales coach?
Coaching with Compassion
What we described here are the first steps into Coaching with Compassion, a concept developed and researched by Richard Boyatzis.
So what does “coaching with compassion” mean?
Here is one definition we like to use for coaching in general: “Coaching is helping others to help themselves.”
If we coach from a place of helping people help themselves, then coaching is about:
- Helping people move forward and make positive changes that lead to better results and outcomes.
- Helping people become better in their jobs through the most immediate and individual feedback and discussions around their tasks and skills.
- Helping people become more independent, self-reflective and confident.
- Being beneficial for both the coach and the coachee.
- Being caring and being compassionate.
Genuine, effective coaching cannot happen without care and compassion.
This take on coaching is significantly different to many sales coaching approaches we see in the field, which often tend to focus the coachee’s issues, fixing their problems, giving feedback and classic advice on their areas of improvement. This often leads to “Coaching for Compliance”, and is more of a corrective approach than supportive and development in nature.
Helping others to help themselves needs to go one step further.
It’s about ensuring that the coachee becomes empowered to fix their problems and issues themselves next time. They grow through coaching not only by receiving a momentary solution, but also developing ways to utilise the solution on their own in the future (vs. the coach/leader fixing things for them), and transfer that knowledge to other areas they might struggle with. It is about teaching self-reflection, decision making, the ability to see different perspectives in a situation, and other skills that help in their personal development. It’s, in fact, helping the coachee to become more independent of their coach and leader, more assertive about themselves, and to be more competent to manage their own change.
‘Compassion’ – as defined by Boyatzis [1] in this context – incorporates empathy and understanding of the coachee’s feelings and emotions, caring for the coachee on a personal level, and the ability and willingness to actively engage with the emotional state of the coachee. It’s going all the way from understanding through caring to action. Compassion in this broader sense is not just pity and concern for the suffering of others, it has a much more positive side to it, in addition to the classic definition. Coaching with compassion is more than being there for the coachee when they’re experiencing suffering and pain. It also means engaging with their desire to reach goals, personally develop, and follow their aspirations.
Such a coaching approach cares for the coachee’s development as much as for the organisational need, and it brings coaching up one level from being an instrumental approach to improve business performance.
What’s in it for the coach?
Why would you invest in Coaching with Compassion? First of all, it certainly does not reduce the traditional, expected results of coaching, such as improved sales performance of the team, better sales and service quality leading to better customer experience, or improved staff retention through motivated salespeople. Coaching with Compassion results in a reduced need for leadership effort to achieve goals through empowered and more independent teams, and simply free up time for sales leaders to work on more strategic tasks (vs. administration, or fixing their team’s issues).
But for the coach, this way of coaching has another huge positive side effect. Coaching with Compassion is very likely to enhance the coach’s own sustainability. By now, a fair bit of research has been done on this, including assessing the neurological changes and benefits this approach can lead to, for example, reducing symptoms of stress through a positive shift in hormonal processes in the body. Coaching leaders are likely to find themselves in a healthier mental state, experiencing more brain power. It can lead to a more positive image of themselves and their environment, reduce self-preoccupation, and keep their mind open to others and their ideas, as well as for criticism and discomforting information. (Some even see it as an antidote to narcissism)
Probably the most personal gain a coach can gain through “Coaching with Compassion” is that it can actually have a reversing effect on some classical stress factors leaders often experience like reducing the negative effects stress has on their physiological and psychological well-being, and thus lead to a healthier, more balanced work-life experience.
[1] Boyatzis, Richard & Smith, Melvin & Beveridge, Alim. (2013). Coaching With Compassion. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. 49. 153-178. 10.1177/0021886312462236.Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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